Waterworld (1995)

Let's be realistic.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Continuing my plan to watch every Kevin Costner movie in order, I come to Waterworld.One of the most controversial movies in KC's filmography. Simply because it had the stigma of being the most expensive movie ever produced at the time. A snip by modern standards at $175 million. Universal initially authorized a budget of $100 million, but production costs eventually ran it up to to an estimated $175 million, with KC putting $22 million of his own money into the film, just as he did with Dances With Wolves. Plot In A Paragraph: In a future where the polar ice-caps have melted and Earth is entirely submerged, The Mariner (KC) reluctantly helps a woman and a young girl try to find dry land.KC reunites with Fandango and Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves director Kevin Reynolds for what should be a slam dunk for the pair of them, but with troubled production from the off, the film was plagued by a series of cost overruns and production setbacks. The script underwent 36 different drafts which involved six different writers, including Joss Whedon who flew out to Hawaii to work on it, he later described it as "seven weeks of hell". Sets were destroyed (The Atoll actually sank too) by three hurricanes, KC, his stuntman, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Tina Majorino (who was also drunk by jellyfish repeatedly too) all nearly drowned. All of that,and then throw in leading man KC's whose marriage fell apart during filming, and when Wyatt Earp opened to empty turnstiles to become his second (third if you count The War) box office disappointment in a row, the critics were gunning for him. Writing that after great success, he was finished, and on his way out. They made out, at 40, he was an ageing gunslinger (think KC would approve of the western metaphor) hearing the footsteps of younger faster trigger men named Will Smith, Jim Carrey, Tom Hanks and Leo Dicaprio. I know i'm in the minority here along with an ever increasing circle of people who actually enjoy this very under rated movie. I don't think it's fan bias, when I say Waterworld is a thoroughly enjoyable summer popcorn flick, all the performances are good, the action set pieces are impressive and it has a good sense of atmosphere too. Whilst I always end up humming James Newton Howard's score for a while after I have watched it too. It's not perfect by any means. Locking director Reynolds out of the editing room, KC hacked it to pieces in order to accommodate the two-hour-running-time maxim imposed by the studio, so that corporate could get their investment back.I'm in the process of trying to track down a fan-edit of the film called Waterworld: Ulysses Cut, which includes all of the deleted scenes. The additional scenes tie up several loose ends left ambiguous by the theatrical release.Even with all of the above, and opening a week before guaranteed money maker Die Hard With A Vengeance, Waterworld ended the year the 12th highest grossing movie of 1995, with a domestic gross of $88 million. KC bashers should get over themselves, and start giving George Lucas what he deserves.

Waterworld is just like Last Action Hero a really good movie with good performances that was very ahead of it's time and people hated it that's like saying that Mad Max was a bad movie because it was ahead of it's time or Terminator or Alien or anything else post-apocalyptic movie or movies with fiction in it. There is a lot of action, laughs but also nice cinematography now the only problem i had with the movie it was sometimes it was a bit silly like Dennis Hopper's character says some lines that totally are made for villains of this kind and the cgi is not good you can also spot the green screen in some scenes threw out the movie but the film has a lot of action, good performances but also it's a funny movie and i'm going to give Waterworld a A- 9/10.

Released in 1996, "Waterworld" chronicles events 500 years in the future after the polar icecaps have melted where people live in ramshackle floating communities called atolls. Kevin Costner stars as the Mariner, a loner who travels the 'waterworld' in his makeshift multi-hulled watercraft; that is, a huge trimaran. After visiting an atoll, the 'village' is attacked by a gang of 'Smokers,' led by Deacon (Dennis Hopper). The Mariner escapes with a woman (Jeanne Tripplehorn) and a smartaxx little girl with a curious tattoo on her back (Tina Majorino). Can they escape Deacon's wrath and find the mythical 'Dryland'? R.D. Call and Gerard Murphy are on hand as Enforcer and Nord respectively.My title blurb is the best succinct description: "Waterworld" is basically Mad Max on the high seas, but with Costner as the protagonist rather than Mel Gibson. If you like the comic booky tone of the original Mad Max trilogy you'll like "Waterworld." If not, you probably won't. I was never a big fan of the nigh-goofy style of those apocalyptic movies, which explains my initial lukewarm feelings about "Waterworld." But if you can adapt to the tone there's a lot to appreciate: There are a lot of interesting props, including miscellaneous sailing and flying machines and medieval-like futuristic arms. A little past the hour mark, though, I was starting to get bored by the one-dimensional setting & happenings but, thankfully, the story segued into a couple of nigh fascinating interludes accompanied by an awesome score. As for the cast and their characters, Costner is stalwart as the laconic drifter with aberrant mutations, but is otherwise uninteresting. Tripplehorn looks great, but the movie fails to show off her beauty, like Beth Rogan in 1961's outstanding "Mysterious Island." To be honest with you, by the end of the movie I didn't care much about the main characters. As for Hopper, he's entertaining as always, but his comical approach diminishes any seriousness and realism. The movie is basically a live-action cartoon. It is common infamy that "Waterworld" was the most expensive movie ever made up to that time. It had a whopping budget of $100 million, but ended up costing almost twice that (not including marketing). It cost so much because it was hampered by a series of cost overruns and production setbacks, including the collapse of the multimillion-dollar set during a hurricane. As such, additional filming was required off the coast of Southern California. Further complications include Costner almost dying when he got caught in a squall while tied to the mast of his trimaran. Not to mention an epic soap opera disaster highlighted by the end of Costner's long-time marriage because of an affair on the set. Costner at the time was the superstar Golden Boy of Hollywood, an all-American hero who could do no wrong. "Waterworld" put an end to that. Notoriously referred to as "Kevin's Gate" and "Fishtar," "Waterworld" was actually the #1 movie at the box office when released and even broke even, eventually making a profit years later via video sales. The film runs 135 minutes and was shot almost entirely in a large artificial seawater enclosure located in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Hawaii similar to that used in the film "Titanic" two years later; the ending was shot in Waipio Valley on the Big Island of Hawaii.GRADE: B- (6.5/10 Stars)

