When you spend an ungodly amount of time inhaling movies, which I’ve managed to finesse into a living, you learn to notice the little things. Such as: When something unusual happens to the studio logo at the start of a film, that means shit is about to go down. Some highlights over the years: Looney Tunes characters fighting over the Warner Bros. logo in Gremlins 2: The New Batch; the 8-bit-style Universal Pictures opening of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World; Disney’s Magic Kingdom getting Tron-ified for Tron: Legacy. But if we were handing out awards for this niche art form, the most evocative execution comes courtesy of Waterworld’s somewhat literal world-building. There’s the traditional sight of the Universal logo, but the studio’s triumphant fanfare is missing as the shot lingers on the globe. Before long, the ocean swallows every continent until all that’s left is a world of … water:
“The future: The polar ice caps have melted, covering the Earth with water,” storied voice actor Hal Douglas says in ominous narration. “Those who survived have adapted … to a new world.” From there, Waterworld is off to the races.
Here’s what follows in the opening half hour of Waterworld: Kevin Costner’s protagonist, known only as the Mariner, is introduced pissing into a water filtration system before going full Bear Grylls; he arrives at a human-made atoll to barter the valuable commodity of dirt; a little girl has a tattoo on her back that doubles as a map supposedly leading to a mythical “Dryland”; the locals discover that the Mariner is a mutant with gills behind his ears and call for his death; pirate captain Dennis Hopper (the Deacon) shows up to torch the place; his minions ride Jet Skis into battle like horses. It’s a 12-year-old boy’s fever dream, ballooned to a blockbuster scale. To me, that’s cinema.
Seeing Waterworld for the first time on cable, I assumed that many others found its go-for-broke B-movie sensibilities endearing. Instead, it was disheartening to discover that the film was reduced to a waterlogged punch line in the ’90s. Waterworld’s issues were manifold: Even though Steven Spielberg cautioned against filming in the ocean after his nightmare experience on Jaws, director Kevin Reynolds insisted on shooting off the coast of Hawaii. A series of mishaps, including Costner’s near death in a squall and a hurricane that destroyed the original atoll set, meant that Waterworld became what was then the most expensive movie of all time at $175 million. Joss Whedon was hired for last-minute rewrites and said that he “accomplished nothing” in seven weeks. Costner and Reynolds butted heads until the director quit the project, leaving the final edit in Costner’s hands. Costner’s marriage was also sinking amid rumors that he had an on-set fling with a hula dancer. All this bad buzz led to Waterworld being mocked by the press as “Fishtar” and “Kevin’s Gate”—good burns, to be fair—and once it was released, the film’s failure at the box office was a foregone conclusion.
Over time, Waterworld’s reputation hasn’t improved, exactly; instead, the film has become a forgotten footnote of blockbuster excess. More expensive swings and misses have followed in the 21st century; spare a thought for John Carter and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, which both deserve their day in the sun. But as Waterworld reaches its 30th anniversary and the deranged ambition that drove the film has become harder to find in an increasingly risk-averse Hollywood, is the tide ready to turn in its favor?
If you’re familiar with George Miller’s filmography, you can easily connect the dots between the Mad Max franchise and Waterworld: Both are postapocalyptic visions of Earth marred by ecocide. (Just swap out cars for boats.) As it happens, Waterworld was conceived by screenwriter Peter Rader as a low-budget Mad Max rip-off for legendary indie producer Roger Corman, whose team ultimately balked at the risky expense of shooting on water. Eventually, Rader’s script got into the hands of Costner and Reynolds, who, having teamed up on Fandango and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, envisioned Waterworld as a summer tentpole.
