Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

Barter Town Crowd:
Two men enter, one man leave!

Max:
Thunderdome. How do I get in there?

Aunty Entity:
That's easy. Pick a fight!

The Collector:
Perhaps you've got something to trade after all.

Max:
Keep talkin'

The Collector:
Twenty-four hours of your life, in return, you'll get back what was stolen.

Max:
Sounds like a bargain.

The Collector:
It's not.

Aunty Entity:
This is no enemy. It's almost family.

Max:
Oh, I see, real civilized!

Aunty Entity:
The reasons don't concern you, only the conditions. Do you want the deal or not?

Max:
Mmm

The Collector:
The first is, no one knows you're working for Aunty. You hit him, you go. The second is, it's a fair fight. The third is, it's to the death.

Max:
Who's the bunny?

Aunty Entity:
Congratulations! You're the first to survive the audition!

Max:
I don't know anything about methane.

Aunty Entity:
You can shovel sh*t can't you?

Master:
These our witness, Aunty. Us suffer bad. Want justice. We want Thunderdome!

Aunty Entity:
You know the law: Two men enter, one man leaves.

Master:
This Blaster! Twenty men enter, only him leave!

Aunty Entity:
Then it's your choice. Thunderdome.

Auntie Entity:
Well, ain't we a pair, Raggedy Man.

Auntie Entity:
Goodbye, soldier.

Pigkiller:
Remember: no matter where you go, there you are.

Aunty Entity:
And what did you do before all this?

Max:
I was a cop, a driver.

Aunty Entity:
But how the world turns. One day, cock of the walk. Next, a feather duster.

Master:
Who you?

Max:
Me Max.

Aunty Entity:
Do you know who I was? Nobody. Except on the day after, I was still alive. This nobody had a chance to be somebody.

Aunty Entity:
We call it Underworld. That's where Bartertown gets its energy.

Max:
What, oil? Natural gas?

Aunty Entity:
Pigs.

Max:
You mean pigs like those?

Aunty Entity:
That's right.

Max:
Bullshit!

Aunty Entity:
No. Pig sh*t.

Max:
What?

The Collector:
Pig sh*t. The lights, the motors, the vehicles, all run by a high-powered gas called methane. And methane cometh from pig sh*t.

Aunty Entity:
You think I don't know the law? Wasn't it me who wrote it? And I say that this man has broken the law. Right or wrong, we had a deal. And the law says: bust a deal and face the wheel!

Max:
YOU!

Jedediah the Pilot:
Me?

Max:
You, it's your lucky day!

Jedediah the Pilot:
It is?

Max:
Uh huh. You've got a plane.

Jedediah the Pilot:
I have?

Max:
It might just save your life.

Jedediah the Pilot:
It will?

Max:
Uh huh.

Max:
The first place you'll find is a sleaze-pit called Bartertown. Now if the earth doesn't swallow you up first, that place sure as hell will!

Master:
Me order! Me Master! Me run Bartertown!

Max:
Sure, that's why you live in sh*t!

Master:
Not sh*t! Energy!

Max:
Call it what you like. It still smells like sh*t to me!

Jedediah the Pilot:
We're not gonna make it.

Max:
We haven't got any choice.

Jedediah the Pilot:
between them and us, there isn't enough runway.

Max:
There will be.

Max:
I ain't Captain Walker. I'm the guy who carries Mr. Dead in his pocket.

Aunty Entity:
Remember where you are - this is Thunderdome, and death is listening, and will take the first man that screams.

Dr. Dealgood:
Right now, I've got two men, two men with a gut full of fear. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls... dyin' times here!

Max:
Who are you?

Slake:
We're the waiting ones.

Auntie Entity:
For God's sake, what now?

The Master:
Who run Bartertown?

Auntie Entity:
Dammit, I told you, no more embargos.

The Master:
More, Blaster.

The Master:
Who run Bartertown? Who... run... Bartertown?

Auntie Entity:
...You know who.

The Master:
Say.

Auntie Entity:
Master Blaster.

The Master:
Say loud!

Auntie Entity:
Master Blaster.

The Master:
Master Blaster... what?

Auntie Entity:
Master Blaster runs Bartertown.

The Master:
Louder!

Auntie Entity:
Master Blaster runs Bartertown!

The Master:
Lift embargo.

The Master:
You want foot in face?

The Collector:
People come here to trade, make a little profit, do a little business. If you have nothing to trade, you've got no business in Bartertown.

Max:
An hour on the inside. That's all.

The Collector:
Next!

Max:
I've got skills. I can trade them.

The Collector:
Sorry. The brothel's full.

The Collector:
If you find him, what then?

Max:
I'll ask him to return what's mine.

The Collector:
Oh, and of course he'll be desperate to clear his conscience.

Max:
He will be.

The Collector:
You that good?

Max:
mmm-hmm

The Collector:
Perhaps you've got something to trade after all.

Max:
So what's the plan?

Pig Killer:
Plan? There ain't no plan!

Bartertown Crowd:
Bust a deal, face the Wheel!

Dr. Dealgood:
Listen on! Listen on! This is the truth of it. Fighting leads to killing, and killing gets to warring, and that was damn near the death of us all. Look at us now, busted up and everyone talking about hard rain! But we've learned! By the dust of 'em all, Bartertown's learned. Now, when men get to fighting, it happens here, and it finishes here! Two men enter, one man leaves.

Dr. Dealgood:
He's the ball-crasher! Death on foot! You know him, you love him! He's...BLASTER! [Crowd cheers wildly] The challenger, direct from out of the wasteland! He's bad, he's beautiful, he's crazy! It's...it's the Man with No Name! [Crowd jeers Max]

Dr. Dealgood:
Thunderdome's simple. Get to the weapons. Use them any way you can. I know you won't break the rules. There aren't any.

Dr. Dealgood:
All our lives hang by a thread. Now we got a man waiting for sentence. But ain't it the truth? You take your chances with the law. Justice is only a roll of the dice. A flip of the coin. A turn... of the Wheel.

Master:
Who run Bartertown?

Savannah Nix:
This you know: the years travel fast, and time after time I done the tell. But this ain't onebody's tell. It's the tell of us all, and you've got to listen and to 'member, 'cause what you hears today you got to tell the newborn tomorrow. I's looking behind us now into history back. I sees those of us who got the luck and started the haul for home, and I 'members how it led us here and how we was heartful 'cause we seen what there once was. One look and we knewed we'd got it straight. Those what had gone before had the knowing and the doing of things beyond our reckoning — even beyond our dreaming. Time counts and keeps counting, and we knows now: finding the trick of what's been and lost ain't no easy ride, but that's our track. We got to travel it, and there ain't nobody knows where it's gonna lead. Still in all, every night we does the tell so that we 'member who we was and where we came from. But most of all we 'members the man who finded us, him that came to salvage. And we lights the city, not just for him, but for all of him that are still out there. 'Cause we knows there'll come a night when they sees the distant light and they'll be coming home.

About:
We were talking one day and Terry Hayes [who co-wrote the screenplays of Mad Max 2 and Beyond Thunderdome with Miller] started talking about mythology and how where people are short on knowledge, they tend to be very big on belief. In other words, they take a few fragments of knowledge and, if you take like the Aboriginal tribes of Australia, they just take simple empirical information and using those little bits of the jigsaw construct very elaborate mythological beliefs, which explain the whole universe. Terry was saying if you had a tribe of kids after the apocalypse who had only a few fragments of knowledge, [they would construct] a mythological belief as to what was before. And what would happen if Max or someone like that…