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TABLE OF CONTENTS |
| Mad Max Home |
| Rationale |
| Instructional Objectives |
| Materials and Equipment |
| Instructional Procedures |
| Part One: Bartertown |
| Bartertown: Questions |
| Bartertown: Plot |
| Bartertown: Notes |
| Part Two: Crack-in-the-Earth |
| Crack: Questions |
| Crack: Plot |
| Crack: Notes |
| Part Three: Conclusion |
| Conclusion: Plot |
| Assessment |
| Sample Essays |
| Return to Unit III |
MAD MAX
BEYOND THUNDERDOME
PART II
The CRACK-IN-THE-EARTH
Once again, Max finds himself lost in the desert. In the course of his wandering, his
horse is swallowed by the sand. Unconscious, and near death, Max is saved by a tribe of
children who take him to their home: an oasis at the bottom of a rift in the desert,
surrounded by cliffs. Down in this crevice of a world, the Crack-in-the-Earth, they live
in a primitive paradise that has the look of an Aboriginal never-never land.
The children are convinced that Max is someone named Captain Walker who has come to fly
them home to a place they believe is called "Tomorrow-morrowland". As Max lies
there, white as death, the children spin an old record album, while a teenage boy, who
appears to be the priest of the group, talks into a broken radio headset, in the mistaken
belief he can make contact with the unconscious man.
"...Delta Fox X-ray. Come in. Is anybody up there?," the teenager says, as all
the children crowd around Max, as he lays there unconscious. "Can you read me,
Walker? Delta Fox X-ray...."
Having just escaped the nightmare of Bartertown, where he was dragged into other people's
agendas, it seems that Max has now been incorporated into this tribe of children's waking
dream.
Max wakes up and one of the oldest of the group,
a young woman named Savannah reveals who and what they are by telling the tribe's central
myth, which is a mixed up description of the events that led to the destruction of
civilization and the stranding of the children. As the tribe puts it, she engages in
"the tell." As she does so, drawings on rock are used to illustrate the story,
and Max is told to look through a hand-held picture viewer at some old slides, which show
scenes from the past that have been misunderstood and incorporated into the tribe's
mythology.
As she explains it in the tell, there were once people who dwelled in the paradise of
Tomorrow-morrowland, with "highscrapers" and "v-v-v-video" and with a
special "knowin[g]" that is now lost. Then a catastrophe, a
"pocsaclypse", took place, which left everyone at the mercy of "Mr.
Dead". But one group, led by Captain Walker, escaped into the air and ultimately
crashed on earth, where they gave birth to the children. Then, one day, missing what they
had left behind, they returned home to Tomorrow-morrowland, promising they would send
someone to bring the children back, as well.
During the
telling of the story, the children use the picture viewer to show Max a slide of what they
believe is Tomorrow-morrowland. It is actually a photograph of preholocaust Sydney,
Australia.
Out in the desert, near the oasis, half-buried in sand, is a large airliner which is the
plane that the actual Captain Walker crash-landed. According to an engraving on rock, the
surviving adult passengers trekked out into the desert to find help, leaving the children
to fend for themselves, which the children have misinterpreted as the adults' return to
the paradise of highscrapers from which they came. And so the children wait, expecting the
plane in the desert, flown by their messiah, Captain Walker, to rise up at the appointed
moment and take them home.
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The second stopping point is |
But Max
can no more take the children to Tomorrow-morrowland than he can undo the 'pocsaclypse'.
So, after he fails to fly them there, a group of children led by Savannah chooses to
attempt a potentially fatal journey into the desert in search of it by themselves. Max
shoots his gun and then uses physical violence to intimidate them into stopping."Now listen good," he says. "I'm not Captain Walker. I'm the guy who keeps Mr. Dead in his pocket and I say we're gonna stay here and we're gonna live a long time and we're gonna be thankful."
However, Savannah successfully
sneaks out and leads a group of the children into the desert. Max goes after them and
finds them deep in the middle of nowhere, but not before the sand has swallowed one of the
children.Max and this group of innocent dreamers are now stranded in the wasteland, not far, as fortune would have it, from Bartertown.
- Ken Sanes, 1997
All pictures copyright Warner Brothers Home Video, 1985.