Postscript: A Licence to Kill

Abstract

A View to a Kill, the thirteenth Bond film, was released in 1985. So was Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, the third of the Mad Max movies. There can be little doubt as to which was the more significant event of the two. The release of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome was something of a media occasion. Accompanied by a television special (narrated by Tina Turner) showing various aspects of the film’s production, the publicity for Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome both contributed to and benefited considerably from the more general promotion of the star currencies of Tina Turner and Mel Gibson over the same period. Tina Turner’s world-wide concert tour; her appearance with Mick Jagger in the Live Aid telethon for Ethiopia; Mel Gibson’s role as Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty and his construction as Hollywood’s most recent and hottest discovery; the general American interest in ‘things Australian’ stimulated by the success of the Paul Hogan tourist advertisements — this network of associations served to mark the release of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome as a cultural moment, a distinctive and integral component in the media constructed cultural landscape of 1985.