Waterworld

During my time as a projectionist there was a spate of futuristic dystopian films all released within weeks of each other: Tank Girl (already covered in this blog), Judge Dredd, and this, the most expensive film ever made (at the time), Waterworld.

Waterworld was cursed from the beginning, and primed to fail by critics and reviewers even before filming had been completed. There were reports of onset arguments, tales of Costner living a life of luxury while the other cast & crew were housed in shacks without air-con, and even weather problems, as high winds, rain & hurricanes buffeted the sets. One storm even destroyed an entire set, resulting in a sub-plot about slavers having to be discarded. 

In all honesty though, what was seen as a vanity project after star Kevin Costner & director Kevin Reynolds took the reins on what was meant to be a kids adventure movie (a kind of Mad Max meets the Goonies) is actually not that bad.

Many still point to the huge budget, over $175m, as being massively excessive, and, while they're right, it has to be said that that's been surpassed many times since then. And, unlike so many other films with similarly huge budgets, you can really see where the money went in Waterworld. The sets & effects are fantastic.

Interestingly, Waterworld is also not the huge loss-making flop that many still view it as. It actually turned a small profit, especially once released on VHS (& later DVD) and watching it now, it stands up as a decent film.

We open with the Universal logo, a spinning planet Earth than film-goers know well. Only this time the land starts to disappear under the water as the polar ice-caps melt. A booming voice over tells us that this is "The future... [I don't think it's mentioned, but it's meant to be 2500]. The polar ice caps have melted, covering the earth with water. Those who survived have adapted, to a new world."

We zoom down to the planet to see a cup, perched on a rusty trimaran, and Costner's Mariner is peeing in it. Probably the only big budget film to start with such an opening scene.

The Mariner then takes his pee, pours it into a filtration device, and after it's done what it needs to do, he takes a drink of the resultant clear fluid, then spits whats left onto a small lime tree. While water may be everywhere, it's clear that the drinkable stuff is in short supply.

The Mariner then dives overboard, while the camera then takes a tour of the boat, showing us the various present-day stuff that he has accumulated over time.

While he's underwater we see a hand reach out & pluck the limes from his tree, then , when he eventually surfaces, carrying a pair of boots & leaving a glass jar floating in the water, we see a boat moored up alongside the trimaran & a fellow sailor aboard.

The two talk & the other sailor speaks of an atoll, 8 days sailing away from where they are, and where he was able to find supplies. The other sailor also talks of the amount of time the Mariner was underwater, to which he offers as a reason that his hull is damaged and has an air pocket, enabling him to stay under for longer. It's worth remembering that bit.

While the two talk they are watched by a group of unsavoury looking characters on rusty jet-skis (everything is rusty in Waterworld); the other sailor spots them & makes ready to leave, recognising them as Smokers, the film's antagonists. As he does so he reveals that he did board the Mariner's craft & steal his limes. Costner is torn between escape, revenge & retrieval of his glass jar, but his boat is so well crafted & fast that he's able to do all three. While getting away he runs his trimaran over the other boat, toppling its mast & leaving the lime thief to the Smokers.

Later, presumably 8 days later, the Mariner reaches the atoll, an impressively large circular fortress floating in the sea. It's in sets like this that the film's budget is so visibly on display. Blocked from getting in by the atoll's gatekeeper the Mariner reaches for the jar that he saved from the skirmish with the Smokers & shows what's inside: it's dirt, a valuable commodity in Waterworld.

The gatekeeper lets him in & he sails in to dock his craft. Whilst doing so he passes a funeral, in which a dead woman is tipped into a slimy substance, presumably to rot away into some form of compost.

The Mariner trades his dirt for what we can assume to be a substantial amount of "chits", such is its value, and walks to the nearby store.

Here we meet Nord, played by Northern Irish actor Gerard Murphy. He's being told by another character (credited as a "Hydroholic") that one of the children of the atoll has a map tattooed on her back, a map that leads to the mythical "dry land".

The Mariner orders a couple of glasses of "hydro" & a tomato plant from the bartender, Helen, played by Jeanne Tripplehorn, an actress who was ubiquitous in the 90s. While he's at the bar Nord sidles up to him to ask him for a glass of hydro (he refuses), offers to buy his boots (he refuses) then they both watch as Helen's young daughter Enola enters, the aforementioned tattoo on her back clearly visible.

