Waterworld

You're a fool to believe in something you've never seen.

Waterworld is directed by Kevin Reynolds and jointly written by David Twohy, Peter Rader and Joss Whedon. It stars Kevin Costner, Dennis Hopper, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Tina Majorino, Michael Jeter and Gerard Murphy. Music is scored by James Newton Howard and cinematography by Dean Semler.

It's the future and the polar ice caps have melted and the Earth is practically covered by the sea. As civilisation is forced to live on the water, their only hope is to one day find the fabled place known as Dryland. A Mariner drifter may hold the key to Dryland's whereabouts...

It was by definition a troubled shoot, with sackings, difference of opinions, cost overruns, production set backs (hurricane destroying a hugely expensive set) and bad word of mouth generated by a film press intent on giving Kevin Costner a good kicking. Facts are, now that all the water has evaporated over the years, Waterworld is neither the flop or the bad film that many believed it to be. Should it be a better movie considering the gargantuan amounts of cash spent on it? Absolutely, without question! But Waterworld turned a decent profit in spite of its problems and mixed reviews, and now it firmly has a fan base willing to love it for the great sci-fi escapism that it is. Now readily available in 3 cuts (Theatrical, TV Edit and Ulysses), you can sample each to find the pros and cons of home format film tampering.

Even in its theatrical form the film is still a rollicking water based adventure, full of spectacular stunts (oh my those jet-skis rock), amazing sets (whoosh, the sci-fi grandeur of the floating atoll) and blood pumping scenes (the eerie journey and subsequent revelation of a city under water). Sure it's far from flawless as the pace is uneven at times and as plot narratives go it's pretty thin, but Reynolds and Costner have crafted an impressive world submerged by water. The cast, too, are delivering knowing performances. Cos...

Rather poorly edited and cut, this film is downright forgettable.

I've seen this movie twice, and I honestly can't believe it. It was truly the same as burning money. After being impressed by the poor quality of the film, I went to read and research about it, and discovered the eventual cause of this disaster: from the beginning, it was a project doomed to failure. Badly planned, it was filmed in a place where the weather conditions would cause problems. The ambition to do more and better is healthy, but in this case it caused an escalation of costs. To make things more difficult, the production was guided by Kevin's disagreement against Kevin, since the director, Kevin Reynolds, was contradicted several times by the main actor, Kevin Costner. The most blatant disagreement may have happened during post-production, with the actor and the studio demanding a straight cut of the film, which was lame and poorly edited. It had everything to go wrong...

I know, now, that there are extended versions of the film, but I haven't found a "director's cut" that would be able to reverse the changes and give us the version that Reynold initially envisioned. What I saw is the “canonical version” of about two hours, and I hated it. The script is based on a very apocalyptic and poorly explained future, where the entire world is flooded, and a myth has been created where, somewhere, there would be land, but which no one has actually been able to confirm. The few surviving people live on atolls and artificial islands, and on boats. The film never shows us a storm, a hurricane or anything that threatens the lives of those survivors, nor does it explain how they survived, or why no one properly explores the world to discover signs of earth. There are a lot of loose ends and absurdities, and the film will only work if we avoid thinking about it too much.

The cast rests solidly on Kevin Costner's back, and even those who aren't particularly fans of the actor will have to agree...

Score: 8/10 An Ambitious, Misunderstood, and Genuinely Entertaining Epic

Waterworld has long been the punchline of Hollywood excess a byword for bloated budgets, troubled productions, and critical derision. Its TMDB score reflects this reputation, a casualty of its own mythologised failures. But watching it now, decades removed from the hype and the hatchet jobs, reveals a different truth: Waterworld is not the disaster it was painted to be. It is an ambitious, visually stunning, and genuinely entertaining piece of blockbuster filmmaking that deserves a serious reappraisal. It earns a strong 8/10 for its sheer audacity, its breathtaking production design, and its commitment to a vision that, while flawed, is never boring.

The Cinematography and World-Building: Grand and Immersive

The film's greatest achievement is its world. The post-apocalyptic waterworld a planet entirely submerged beneath endless ocean is rendered with immense scale and detail. The cinematography is grand, capturing the vast, lonely beauty of the open sea and the gritty, desperate reality of the floating atolls and rusting wrecks that house humanity's remnants. The production design, from the claustrophobic interiors of the Deacon's oil tanker to the improvised, ramshackle architecture of the atoll, is a triumph of imagination and craft. It is a world that feels lived-in, dangerous, and completely realised. Even the infamous "dirt" scene, where the Mariner trades a handful of soil for a woman, speaks to the film's thematic core: in a world without land, the most basic things become priceless.

The Premise: Bold, Dark, and Surprisingly Prescient

The central premise a world where polar ice caps have melted, and humanity survives on floating outposts was met with scepticism in 1995. Today, it feels eerily prescient. The film tackles themes of environmental collapse, resource scarcity, and the desperate lengths people will go to survive. It is a serious topic, an...