Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome installments of the "Mad Max" series, "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" has influenced popular culture in various regards. The term "thunderdome" is now used in various contexts in which its meaning is similar to the sense in which it appears in the film. That is, a contest where the loser suffers a great hardship, though it has also come to mean, more generically, the state of the world following a nuclear apocalypse, or any place where chaos is the norm. Filmmaker Chris Weitz has cited the film as an influence. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (also known as
Mad Max 2 concept of the hero", stating that this attempt "makes the film joyless", "sappy", and "sentimental". The film's depiction of a post-apocalyptic future was widely copied by other filmmakers and in science fiction novels, to the point that its gritty "junkyard society of the future look...is almost taken for granted in the modern science-fiction action film." "The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction" says that "Mad Max 2", "with all its comic-strip energy and vividness...is exploitation cinema at its most inventive." Richard Scheib called "Mad Max 2" "one of the few occasions where a sequel makes a dramatic improvement in quality over its