After the Mariner rids himself of Nord - "why are you still talking to me?" - Helen asks him if he's seen dry land, to which he replies that, after 15 months at sea, he hasn't.

As the Mariner returns to his boat with what little supplies he has managed to get, he's approached by a number of villagers, asking him to impregnate a young girl. He refuses. This raises the suspicions of the villagers, who now suspect of him of being a Smoker spy. 

I'm not sure of the logic here, are the Smokers celibate? Or gay? It's not made clear. 

They attack him & find that he has gills behind his ears, signifying that he's a mutation, and explains why he was able to spend so long underwater earlier.

After a fight with some of the locals the resident lawman, The Enforcer, intervenes & arrests the Mariner for disturbing the peace, before imprisoning him in a cage.

Later that night Helen, Enola & an elderly villager named Gregor discuss how to interpret Enola's tattoos. Gregor suggests that the Mariner might know so goes to speak to him, whilst confirming that, as well as gills, Costner's character also has webbed toes, and rather poorly conceived, rubbery webbed toes at that.

The Mariner offers Gregor nothing and the next day he's found guilty of being a spy & sentenced to be lowered into the same gloop that the dead woman was tipped into earlier, for "recycling". The Enforcer apologises for this, making it clear to the Mariner that he had nothing to do with the decision.

While Costner, still in his cage, is being lowered into the slime a lookout spots a flotilla of Smokers approaching & sounds the alarm. They attack, and it becomes apparent that there was a Smoker spy in the atoll, but it was Nord, not the Mariner.

The Smokers' leader, the Deacon (Dennis Hopper, seemingly having the time of his life) barks instructions to his troops & they attack with machine guns, steer jet-skis over ramps & under the water into the atoll itself, even ramming the atoll's walls in kamikaze attacks. They kill many of the atoll-dwellers as they do, who can only respond with ineffective water cannons & the occasional fireball from a trebuchet.

An attack on Gregor's home has the effect of prematurely launching his hot air balloon. Gregor manages to climb aboard, but despite his best efforts to save them he leaves Helen & Enola behind. They then turn to the Mariner, still stuck in a cage partially submerged in slime, and offer to free him in return for him getting them to safety. He agrees and is freed from the cage. 

There follows a complex & really quite impressive series of stunts in which Costner uses various ropes & pulleys to get to his boat, opens the atoll's gates, kill a few dozen Smokers, rescue Helen & Enola, harpoon one of the Smoker gunboats & pulls it around so that it attacks its own, destroying the Deacon's command boat as he does, and get away.

During the battle the Deacon makes it clear that he despises sail boats; the heavy polluting, inefficient engines of the Smokers' crafts being more to his liking, and the reason for their name.

With the battle over the remaining Smokers take control of the atoll. As Nord commands all men to search for the tattooed girl the Deacon arrives, minus his left eye. They torture two captives into revealing that Enola left with "a muto", i.e. Costner's Mariner.  After promising that he wouldn't kill the man who revealed the whereabouts of the girl, the Deacon then gets Nord to do it for him, before joking that they need to "keep an eye out" for him. He's missing an eye, see?

Perhaps one of Waterworld's shortcomings is that Hopper's Deacon is quite a comical character. He cracks jokes throughout, and where he's meant to appear threatening he doesn't quite manage it. He's just not that malevolent, and his army of Smokers wouldn't look out of place in a slapstick comedy.

Waterworld is often compared to the Mad Max films (I've even done it myself here), but where those films had some truly terrifying villains, Deacon & the Smokers just don't seem that scary. Nord is probably the only truly villainous one of the group, as we'll see later.

On the his boat the Mariner is telling Helen that Enola has to go over the side as he doesn't have enough water & supplies for all three of them. Helen tries to reason with him, even to the point of stripping off & offering herself to him, which, like the offer to impregnate the girl in the atoll, he refuses, saying she has "nothing I need". Angry, Helen then turns his own harpoon gun on him. He drops a sail on her head & knocks her out, before continuing to sail away into the sunset.

I'm not sure how long days last in Waterworld, but the Mariner was to be executed at dawn. Now, after the battle at the atoll & a brief conversation on the boat, the sun is now setting. The day seemed to have lasted only a few hours at most.

At Smoker HQ (which is fully revealed later, in another impressive shot) we see the Deacon get fitted for a glass eye. His sycophantic men announce it looks great, so he turns to a boy for his opinion: "It looks shit", "It does look shit" says Deacon, and removes it, saying that children at least tell him the truth. Again, not very menacing. 

