"This is the most difficult announcement. As you know, things have not been going well back home. Well, it's gotten worse-a lot worse. Yesterday, a Soviet destroyer challenged the blockade. Several warning shots were fired across her bow; she did not respond. A second volley was fired; there still was no response. None. The nuclear destroyer USS Cunningham launched two of her falcon missiles. Both struck the Soviet vessel amidship. She broke in two and sunk. 800 of her crew were lost. This morning, an American surveillance satellite was struck by a Soviet laser, fired from the Sergei Kirov space station. The American satellite was destroyed. The United States has broken off diplomatic relations with Russia. All ambassadors have been recalled. The Soviet ambassador has been expelled along with the entire staff. All American air defense and satellite defense forces are on full alert. Premier Ulanov made a televised address and said that technically, a state of war exists between our two countries. All American personnel are ordered to leave Soviet territory immediately or they will be placed under arrest. All Russian personnel are similarly ordered to evacuate American territory. As a result, by direct Presidential order, the three of you must leave the Leonov. No Russian citizen is allowed to remain on or is allowed to enter the Discovery. This order is effective immediately. The launch window for reentry is 28 days. The Discovery has enough fuel for low consumption trajectory. HAL appears to be reactivated and is functioning well enough to operate the onboard systems. The Leonov has enough fuel for low consumption trajectory that will arrive 12 months earlier. The launch windows are critical for both the spacecraft. Only communications of emergency distress nature are allowed between the Leonov and Discovery. I know you people are caught in the middle of this — in a sense, we all are. I wish there was something I could do to help. The only thing left for us is to pray...pray for the safety of our families, for our countries, for our planet. May God forgive us and protect us."

"Milson to Floyd: It's been 12 hours since my request for information. I need a reply. All hell is breaking loose down here; I have enough problems without you people pulling some kind of a stunt. I only hope that there's a world left for you to return to. Report to ground as to what is going on and make that report immediately! And while you're at it, could you please check out a black spot on Jupiter that has been detected by satellite telescope? It is on the dark side, and should be coming around your way in about 4 hours. End transmission, Milson, 2780."

"In the very near future a small group of Americans and Russians set out on the greatest adventure of them all... To see if there is life beyond the stars."

"This is Milson, switching over to KE2 in 5 seconds. Mark. I wish I could bring you better news. It's getting worse. The President addressed a joint session of Congress yesterday. He said he wasn't gonna back down on the blockade. I don't know which was scarier, the speech or the Congress cheering it. He evoked Lincoln. Whenever a president is gonna get us into serious trouble, they always use Lincoln. I honestly don't know if we're gonna be at war or not — it's terrifying to hope that the Russians are less crazy than we are, when they are clearly crazy. Right now, I think you're in a safer place than we are. I just hope that there is an Earth to return to. I heard about the spoiled food in the Discoverys galley. I'm glad that's all it was. I'm also glad that you got the ship under control. Curnow is a capable man. No one knows those systems better than he does. It's a good sign that there was some reserve power. Maybe the rest of the circuitry will work. We have nothing new here on the Monolith. Our data confirms yours. It's not moving."

"My dear Christopher: This is the last time I'll be able to speak to you for a long while. I'm trying to put into words what has happened. Maybe that's for historians to do sometime later. They will record that the next day, the President of the United States looked out of the White House window and the Premier of the Soviet Union looked out of the Kremlin window, and saw the new distant sun in the sky. They read the message, and perhaps they learned something because they finally recalled their ships and their planes. I am going to sleep now. I will dream of you and your mother. I will sleep knowing that you are both safe, that the fear is over. We have seen the process of life take place. Maybe this is the way it happened on Earth millions of years ago. Maybe it's something completely different. I still don't know really what the Monolith is. I think it's many things. An embassy for an intelligence beyond ours. A shape of some kind for something that has no shape. Your children will be born in a world of two suns. They will never know a sky without them. You can tell them that you remember when there was a pitch black sky with no bright star, and people feared the night. You can tell them when we were alone, when we couldn't point to the light and say to ourselves, "There is life out there." Someday, the children of the new sun will meet the children of the old. I think they will be our friends. You can tell your children of the day when everyone looked up and realized that we were only tenants of this world. We have been given a new lease and a warning from the landlord."

"Whether we are based on carbon or silicon makes no fundamental difference. We should each be treated with appropriate respect."

"The year we make contact."

"HAL was told to lie - by people who find it easy to lie. HAL doesn't know how."

"We are not alone."

"Dear Caroline: This is finally it. After 9 years and hundreds of millions of miles, we are about to come face to face with the Monolith. The last human being who did that disappeared and was never seen or heard from again. Something truly amazing is going on out here, and I really believe this black giant is controlling it all. We have so much to ask. I have a feeling that the answers are bigger than the questions."

"Rod Zuanic - "Scrooloose""

"George Spartels - "Blackfinger""

"Angry Anderson - "Ironbar" Bassey"

"Robert Grubb - The Pig Killer"

"Helen Buday - Savannah Nix"

"Paul Larsson - "Blaster""

"Adam Cockburn - Jedediah Jr."

"Frank Thring - "The Collector""

"Tom Jennings - Slake M'Thirst"

"Angelo Rossitto - "Master""

"A lone warrior searching for his destiny...a tribe of lost children waiting for a hero...in a world battling to survive, they face a woman determined to rule."

"Mel Gibson - Max "Mad Max" Rockatansky"

"Tina Turner - Aunty "Entity""

"Hold out for Mad Max. This is his greatest adventure."

"Bruce Spence - Jedediah "The Pilot""

"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…"

"Edwin Hodgeman - Dr. Dealgood"

"And now, I've got two men — two men with a gut full of fear. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, dying time's here!"

"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]"

"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."

"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."

"Well, ain't we a pair, raggedy man? [laughs] Goodbye, soldier!"

"Two men enter; one man leaves!"

"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."

"Bust a deal, face the Wheel!"

"Remember where you are. This is Thunderdome. Death is listening, and will take the first man that screams."

"Who run Bartertown?"

"You think I don't know the law? Huh? Wasn't it me who wrote it? And I say this man has broken the law. Right or wrong, we had a deal. And the law says, "Bust a deal and face the Wheel!""

"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 it 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 and 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 them 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."

"Vic Tayback - Pete Ross"

"Pat Renella - Johnny Ross"

"Felice Orlandi - Renick"

"Justin Tarr - Eddy"

"Carl Reindel - Stanton"

"Don Gordon - Delgetti"

"Robert Duvall - Weissberg"

"Simon Oakland - Captain Bennet"

"Jacqueline Bisset - Cathy"

"Detective Lt. Frank Bullitt - some other kind of cop. Pity the guy he works for."