Actor Kevin Costner and director Kevin Reynolds’ gargantuan,
grandiose folly Waterworld remains one of the most expensive big-screen
spectacles ever attempted. George Miller’s
The Road Warrior if it took place on the open ocean with jet skis
instead of motorcycles or warships instead of diesel trucks, it’s an often
unfairly maligned post-apocalyptic exercise in dystopian science-fiction action
adventure with every dollar on the screen with a tangible concrete realism to
it long since lost to time as filmmakers and studios have turned more and more
towards computer generated imagery. While
tragically the first of what would become a series of expensive flops for Kevin
Costner (The Postman being the next), the film now spearheaded by the
good folks at Arrow Video in an upcoming 4K UHD limited edition disc release
has a chance to be seen in the light its makers always intended it to be.
Sometime in the year 2500 the sea levels have risen over
7,600 meters as a result of the polar ice caps melting, submerging every
continent on the globe underwater. Those
who survived now forage on atolls or floating cities that feel like oil rigs by
way of Tatooine or Fury Road’s Citadel in the middle of the Ocean while
endlessly searching for the much mythologized “Dryland”. Among them is The Mariner (Kevin Costner), a
mutant trader with webbed feet and gills behind his ears so he can breathe underwater.
Traveling alone on his transforming multifaceted trimaran
stopping occasionally at atolls to trade dirt for supplies, he crosses paths with
a rogue gang of pirates dubbed the Smokers led by The Deacon (Dennis Hopper)
who after losing an eye dons a makeshift pirate eye patch made from water
goggles. Quickly a young woman named
Helen (Jeanne Tripplehorn) keeping vigil over a little girl named Enola (Tina
Majorino) become targets of the pirates who are seeking to use the girl to seek
out the mythical Dryland. But not before
the Mariner takes both under his wing on a cross-oceanic chase replete with
stunning effects stunt sequences involving jet skis and motorboats.
At once famous for being a still-astounding technical
achievement in effects-set heavy filmmaking as well as infamous for the various
controversies and cost overruns swelling around the production, the film was
initially budgeted around $100 million before ballooning to a then
record-breaking sum of $175 million.
Shot off the coast of Hawaii which greatly benefitted the state
economically, the film bypassed the words of warning from Steven Spielberg over
his ordeal making Jaws in the open water, resulting in one of the sets
sinking to the bottom of the sea before needing excavation and repairs.
Worse still, Kevin Reynolds stopped getting
along with Kevin Costner and quit the production before its theatrical release
despite retaining full directorial credit.
Initially a theatrical flop in the US before international followed by
home video sales boosted its profits back up, the film like Heaven’s Gate before
it was widely attacked for its perceived waste of money. Its closeness to The Road Warrior which
screenwriter David Twohy cited as a major influence didn’t help protect the
film from critical drubbing.
All that said, warts, derivations and all, every dollar is
on the screen in terms of sheer world-building spectacle. For being ostensibly a dystopian Mad Max clone
set in the water, Waterworld is kind of sumptuous. From Blade Runner 2049 production
designer Dennis Gassner’s jaw dropping sets to The Road Warrior cinematographer
Dean Semler’s pristine camerawork capturing every nuance, crevice and detail of
the sets, Waterworld looks incredible.
The soundtrack by James Newton Howard leaves something to be desired,
more or less channeling the fast-paced energies of the Mad Max scores.
Performance wise Kevin Costner does a ton of daunting
physical acting including but not limited to tons of underwater scenes. Dennis Hopper as the film’s reptilian villain
more or less is riffing off of the same schtick he brought onto Super Mario
Bros. with more than a bit of the actor gleefully hamming it up. Jeanne Tripplehorn’s role is more or less
thankless despite some onscreen nudity but the real standout performance is
from eventual Napoleon Dynamite actress Tina Majorino as the quick witted
whipper snapping Enola.
A movie the critics and perhaps the moviegoing public itself
was pining for a burning at the stake, Waterworld was set to sink at the
box office before it even had a chance to open its sails. For decades it was regarded as this Battlefield
Earth kind of misbegotten trainwreck, a film you loved to hate and clicked
shotglasses over in between its “funniest” scenes. Now decades later, after the dark cloud
whipped up by press junkets and tabloids has subsided, audiences can finally
have a chance to experience Kevin Costner and Kevin Reynolds’ heated labor of
love outside of the controversy and hate mail it engendered.
While far from a masterpiece (Kevin Reynolds’ Robin Hood:
Prince of Thieves and Risen arguably being superior), films of this
magnitude and scale rarely ever happen anymore and when they do it mostly
involves actors standing in front of a green screen. A product of its time and one of the
quintessential penultimate blockbuster movie productions, Waterworld is
a lot more escapist fun and thrilling than you’ve been led to believe after all
these years.
-Andrew Kotwicki
