[MacBlayne]

WATERWORLD

A world drowned. People struggle to survive, and pass the time being hostile to each other. Rumours abound about a better world, but it seems out of reach. No hope. No future. Welcome to Hull!

It doesn’t sound so strange these days to admit that you like Waterworld. The film has a strong cult following, and is a dependable seller on home video. On release, Waterworld was the recipient of extremely negative press and reviews. Siskel and Ebert labelled it as one of the dogs of 1995. Journalists had trashed it before release, and reacted with glee at the film’s underperformance.

Underperformance is the key word here. Contrary to common consensus, Waterworld was not a flop. Universal Studios had expected the ocean-shot film to go wildly over-budget (Universal experienced the same with Jaws 20 years earlier), and were willing to play the waiting game. Producer Charles Gordon said that through licencing and pre-sales, Waterworld had already become profitable before the healthy home video sales.

“But what about the film itself? Is it any good?” Well… Yeah! Easily. Waterworld has issues. Even some major ones. The plot is a series of contrivances. Rescue just always happens to come the right time. The whole macguffin being a map with a massive arrow tattooed on a girl’s back is astonishingly bad. Jeanne Tripplehorn is rather annoying. It’s an overlong rip-off of Mad Max 2.

If you were to review Waterworld as a story, then you would slap it with a D-. If you were being charitable. However, Waterworld is a film, and film is a visual medium. And it excels.

Waterworld is sumptuous. The sets are massive and extraordinary. And when you realise that they actually built these sets on the ocean, you can’t help but appreciate their lunacy. There is some dodgy CGI, but it’s very minor, and it was 1995. The costumes and make-up sell the post-apocalypse, and the rousing score by James Newton-Howard boosts the terrific action sequences. Sets are blown to pieces. Stuntmen and jet-skis fly through the air while on fire. Corpses explode from every corner. It is PG-13, but there is brutality there that modern PG-13 films try to cover up. I suspect the film originally landed an R rating, and some careful editing and cutaways were employed.

But it’s the smaller scenes that propel Waterworld above other expensive sci-fi action. Dennis Hopper is tremendous, obviously, but what’s interesting is that he doesn’t play the Deacon as a scenery chewing villain, but as a childish, forgetful brat. He’s somebody that never evolved beyond eight years old, and displays an extreme pettiness towards everybody. Now, I am a Kevin Costner fan, so take that however you want, but I think he’s superb in this. He’s way better than the critics would have you believe. His Mariner has some depth for him to chew on, believably crossing from sociopathic arsehole to concerned hero. It’s the little moments that has Costner being silent, conveying emotion with his stare that sell this. He is being helped by the music, which adopts a haunting new-age melody during these scenes.

I always have a blast with Waterworld. It combines Mad Max with Errol Flynn, and it never fails to be fun. Sure, it’s flawed, but it is a film of its era. When films were designed with satisfying the audience with stunts and spectacle. When they wrote them with an ending in mind, and worried about the sequel later. When they built the sets, the props, the costumes, and carefully lit them all on location, and not just glue a bunch of golf balls onto Mark Ruffalo’s spandex suit and throw him into a green shed. Waterworld fails to make me worry about the future, but it makes me miss the past.