Add These Trading Cards To Your Collection

Want to own your own little piece of the Repeat Viewing website, but you're strapped for cash? Now you can purchase postcard size prints of some of our most desirable, imaginary trading card wrappers for less than the price of a convenience store cup of coffee, including:

• Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
• Stand By Me
• The Karate Kid
• Blade Runner
• And more to come! 

Visit the store and collect the set. Trade them with your friends. You'll be the coolest!

Framed Canvas Prints Available in Store Now

Is Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome a children's movie? Consider the facts:

• Max has a pet monkey who leaves Max's boots on the side of the road for him, and tracks him across a desert while dragging a water bottle
• The Collector receives a hilarious blow to the groin
• Ironbar falls into a vat of pig faeces
• Half of the cast consists of precocious/adorable children
• A driver gets smacked in the face with a frying pan for comedic effect
• The amount of near fatal injuries that Ironbar receives, without consequence, suggests he is immortal like a Warner Bros cartoon character
  

 

With Thunderdome's broader audience appeal, it's surprising that there wasn't more child friendly merchandise available during its theatrical run. Even Rambo: First Blood Part II, released in the same year, had a trading card set. Which is why I created a Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome Read-Along book. And a partial set of trading cards, which can be found (with other cards that never existed) by hitting the tab at the top of this page.

  

Although these trading cards exist solely in digital form, you can now purchase the imaginary wax wrapper (and others like it) as a framed canvas print from the Repeat Viewing Pop-Up Store - for a limited time! 

New Year, New T-shirts

Nine new designs have been added to the Custom T-shirts collection. You can check them out via the tab at the top of the screen, or roll your eyeballs downwards towards these low resolution images here:

 

 

You could also join my six non-bot followers on Instagram and be among the first to see each new design as it drops. I hear it's what all the cool kids are doing these days.

Aunty Entity: A Mad Max Saga

 

Nefertiti Owens is known by many names - NTT to her friends, Vice Principal Owens to her colleagues, Aunty to her students. She is renowned amongst the faculty and greater community as level-headed and compassionate. When Nutbush High is one of seven sister schools chosen to send their football team on a goodwill tour of the South Pacific, Aunty is the obvious choice to lead the delegation. Two other Nutbush faculty members are quick to volunteer as chaperones - Ton Ton Tatsuhara, Music teacher and leader of the school band, and Elvis Ford, the diminutive Master of Science. 

 

Along with the full contingent of thirty Nutbush Thunderbolts comes the mentally handicapped team mascot Blaster, wearing his oversized mask with its trademark black eye and Oxford boater.

 

The tour is doomed from the start. Petrol shortages are an ever present threat, as are protest marches and the riots that follow. A terrorist attack precipitates the team's early departure from Australia, on what would be the last flight out of Sydney before the power grid collapses nationwide. A brilliant flash of light illuminates the northern skyline and the worst turbulence Aunty has ever experienced forces the pilot, Captain Walker, to set the plane down before he's even reached cruising altitude. 

 

The plane grinds to a halt atop the encroaching sand dunes beyond the city limits. The survivors split into two groups - Walker leads a group of women and children into the outback in search of the watering hole he claims to have spied from the air, while the other group, led by Aunty and her Thunderbolts, salvage what they can from the wreckage, including their team kit bags full of football gear. Aunty takes the lead as they begin the arduous journey back towards Sydney, with Mr Ford riding high on Blaster's shoulders.

 

Three blistering days into the trek, they stumble across a railway line and follow the tracks deeper into the desert. The tracks take them to a fortified farm with an onsite biogas facility, inhabited by dozens of pigs. The farm contains several working wells and a hefty supply of food for livestock. The survivors descend upon the squealing denizens of the farm. Ford, convinced that the pigs are worth more alive than dead, persuades Aunty to stop the hungry survivors and, with the help of her loyal Thunderbolts, she is able to do so. The seeds of the first law of Bartertown are planted on that day.

 

Aunty fashions her Thunderbolts into her own personal army, tasked with keeping the peace in their growing commune. They build Thunderdome in honour of their home field in Nutbush, Tennessee. It is a multipurpose venue, used to dispense information, settle disputes, and entertain the masses that are drawn to the lights produced by Ford in the cavernous biogas facility beneath the farm. 

 

Buoyed by the surrogate body of Blaster and his usefulness in the new world order, Ford becomes Master. Aunty recognises Master's confidence for exactly what it is; a challenge for rule of Bartertown. She has also grown accustomed to the vaunted position the end of the world has elevated her to, and has no desire to give it up. Aunty understands that Master's knowledge is a valuable commodity, so with the help of her closest allies, she conspires to remove the brain and dump the body. All she needs is a willing and capable assassin to complete the task. One might even go so far as to say, a hero.