Another man arrives & says there's a problem "in the pit". Deacon, Nord & a few others get into a car, and with Henry Mancini's iconic Peter Gunn theme blaring they set off through what looks like a post-apocalyptic wasteland. You know the type, where people in rags huddle around bins that have been set ablaze.

On arriving at the pit, a deep fuel tank in which an elderly man is afloat in a small boat, taking depth measurements, they're informed that "the black stuff" is running low. Deacon tells the Smokers that no fuel burning is permitted, except when searching for the girl, the hunt for her is everything.

Back on the trimaran Enola is in trouble for decorating the boat, so the Mariner chucks her into the water. Helen screams that the girl can't swim, before diving in to save her. Coming to his senses, the Mariner stops the boat & circles back to rescue them. As he does so a plane flies overhead, piloted by a young, and virtually unrecognisable, Jack Black. 

As the plane attacks the Mariner goes down below to gather weapons, but, thinking he's deserted them, Helen again grabs the harpoon & fires, killing the machine-gunner, but causing the plane, now caught by the harpoon's rope, to fly around the boat in ever-decreasing circles, knocking out a mast and inflicting yet more damage.

The pilot leans out & shoots the rope, thereby freeing the plane & enabling him to make a getaway. Back on the boat the Mariner inspects the damage, and angrily chops off both Helen & Enola's hair with a machete. Why though? I'm not so sure. I'm not even sure what this is meant to symbolise about the Mariner's character, that he's just deeply unpleasant, perhaps?

With a report on their location from Jack Black's pilot, the Deacon & Nord discuss where the Mariner is likely to go. Once again, the conversation is comical, with "logic" akin to the infamous poisoned cup dialogue from The Princess Bride. The Deacon also refers to the Mariner as an "Icthydemon" during this conversation, one of a number of humorous fish-related names he comes up with during the film. "Gentleman Guppy" being another.

We jump back to the trimaran, and the Mariner has spotted another boat, piloted by a man credited as "The Drifter". Like Nord, this man is Irish, but from the Republic. It's good to know that hundreds of years after an apocalypse wipes out most of humanity that there will still be people speaking with regional Irish accents.

The Drifter is clearly quite mad, after years alone at sea, but he arranges to trade a few pages of a magazine with the Mariner for 30 minutes with Helen; like dirt, paper & reading material are clearly very valuable commodities here. The Mariner agrees, then immediately thinks better of this. As the Drifter & Helen go below decks on his boat, and he undresses to ready himself for 30 minutes with a disgusted Helen, the Mariner turns up to rescind on the deal. The Drifter is unimpressed with this, thinking that they had a deal, the two fight, and after a brief moment when it looks like the Drifter has won, it's then revealed that he's fatally wounded & dies. The Mariner pitches him overboard.

Helen & Enola go through the Drifter's belongings & find a fishing rod, which the Mariner immediately discards, preferring his own fishing technique: once underway he ties a rope to himself, pops a knife into his mouth, then jumps into the water allowing the boat to drag him. Within seconds a large sea creature emerges from the water & swallows him whole. The Mariner then kills the creature from the inside & we later see the three of them eating a feast of cooked mutated shark. Yum.

We also hear Enola sing a little ditty that is to have further meaning later in the film.

The Mariner tells Enola that he has never encountered someone who couldn't swim; which, it being Waterworld, is understandable. So, the next day the Mariner teaches Enola how to swim. Fortunately, and conveniently, at a time when the sea creatures are asleep. 

By the way, this whole scene goes on way too long. It's like they needed an excuse or reason to use their underwater cameras so went all in for about 20 minutes. It does, however, show us that the relationship between the three characters has now evolved into a friendship, albeit very, very quickly. Remember it's been less than 24 hours since he was pimping Helen for some pages of a magazine, and not too much longer that he was throwing Enola overboard & hacking at their hair with a machete.

Later, the trimaran approaches a stationary, floating platform, on which people can be seen waving. The Mariner calls out in the language of the seas: Portu-Greek (a nice touch that, a mixture of the languages of two historically significant sea-faring nations). When there is no response the trio's suspicions are aroused. Helen spots that the people are tied up & waving via a series of pulleys (like in Weekend at Bernies).

Meanwhile the Mariner tastes the water & finds traces of fuel. Using an inverted periscope-like device in the boat's hull he sees that a group of Smokers are on jet-skis under the water. It's a trap! The Deacon & the others are on the platform controlling the pulleys attached to the corpses of its inhabitants.

