I remember when Waterworld was getting marketed like mad in my youth. We were all so excited about what was at that time the most expensive movie ever made and it starred Kevin Costner, who at that point in his career seemed to be incapable of doing anything wrong.
We lined up at the theaters like good little lemmings only to be subjected to a film that was actually nowhere near as incredible as we had hoped it would be. This was in a time when streaming wasn't even something that could be conceived of and even internet reviews of stuff were something that not very many people did. I suppose that kind of worked out in the film's benefit because they enjoyed a few weeks of making big money before word got around that the film isn't very good.
The film isn't very good, yet I still think people today should go back and watch it, for the first time, or perhaps for a bit of nostalgia about the "good ol' days."
From the promotional materials we were provided in 1995 this movie was presented as being a "Mad Max" on the ocean and honestly, that is exactly what it is. Well it was that and a budget of $100 million, which was an absurdly high budget for that time period and it spiraled out of control to nearly $200 million once the producers found out that filming something exclusively on water is actually a lot more difficult than they had planned.
The film's producers and director Kevin Reynolds (who?) were actually warned, in a very kind way, by Steven Spielberg of all people to not film on open water because it isn't going to go like you have planned. He speaks from experience seeing as how he had a little project you may have heard of called Jaws that also went wildly over budget and was extremely frustrating for everyone involved. Do you think anyone listened to Spielberg? Nah, of course not.
Much of the shooting was done in controlled environments that aren't actually the open sea, much like Titanic would do years later, but this was rather uncharted territory at the time and they learned very quickly that this was a crazy venture. There is some rumor that a lot of the conceptualized ideas that they had for the film had to be cut because they were already wildly over budget and the cast and crew were at their collective wit's end. The end result is a film that barely makes any sense, looks very cheap and fake at times despite having a tremendous amount of money involved in it, and invokes more eye-rolling than it does any sort of enthusiasm.
I was upset when I was leaving the theater after watching it, but the other day I went back to watch it again and I can say that time has definitely helped this movie out a lot because for me at least, this film showcases the notions of excess in the 90's and how filmmakers really seemed to believe that if they just threw enough money at something, that it would be a hit. They were partially right, but even though Waterworld ended up making $250,000 worldwide, because of the massive advertising campaign that they had to endure to get people to actually go and watch it, they ended up losing money anyway. In that sense I feel as though entertainment is cyclical because we are seeing this happen to film after film these days, especially with superhero films, and one would assume that studios would be dropping like flies when all of their films end up losing tens of millions of dollars.
Waterworld was an anomaly at the time and it was such a surprise that something that had so much money behind it, and so much star-power, could be such a colossal flop. I guess they were predicting the future with this one because now that happens all the time.
Another reason to go back and watch this again is because in 1995 we couldn't just CGI everything and have it be convincing. In order to get the shots needed for this film they had to use practical effects. Very little of the film involves computer graphics and well, it is quite noticeable in a lot of places. The famous jet skis exploding on impact scene is a fantastic example of that. It doesn't look even remotely real.
Kostner's character has no name, and is simply known as "The Mariner" and it is later shown that he has somehow evolved and has gills and he goes on a rather silly deep dive to some area on the bottom of the sea. Why? nobody knows and it has no impact on the plot. I guess they just needed to spend some more money.
There are a ton of massive plot-holes in this movie that are never explained and screw it, it actually makes the film more fun because so many things, such as where the hell is everyone getting gasoline from, are never really addressed. Sure they have a giant floating oil barge that the main baddy lives on, but anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of petroleum knows that you can't just shove crude oil into a jetski and get it to move. The refining process is actually extremely complicated and would require, I dunno, a great deal of dry land to have a factory to perform this process. The entire premise of the movie is that there is no dry land anymore and that is the entire reason why everyone is in such trouble.
The source of all the drama evolves around a girl named "Enola" who has a fucking tattoo on her back. A tattoo on a child, that's correct.. and this tattoo is meant to provide people with information about how to get to what is the only dry land remaining on the planet or something. How does the tattoo lead to this area? Nobody knows... When it is later revealed that Enola actually lived on said island in the past a collective groan literally rose up from the crowd in the theater where I was watching this in 1995.
The story is bad, the limited CGI is bad, most of the acting is bad, yet somehow, I really think that this film has improved dramatically over time. You need to watch it with the right mindset though and if you do, I think you will have a great time. You just need to remember that this film was meant to be super-serious yet it comes across like a comedy with how campy and bad it is. If you can go into it realizing this, I think you will have a great time.
When you take into account the extreme difficulties they would have had filming all of this, it becomes even better. That one photo above tells a massive tale because getting lighting just right is a very tricky game involving multiple light sources and reflections of just perfect order. Now imagine how difficult this is to accomplish when you have the unpredictable nature of the ocean basically working against you and your entire crew the whole time you are filming?
The film ended up getting nominated for awards but it didn't win any of the ones people actually want to receive. It was nominated for 4 Golden Raspberry awards and won only one of them and it was well-deserved. It went to Dennis Hopper for "worst supporting actor."
Again though, while it was seriously disappointing to me at the time because I expected a serious and gritty film, I look back on Hopper's performance with glee these days. He was handed an absurd character with absurd dialogue and was likely one of the first people on set to get fed up with the making of this film. Some of the scenes involving him appear as though they definitely needed refining and a few more takes but it honestly wouldn't surprise me if Hopper just outright refused. What are they gonna do? Reshoot the entire film with a new actor? I don't think so.
I find Waterworld to be a piece of cinematic history because it isn't often that the entire world gets let down so much by a film that they spent years making and telling us that it was going to be the best thing ever. These days I kind of expect films to flop on a regular basis but in those times, especially after the legendary film year that was 1994, this was something that truly caught us all off guard. If you've never seen it, I kind of envy you because you are in for a real treat of something that everyone involved thought was going to be an epic film that would be remembered throughout all time... Well, it is remembered, but probably not for the reasons that they originally hoped.
Currently this film can be legally streamed from a wide variety of services including Starz and AppleTV+