I think The Postman could be transformed into quite a significant movie by just a little judicious editing to tighten up the pace - I can’t see how the same could be done with Waterworld - you’d just end up with a shorter version that still plods along.
“The book author” would be David Brin, and here are his impressions of the movie.
With respect to the OP: The first third, or maybe half, of Waterworld was really cool. Then it descended into such moronic stupidity that I almost gagged, and was filled with plot holes big enough to drive that trimaran through. Personally, I think that’s mostly the answer to the OP: the movie was just too dumb, even for your average American.
My take:
- It wasn’t really a very good movie.
Plot, dialogue, characterization… none of it made a great deal of sense. The main character. for want of a better term, was sullen and uncharismatic for pretty much the entire film, while the villains were so cartoonish as to be unbelievable. Dennis Hopper obviously thought the whole thing was a hoot, but I wasn’t persuaded for a second that his clownish gang of stinky pirates was competent enough to even drive an oil tanker, let alone keep one operable in a post-apocalyptic setting.
As has been mentioned, the central premise is flatly impossible: there just ain’t that much water on the planet. For some, this may not have presented a difficulty; this is fantasy, after all. But I found that I couldn’t accept the film at face value. I think the film’s half-assed ecological message is poorly served by the fact that such a doomsday scenario couldn’t even happen to begin with. I understand the importance of metaphor in these sorts of films, but this one just didn’t work for me. It’s like someone made a movie warning that deforestation may cause gravity to stop working.
There was a lot of other stuff that made no sense to me. My BS-meter was tripped by the very first scene, where the guy pees into the Rube Goldberg contraption and then drinks it. Now, I’m no biochemist, but it seems to me that if you have a gadget that can effectively remove impurities from human urine, then it could probably do the exact same thing to seawater, only much more easily. So you’d never really have to drink your own whiz at all. I’m guessing that he just liked the taste.
Then he gets to the floating city, where he’s welcomed, given the opportunity to trade, and invited to mate with the population’s eligible women. That is, until they discover… he’s a mutant! He has gills, and webbed toes, and can breathe underwater! The abomination must not be allowed to taint the gene pool! Kill him at once! And all the while, I’m going: um, what? You guys live *on the goddamn ocean?! * How could having kids that can live underwater be anything but a good thing for you people?
Granted, many of the movie’s flaws are common to the post-apocalyptic movie subgenre, but then most such films don’t cost 229 million dollars either.
- The movie cost 229 million dollars.
While this perhaps doesn’t affect the quality of the film itself, it is remarkable when the finished product is considered. One of the great financial perks of most cheesy post-apocalyptic films is that people naturally expect the dystopian future to look like crap. You can save beaucoups money by judiciously choosing filming locations in abandoned factories, soon-to-be-demolished apartment complexes, etc.-- the nastier it looks, the better. Waterworld managed to reverse all that, as the central gimmick required all setpieces to be unique and custom-built. Even so, the movie just doesn’t contain 229 million dollars worth of imagery. It’s a bunch of people on boats, and sometimes a horizon line. They could have filmed practically the whole thing except for the jetski chases in the big tank at Universal Studios.
- It starred Kevin Costner.
Nothing against the man himself-- well, okay, I’ve never quite understood the widespread appeal he had at that time. Waterworld extensively showcased his “Everyman, Except Sulkier” stock character, except here he was even sulkier than that. But beyond all this: if you’re going to produce and direct the most expensive movie ever made, and then cast yourself as the hero, I think it’s understandable for people to perceive it as something of a vanity project and be turned off a bit on that basis.
- Kim Coates was in it.
He played the twitchy, weedy guy on the fishing boat, who wanted to purchase the services of Jeanne Tripplehorn. He was also in **Pearl Harbor ** and Battlefield Earth. His future activities should be monitored closely.
I didn’t think it was nearly as bad as they made it out to be. In fact, I mostly liked it.
Kevin would insist on using Evian!
As a movie goer without any financial stake in any companies that make movies, and someone not likely to interact with Kevin Costner, why should I give a damn
(A) how much the movie costs? and
(B) whether or not Costner is a jerk in real life?
I still can’t get over “She doesn’t know how to swim!”
One of the most annoying plot holes to me was that paper was held in such high accord… and yet Costner has every damned issue of National Geo hidden below. He was going to whore the woman for half a sheet of paper when he’s got hundreds below- she’d have been well in her rights to put him on a stringer.
I also couldn’t believe how casually the crewmembers were smoking cigarettes when this would be a pretty depletable/ultimate luxury resource. I doubt the Philip Morris plants are still in operation on an atoll somewhere, and yet even kids are lighting up.
I remember that at the time I wasn’t very far removed from my first job working for Mobil, and boy were there some problems with that tanker.
The Exxon Valdez, like all tankers, carried crude oil. It would have been impossible for them to refine it into gasoline. Especially the kind you would need for a plane.
Even better, like all tankers, it had an unloaded displacement of over 200,000 tons. I damn near fell into the aisle laughing when I saw that they were actually trying to use oars to row it somewhere.
But I liked it OK.
Besides, looking back on it it’s great trivia for Big Love fans. (The little girl now plays the Christian friend of Tripplehorn’s daughter in Big Love).
She was also Napoleon Dynamite’s friend with the ponytail sticking out of the side of her head.
Tom Hanks was also interested in the movie rights to the book. His movie would have been so much better.
Another ridiculously implausible scene (if I recall correctly) was when Costner brought up a pail of dirt form the ocean floor and bartered it for a huge amount of goods. The final item he bought was a tomato plant - that came in a pail of dirt.
Well, they used to. For some time now, we’ve been seeing extremely expensive movies with crappy scripts. Consider the giant pieces of shit from Michael Bay. Premises and dialogue suitable for a low-budget B-movie are getting full-scale productions with big stars.
That’s exactly the link I remember. Thanks.