More nautical hi-jinks ensue as the Mariner lets loose his sails & they get away, but not before he's winged by a rifle shot from the Deacon.

While being tended to by Helen the Mariner admits that he has never seen dry land, and has no idea where he's taking them. She asks, if he hasn't been there, then why does he have so many strange things on his boat that suggest he has. She also offers a theory that people used to live on dry land, not on the water. Crazy talk, right?

The Mariner then takes her underwater in a diving bell, showing her stuff from our time, and a city, actually Denver, where even the mountains & ski fields are submerged. Despite being 500 years in the future, and long after after an apocalyptic flood, many of the things they find are remarkably well-preserved & recognisable.

Interestingly the Mariner uses flares to light the way as he pulls the diving bell under water. It's not explained how he managed to come by these. Even if he were to find them, I'm sure they would've corroded or become ineffective by this time, but he seems to have a plentiful supply.

When the two of them return to the boat they find that the Deacon & his Smokers have got there. The Mariner really should keep an eye out while he's underwater, he's only gone deep sea diving twice in the film so far, and each time he's been surprised by others when he's come back up.

Enola, presumably having kept a better lookout than the adults and seen the Smokers approach, has hidden, but reveals herself when the Deacon threatens to shoot Helen & the Mariner. They manage to escape by jumping overboard, but Enola is taken captive. While the Mariner keeps Helen alive underwater by breathing for them both the Smokers burn his boat & leave.

At Smoker HQ the Deacon interrogates Enola about her tattoo, and she announces to him & his crew that the Mariner will come for her.

Back on the remains of the trimaran Helen asks the Mariner why he refused sex with her when she offered. He admits that he knew she didn't want him, this leads to them kissing, then presumably having some mutant, fish-like sex which doesn't bear thinking about.

Afterwards, as they take stock of their situation & come to the realisation that they are likely to die on the boat Gregor arrives in his balloon, one of the worst examples of Deus ex Machina ever committed to film.

Gregor takes the pair to a new, smaller atoll where he & some of the other survivors of the earlier battle with the Smokers, including the sympathetic Enforcer, have set up home.

The group discuss the Smokers, Enola, the tattoo, and Gregor & the Mariner begin to piece together the tattoo's meaning. The Mariner takes a jet-ski & leaves, resolving to bring Enola back.

The Deacon and his men are studying Enola's tattoo, and cannot make any sense of it, one of the crew suggests cutting it out & stretching it over a frame to make it clearer, but again, as they're rather non-threatening villains, this is not followed through, luckily for Enola. When his men leave the Deacon toast a photo of a man on the wall and addresses him as "St. Joe".

As the Mariner approaches, we see the Smokers' HQ for the first time, it's the Exxon Valdez, of the infamous Alaskan oil spill of 1989; and "St. Joe" is the ship's captain of that time, Captain Joseph Hazelwood.

A sidenote: it was widely reported in the media at the time of the spill that Capt Hazelwood was an alcoholic, and was to blame for the accident. It has been suggested by people involved in the making of Waterworld that the Smokers' seemingly endless supply of booze & cigarettes is meant to be Hazelwood's personal supply, so large that there is still enough for the Smokers 500 years into the future.

The Deacon addresses the entire crew from the ship's bridge, there are hundreds of them. Again, the film's budget is right there on screen as hordes fill the deck of the rusting supertanker. The Deacon announces that "dry land is not just our destination, it is our destiny", a quote I remember well from the trailers. 

He then goes on to say that, once found, they will exploit the land by felling trees, damming rivers etc. and so on; proving that he hasn't learned from humanity's mistakes.

After whipping them up into a frenzy he urges them to man the oars, like a viking longboat, & row the Valdez to dry land despite none of them having quite worked out how to find it. 

Incidentally, despite the sheer numbers of Smokers present, using oars to move a ship the size of the Valdez has to be physically impossible, but then, that was maybe the plan, to just deceive the crew into believing they're making headway while they decipher the map.

Meanwhile the Mariner is making his way through the ship, killing Smokers indiscriminately. As he does, Enola tells stories of how he will take his vengeance on the Smokers to a disconcerted Nord, who sneaked away from the others in order to steal some whiskey. Nord, in response, becomes nasty & threatens to kill Enola.