Waterworld is not an adaptation from a book. That right there is proof for research and creativity ! The first script draft was ten years ago but Costner re-wrote it. Waterworld might be the most under appreciated movie of all time, and is a very important contribution to sci- fi, for the amazing decor and infrastructures, the phenomenal music, the number of people hired to play in it... No other movie has bothered to tackle the same subject, because even with CGIs it requires a lot of effort and work, something Costner did. I don't think people understand how brilliant Costner matches this role so perfectly, which is very hard; If you don't get it, then you just don't get acting. This is not Rocky Balboa 'brrrruubbrrruruhuhughg lightheaded" acting, it took Costner a lot of effort and energy to play a masked cold angered mariner and does a few stunts at age 40 (he had a stuntman surfer doing the others). The Media of course, deliberately trashed this movie for recreation instead of praising the fact that it's incredibly ahead of its time think about it, no one had ever come up with that concept before, but Costner did. And then there's the issue of forums: what we call the trolls, those who tag along and criticize just to criticize. The Media demonstrated its immaturity and autoproclaimed right to unfairly bash without taking any responsibilities. Costner was scandalously trashed by the press coalition that destroyed his marriage, they slandered, insinuating he had an affair, they kept reporting it in the tabloids headlines, reporting there were multiple incidents on set (most of it because of natural hazards that sunk a set and stuck Costner up on the sail), just because Universal didn't pay them to go watch the movie. They even said Costner's hair line was CGI effects ! And of course a ton of people hopped on the bandwagon. The story itself is great, a future covered by water and only one hope remains that a dry land still floats. One girl shipped into a basket wears markings that are coordinates to dryland. Her guardian Helen and an inventor protect her from the Smokers who have heard about her tattoo thanks to a leak (the Nord spy). Along comes the Mariner who can swim under the very bottom of the ocean, to pick up dirt and trade it on atolls but he is captured by the habitants labeled as a threat and a spy. The Mariner is released from his cage by Helen and the three take off on his trimaran in the middle of the Smoker attack, but the Smokers are determined to run him down and recover the girl. The Mariner then realizes the girl's markings are key indications but only he knows that the world has sunk and been covered up by water. They are ambushed by the Smokers who blow up his boat and kidnap the girl. The Mariner and Helen survive thanks to Grigor who spotted them up from his gas balloon but the Mariner refuses to run after the Smokers and decides to return to his destructed boat to recover the few objects left and sees drawings of dry land that match his national-geographic magazines and understands she is indeed a native of dry land. The final showdown takes set on the Deacon's boat that is overrun by the Mariner and leaves in the company of Helen, Grigor and the sheriff of the atoll on their way to dry land that Grigor has finally figured out the coordinates.I understand that at the time people were bothered by questions and I will urge them to go watch the complete version for three hours, it's out there on DVD and internet, and I guarantee you will get the answers and enjoy the complete version. It makes a HUGE DIFFERENCE. It's pivotal for the development of the story and characters, especially the Mariner. You look at Costner's performance in Field of dreams, Bull Durham, Dances with Wolves and Waterworld, not one of them are similar but Waterworld definitively reaches another level. The cast around him is very good, there are mostly very good characters, Hopper is hysterical but criticized because he's not "cruel" enough and looks more like a prankster. Maybe heiq, but he blows up an entire atoll and the Mariner's boat so I think that's good proof he is cruel. The negative would be the CGI - it is true that if you know the basics of CGI, you can spot the anomalies - the explosions that are offsync, the leviathan that swallows up Costner, when Costner has his boots off and his bare foot and back to wearing boots several times.... those are the regular anomalies that make this wonderful production unprofessional. Laziness ? Perhaps. But it was 1995. It would be a shame if Waterworld is not played again on TV in the full extended cut because the fans and the younger generations or even those who never saw it at the time, would discover a fantastic movie. If you have good taste, you can only enjoy this wonderful ride that leads you all the way to dryland.