Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)

Miller co-directed this third Max film with George Ogilvie, the first made without his producing partner Byron Kennedy, who died in a helicopter crash in 1983. It is the oddball of the series: Tina Turner rules Bartertown as Aunty Entity, the Thunderdome cage fight is one of the great action set pieces of the 1980s, and the second half turns into a fable about a tribe of lost children. Fans who want pure road fury often rank it last, but it is the clearest early sign of the mythmaker and the softer storyteller who would later make Babe: Pig in the City.