With the crew below decks, only The Deacon & a few others, including Nord & Enola, remain on the bridge. The Mariner approaches on the ship's deck, when Enola excitedly recognises him & calls out.

The Deacon, seeing him, refers to him as "the turd that wont flush", then looks on in horror as he lights another of his flares & holds it over an opening leading to the fuel tanks. "I've come for the girl" he says, "she's my friend" - Aw!

The Deacon calls his bluff, saying that to drop the flare would kill them all, so... the Mariner drops it anyway. Way below, the elderly man who sits afloat the oil sees the flare & whispers "Thank God" as he, and the fuel, ignites.

There follows another cracking action sequence: lots of fire, explosions, and more aerial stunts. The Deacon attempts to make a getaway with Enola in the plane, only to be thwarted when the Mariner brings it down with a harpoon & grappling hook. We also see the end of the villainous Nord when he is shot by the Mariner. While this goes on the Smokers abandon ship in their droves.

The atoll-dwellers then show up in the balloon again (there's that handy Deus ex Machina), and lower a rope for the Mariner & Enola. The Deacon grabs hold too, but a timely intervention from Helen, throwing something hard & heavy at his head, knocks him off the rope. 

As the Valdez sinks the Deacon reaches a jet-ski, grabs a rifle, and shoots at the balloon, causing it to rock & Enola to fall into the water. The Deacon & some of his other men, also on jet-skis, converge on Enola (lucky she was taught how to swim, eh?), but are no match for a bungee-jumping Mariner who plucks her to safety as the Smokers crash into each other & their jet-skis explode.

Back on the balloon Gregor & the Mariner finally manage to interpret the markings on Enola's back & steer a course for dry land. If only the Mariner had agreed to pool resources with Gregor earlier, they could have already been safely ensconced on dry land by now.

After some time in the air a seagull lands on the balloon. Apart from the sea creature, this is the first wildlife we've seen in Waterworld, and the inference being that they're nearing dry land. As the clouds part (also the first we've seen in the film) a lush, green, mountainous island is sighted.

The group land & explore the island. They find fruit, birds, horses, fresh water, although its source is not fully explained, and a cave-dwelling with two skeletons inside, lying side-by-side. There's a small music box too, which, once played, plays the ditty that Enola was singing earlier in the film. Once she hears it Enola announces "I'm home".

The two skeletons are her parents (alluded to in the version I watched, although there is apparently an alternate version that makes this clear), who sent her away when they realised they were dying, but tattooed the coordinates of their location so she could find her way back once she was older.

I can't help but think she may have been safer fending for herself on the island, even though she was young, than cast adrift at sea, but who am I to argue with the inhabitants of a post-apocalyptic world?

Some time later the Mariner has built himself a new, wooden boat & makes ready to leave. There are some tears from Helen & Enola as he goes, but he has come to realise that his place is on the water (he is part-fish, after all). As Helen & Enola watch from a high point of the island he sets sail, cueing up a sequel that never eventuated.

According to IMDB there is another deleted scene showing the group discovering a plaque referencing the Hillary/Norgay conquest of Everest, thereby proving that dry land is, in fact, the top of that mountain. I like to think it was edited out because (to the best of my knowledge) no such plaque exists at the top of Everest, and the one they created had the British flag on it, not New Zealand's, the land of Hillary's birth, but it's probably more likely that the producers thought that audiences wouldn't understand the reference.

As mentioned earlier, Waterworld is nowhere near as bad as it's often perceived to be. It owes a massive debt to the Mad Max films, especially the second film in the series, with which it shares a lot of similarities. There are traces of its beginnings as a kids adventure film too, its original premise, with the comical Smokers & a lead role for a child. 

But, for all Waterworld's faults, it's a good, solid action film, and has an eco-message that, despite its implicitness, is not rammed home in a preachy manner. I recall that, despite the negative press, crowds did still turn up to watch it, not in huge numbers, but it got a respectable audience in the cinema I worked in.

Incidentally, the two Kevins, star Costner & director Reynolds, had a falling out during the making of the film, resulting in Reynolds leaving & Costner having to step in to the director's chair, although only Reynolds is credited as director. Having worked together frequently before Waterworld it would be another 17 years before the two would work together again.

The muted critical response & lack of a sequel didn't stop Costner from appearing as another Mad Max-style drifter without a name in a post-apocalyptic dystopia; a few years later he would make The Postman, an even less well-received film that made even less of an... um... splash than Waterworld.

Fin