Blockbuster Overload: Our ongoing series looking at movies that took the blockbuster genre to the extreme and perhaps to excess. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.
What Is It?
This film takes place on a future Earth where global warming has led to the melting of the polar ice caps, completely covering the planet in water, and people live in thrown-together floating cities or on salvaged ships from the past. The focus is on a character known as “the Mariner” who lives a solitary life on his trimaran that he has fitted for extensive sea excursions and who spends most of his time scavenging relics from the past that he can use to barter for precious things like fruit and vegetable plants as well as fresh water. He visits one of the makeshift water cities, but it is revealed that the Mariner is a mutant and has gills for breathing underwater as well as webbed feet. They plan to execute him for this heresy, but at the same time, the city is attacked by “Smokers” (people using boats that rely on fuel) who want a girl who has a tattoo on her back that allegedly provides the key to finding dry land. The girl’s mother helps the Mariner escape, but only after he agrees to take them with him. He reluctantly concedes to the demand, and they make their escape, though the solitary Mariner quickly finds that he does not desire the company of two females. It is not long before the Smokers catch up with them and take the child, though, and the Mariner (with the assistance of some of the people who survived the earlier attack on the city) sets off to rescue her.
Cast: Kevin Costner, Dennis Hopper, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Tina Majorino, Michael Jeter
Crew: Kevin Reynolds (Director), Peter Rader (Writer), David Twohy (Writer), James Newton Howard (Music)
Original Release: July 28, 1995
What Were Its Excesses?
Waterworld actually delivered an intriguing concept and established an interesting world, but it fell short in its execution, going overboard with the production while also feeling like a retread. Any genre fan who has seen this film will almost certainly recognize that it bears more than a passing resemblance to the 1982 cult classic The Road Warrior (aka Mad Max 2), though it falls short of the inspiration that drove that film. Waterworld often feels bloated and overwrought, and its pacing can be ploddingly slow throughout its 135-minute running time.
A Closer Look:
Kevin Costner spent much of the ’90s working on films that delivered “grand statements” like Dances With Wolves and The Postman, which often found themselves stumbling over their own proselytizing. Waterworld was another of those, and despite a mega-dollar budget along with a promising premise, it came up short and is often considered an example of the excesses of the genre.
As mentioned above, Waterworld essentially gives us The Road Warrior set on the ocean instead of the desert, and it parallels that film to the point of having marauders stage an assault on a makeshift fort/city, even throwing in its own version of the Gyro Captain (plus, director of photography Dean Semler worked on both movies). However, Costner’s film lacks much of the subtlety that made The Road Warrior a great genre entry and that resonated with viewers for years after its release (and you can read more about that film at Cult-SciFi.com). That cult classic succeeded because it did not preach to the audience, and its message lay deeper within the subtext of the film: life is cheap, fuel is worth much more. That underlying theme resonated with audiences when it first came out, even though it is never explicitly stated, and still seems rather poignant today.
The message of Waterworld, though, seems much more muddled and never really strikes a chord with the audience. The people in this movie seek the mythical “dry land,” which seems to represent what they lost because their ancestors had not heeded the warnings of global warming. But this just seems too nebulous and difficult to grasp (despite its relevance), and the message is too often delivered from a high pulpit. Even when the Deacon gives the ironic speech stating that his marauders will find dry land and subvert it to their will, the message never really grabs us the way The Road Warrior did.
This is in part because of the self-importance apparent in Waterworld, but also because it is not a very good movie to begin with. The Road Warrior never tried to pretend that it was anything more than a cheesy B-movie with maybe a bit of social commentary thrown in for good measure. Waterworld, on the other hand, stormed into theaters as one of the biggest-budgeted blockbusters ever up to the point of its release. Whereas The Road Warrior went small and cheesy, Waterworld delivered big and gaudy. And while it looked good for the most part, it got tired quickly. It was bloated in length and weighed down by plot contrivances, implausibilities, action-movie excesses, and copy-and-paste scenes and dialogue. It also tried to throw in the doses of humor that audiences had come to expect from the big-dollar, star-studded blockbusters, but these seemed forced and often just fell flat.
Nor did the acting do much to pick up the pace. I like Kevin Costner as an actor and believe that he can really soar with the right role (i.e., Ray Kinsella in Field of Dreams), but he seemed completely out of place here. His acting varied between wooden and grandstanding, with too much self-importance fueling his performance. And he changes from an unlikeable loner to a dedicated guardian of Enola and her mother without sufficient justification beyond perhaps the scriptwriters feeling like it was finally time for us to like his character. Nor do the other characters really stand out as anything more than your standard genre-film supporting cast. Dennis Hopper does have some good scenery-chewing moments as the Deacon, but he never manages to elevate the role above the caricature level.
There is an extended version of the film, for those interested, that fills in more of the backstory of Waterworld and some of the characters, but more screen time is definitely not what this already bloated two-hour-long production needs. Waterworld cost $175 million to make, a record budget at the time it came out. For that type of money, you expect grand production and spectacle. Yet for all of its costs, it hardly out-shined the much cheaper The Road Warrior. Sure, it wasn’t as cheesy, but it also wasn’t as much fun either. Ultimately, Waterworld gave us the classic example of Hollywood shooting big but stumbling over its own ambitions, leading to the film falling well short of its vision.
Why Was There No Sequel?
Waterworld was made on a budget of $175 million, with costs driven up by its many expensive water shoots (and reshoots). It made $264 million based on worldwide receipts, but that still had it falling well short of turning a profit. It was instead considered a commercial and critical failure, and there was no interest in producing a second movie in the series.
Should It Be Rebooted?
As mentioned above, Waterworld did deliver a decent premise and an interesting world, so a redo of this one might be worth considering. Get a creative team more interested in telling a good story and less focused on trying to make a grand statement or impress with the budget, and perhaps this could turn it into a credible genre entry. In fact, a television series reboot might work for this one because that gives the opportunity to really explore the world and perhaps take a look back at how it got to the state it is in. And, in fact, that could happen. A television sequel series was announced back in 2021 that would take place over two decades after the events of the film, following some of the original characters and introducing new faces. Not much has progressed with that, though, so it may be in Development Hell at this point. But there is definitely some potential for reviving this one, and perhaps that will surface at some point.
Interesting Facts:
Unlike most water-based movies, Waterworld was filmed on the ocean and not in a tank, though that caused issues for the production. It was shot in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Hawaii, and this created constant problems with waves, storms, seasickness, and equipment failures. Kevin Costner was even caught in a storm while filming a sequence in the trimaran, and he reportedly spent hours stranded at sea before being rescued.
The filmmakers constructed an enormous floating version of the atoll community on the ocean. The set weighed hundreds of tons and had to be anchored offshore. A hurricane eventually damaged portions of it, leading to costly repairs and delays.
Where Can You Watch It?
This movie has been released on DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K UHD, and you can rent or purchase it VOD. It is currently available for streaming on Netflix.
