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.
By John J. Joex
Rating: 1 ½ out of 5 Stars
Waterworld is Kevin Costner’s mega-dollar, post-apocalyptic film that takes place on a future Earth where global warming has led to the melting the polar ice caps and completely covered the planet in water. In this world, people live in throw-together floating cities or on salvaged ships from the past. Costner plays a character never given a name in the film, though referred to by some as “the mariner”. He lives a solitary life on his trimaran that he has fitted for extensive sea excursions and he 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. While in one of the makeshift water cities, 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 in the city 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. He eventually comes to tolerate their presence, though. However, it is not long before the smokers catch up with them and take the child, and the mariner (with the assistance of some of the people that survived the earlier attack on the city) sets off to rescue her.
Any genre fan watching this film will almost certainly quickly recognize what previous film it draws much of its inspiration from. Waterworld essentially gives us The Road Warrior set on the ocean instead of the desert, and it parallels that film to the point of have marauders stage an assault on a makeshift fort/city and even throws in its own version of the gyro pilot (in addition, director of photography Dean Semler worked on both movies). However, this film lacks much of the subtlety that made Road Warrior such a great film that resonated with viewers for years after its release (and you can read more about that in my Anti-Blockbusters review at this link). Waterworld’s star Kevin Costner spent much of the 90’s working on films that delivered “grand statements” (such as this film, Dances With Wolves, and The Postman) which often found themselves stumbling over their own proselytizing. The Road Warrior succeeded because it did not preach to the audience, 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 and still does today, even though it is never explicitly stated. We saw the message play out in the onscreen action and it touched a nerve. The message of Waterworld, though, seems much more muddled and never really strikes a cord with the audience. The people in this movie seek the mythical “dry land” which seems to represent what they lost apparently because their ancestors had not headed the warnings of global warming. But this just seems too nebulous and difficult to grasp, and the message is too often delivered from a high pulpit. Even when the Deacon delivers the ironic speech that they (his marauders) will find dry land and subvert it to their will, the message never really grabs us the way Road Warrior did.
This is in part because of the self-importance of the film, 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 the theaters as one of the biggest budgeted blockbusters ever up to the point of its release. Whereas Road Warrior went small and cheesy, Waterworld delivered big and gaudy. And while it looked good, 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 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 grand standing with too much self importance fueling his performance. And he changes from unlikeable loner to dedicated protector of Enola and her mother (well, guardian actually) without sufficient justification. Apparently the scriptwriters just felt 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. And while there is an extended version of the film for those interested that fills in more of the back story of Waterworld and some of the characters, 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 looked better than the much cheaper 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 ultimately stumbling over its own ambitions. The film did eventually make money when its worldwide receipts were factored in, but it fell well short of its vision. And it also quickly fell off the radar of genre fans who dismissed it as a big dollar clone of The Road Warrior; a much better, much cheaper film that still resonates with viewers thirty years after its release.
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