The FAQ of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Mel Gibson's third (and final) adventure in the wastelands of the Australian outback, is widely regarded as the weakest film in the franchise. Many supporters of this sentiment claim that Thuderdome's tribe of children, cartoonish violence and M rating were detrimental to The Road Warrior's R rated legacy. The plot itself might also be responsible for alienating its audience, with its holes and questionable logic. To assuage your confusion and increase your enjoyment of the film, I have compiled a list of Frequently Asked Questions about Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and trawled through Joan D. Vinge's novelisation to answer them in the time honoured format of the 'trading card'.

A World Without Mel: Mad Max Fury Road

Full disclosure - I love Mel Gibson. No, I don't love love him, and I wouldn't say I even had a man crush on him. My love for Mel is purely based on an appreciation for his talent. Talent might even be too strong a word for it. What I appreciate most about him is his presence. Whether you consider him in his heyday as a young, charismatic leading man (sans mullet), or in his later years as an acclaimed director, you have to admit, the man has presence.

Now, obviously there's the private life of Mel that we're all aware of - his drinking, his relationships, his religion. To be honest, I generally avoid the tabloids and what celebrities do outside of their work. Fact is, some of my 'heroes' have been highly flawed individuals with questionable ideals. J. D. Salinger, for instance. Or Philip K Dick. Want to knock someone of the pedestal you've put them on? Read their biography.

Anyone who's had a quick look at this blog will undoubtedly notice numerous references to the Mad Max films (particularly Beyond Thunderdome, my favourite). So, when shooting began on Fury Road, I was excited to see where George Miller would take our eponymous hero. Since it's release, I've watched it repeatedly - and there are very few movies released this decade that I could say the same thing for. Fury Road is an extremely well made, highly watchable film, but it isn't perfect. Even on the first viewing, I knew something was off. Sure, the throwbacks to the previous films were often off-putting. The lack of screen time for Tom Hardy's Max was somewhat baffling. But my biggest issue with the film was the complete lack of disregard for the timeline.

George Miller has never been one to pander to the desires of the fans. Once you've seen Bruce Spence play a pilot in the second film and a completely different pilot in the third, it becomes pretty clear that Miller isn't fazed by a need to retain perfect continuity between films.

Bruce Spence: Gyro Captain/Jedediah the Pilot.

The society and structure of the world of Fury Road is so different to the previous films, so extreme, it would make sense to call this a comic book style reboot. Except you can't, because the prelude graphic novel released after the film tells us the first three movies are cannon. 

Music, Memory and 80s Film Classics

Music has always been an integral part of the film making process. Get the music wrong and a film can be ruined (think Ladyhawke), whereas the right music accompaniment can elevate a mediocre movie into the realm of the 'classic'.

Sound, like smell, are our most powerful triggers for memory. A song or piece of music can remind us of a film long after the plot, characters and visuals have been forgotten. With that theory as a jumping off point, I've created a list of the top 10 movie songs from the 1980s. Rather than using popularity or record sales as a basis for comparison, to be included in the list the songs must be:

• indicative of the era
• inexorably tied to the movie

Although dated, what sets these songs apart is the fact that, for many people, they cannot be heard without thinking about the film they were in. To make it a little harder, I've avoided using songs in which the title of the movie is mentioned. Unfortunately, that rules out the following sonic masterpieces:

Footloose, Kenny Loggins

Ghostbusters, Ray Parker Jr

The Goonies Are Good Enough, Cyndi Lauper

St Elmo's Fire, Man in Motion

The Never Ending Story, Limahl

Flash, Queen

Fame, Irene Cara

So counting down from 10, click the jump to see the Not-At-All-Arbitrary, All-Time Most Memorable, Memory Inducing Film Songs From The 80s:

'Member This?: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome And The Read-Along Record

In the 70s and 80s, movie soundtracks, novelisations and trading cards could help you relive the events of your favourite film during the years before its release on home video. The Read-Along Record took it one step further. Using audio from the film (dialogue, sound effects, music), they would create an interactive audio/visual experience unlike any other medium.

Unfortunately, very few films made the transition to the Read-Along format. Continuing with the theme of rectifying past pop culture merchandising oversights, I've mocked-up a Read-Along Adventure based on one of the greatest Australian movies of all time – Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

Beyond Thunderdome was the first of the original Mad Max trilogy that was clearly attempting to broaden its fan base to include children. Even with its M rating for course language, cartoonish violence and the occasional child buried alive, a Read-Along Adventure based on it wouldn't have been too much of a stretch of the imagination back in 1985.