While Waterworld was supposed to have a budget of “just” $100 million before all its costly setbacks, that was still an eye-popping number for an original blockbuster back in the day—least of all something that ended up being so uncompromisingly weird. If the Mariner’s gills weren't off-putting enough, he also reveals himself to be a genuinely unlikable dude. After the Deacon and his men destroy the atoll, the Mariner spends the rest of the film sailing with Helen (Jeanne Tripplehorn), the community’s barmaid, and Enola (Tina Majorino), the little girl with the Dryland tattoo. Across their journey, the Mariner [sigh] hits Helen with a paddle, throws Enola overboard in a fit of rage, and mulls prostituting Helen to an erratic drifter in exchange for … paper. Rather than a taciturn loner type like Max Rockatansky, the Mariner proves to be as cold and unforgiving as the high seas. (The Mariner does warm up to Enola while teaching her how to swim, which is nothing if not extremely on brand for an actual fishman.)
This approach can make Waterworld a discomfiting watch at times, especially when the Mariner and Helen inevitably (albeit implausibly) catch feelings for each other. But the fact that Waterworld doesn’t sand off its rough edges is part of the appeal: In moments good and bad, the film is wholly, unapologetically itself. Consider that Reynolds had the balls to shoot Waterworld in the Pacific to begin with, something so ill-advised that even cinema’s preeminent Ocean Master, James Cameron, has never attempted it for a feature film. You can read as much about Waterworld’s nightmarish production as you want, but those troubles don't come across in the finished product. What’s on-screen is some of the most astonishing large-scale production design and practical action set pieces you’ll ever see. There’s no need to suspend disbelief when this is the level of immersion Waterworld has going for it in open water:
The movie’s world-building has real depth in other areas, too. Since the Mariner can breathe underwater, he takes Helen down in a makeshift diving bell to show her the submerged remains of Denver. The sequence serves a plot function—this is how the Mariner collects all his precious dirt—but it also drives home Waterworld’s environmentalist message. We might not have to worry about the Mile High City going underwater, but when island nations are buying land and building digital re-creations in the hopes of preserving their cultures for centuries to come, Waterworld’s premise doesn’t seem so far-fetched. The ecological allusions extend to the film’s portrayal of the Deacon, whose headquarters are the dilapidated remains of the Exxon Valdez—the site of a disastrous oil spill—and who aspires to reach Dryland to pillage its resources. “If there’s a river, we’ll dam it, and if there’s a tree, we’ll ram it!” the Deacon preaches to his flock.
And for all the jokes made at Waterworld’s expense—the on-set disasters, the soaring production costs, the poor reviews, the underwhelming box office returns—it has, in some ways, transcended its less-than-stellar reputation. For one, thanks to home video sales and other revenue streams, Waterworld has reportedly managed to become profitable over time. Then there’s the Waterworld stunt show at Universal Studios Hollywood, which opened in 1995 and remains the longest-running attraction at the theme park. Waterworld doesn’t have the mainstream recognition of, say, a Marvel movie, but the longevity of wonderful nonsense like this proves that its cultural footprint shouldn’t be discounted, either.
As a well-documented lover of Ocean Cinema™, I was always going to have a soft spot for Waterworld, but I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that it’s a misunderstood masterpiece. Waterworld is still shamelessly derivative of better (land-based) action movies, and Costner, for all his strengths as a movie star, makes it hard to become invested in the adventures of a soggy sourpuss like the Mariner. But it’s also worth acknowledging that something of Waterworld’s scale and ambition could probably never exist today. Even if a studio were willing to take a chance on a pricey original tentpole, nobody would sign off on filming in the goddamn ocean. (It goes without saying: A modern, CGI’d Waterworld wouldn’t hit the same.)
Viewed one way, Waterworld was, like Ishtar and Heaven’s Gate before it, the kind of recklessly expensive vanity project that was always destined to fail. Conversely, you just need to look at James Cameron’s filmography to know that there’s a thin line between a disaster-in-waiting and a paradigm-shifting blockbuster, and 30 years since Waterworld’s release, I’d argue that it leans closer to the latter. There’s just nothing else like it. It's impressive enough that Waterworld survived a production from hell and made it to the big screen—that it also manages to be a rip-roaring crowd-pleaser feels as miraculous as finding a pearl in an oyster. Or, I suppose, encountering a man with gills tucked behind his ears.
