Thunderdome

We Don't Need Another Hero from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, the final installment of the Mad Max trilogy, is one of the finest examples of a movie theme song.  The lyrics and the music fit right in with the film, instead of feeling like something just stuck into the film.  Plus, they've got Tina Turner, who played Aunty Entity in the movie, on vocals.  The music video also does a good job integrating the themes of the film into the song.

Out of the ruins
Out from the wreckage
Can't make the same mistake this time
We are the children
the last generation
We are the ones they left behind
And I wonder when we are ever gonna change
Living under the fear till nothing else remains

We Don't Need Another Hero was written by Terry Britten and Graham Lyle who had previously composed Tina's huge comeback hit, What's Love Got To Do With it.


Beyond Thunderdome (1985) is a fine film but THC thinks it the weakest of the trilogy.  The production quality and editing is definitely better, perhaps due to bigger budgets or director George Miller learning his craft but it does not maintain the unflinching view of the future of Mad Max (1979) and The Road Warrior (1981).  Because Beyond Thunderdome pulls its punches it does not have the emotional impact of the earlier films and some of the finale's best scenes, like the train chase at the end, are reworkings of uniquely creative scenes from the earlier films. 

THC saw The Road Warrior before seeing Mad Max and without much foreknowledge about the contents of the film.  Thirty years later, the post-apocalyptic world it portrays has been the subject of countless (and mostly bad) films but, at the time, it was unique in its vision and seeing it was a very disorienting and shocking experience capped by the most thrilling chase sequence THC had ever seen.  It also had one of the most memorable final shots and lines in filmdom and is my favorite of the series.
The first film, Mad Max, is much cruder in terms of directorial quality and suffers from a terrible dub job but it is also very powerful and, particularly towards the end, contains some disturbing material which explains how Max became the character you see in the final two movies.