Viking Night: Waterworld
By Bruce Hall
December 15, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
I speak of course, of Waterworld, and I speak of Kevin Costner, who despite what a lot of people think of him (fairly or not), is a really successful guy. He's a go-getter. I can respect that. The thing is, there's really two ways to get things done. You can be the kind of guy who gets things done that nobody else can - as long as everything is done YOUR way. Or, you can be the guy who gets things done that nobody else can, specifically because you're good at motivating good people to apply their best talents to the problem.
I'm not saying that Kevin Costner is either one of these things. I'm saying that there's a ninety percent chance that he's totally one or the other. That's all. I'm definitely not about to put the blame for what doesn't quite rise to the level of the “Water” to “Watergate”'s “Gate”. But it does, in many ways...oh God...I can't believe I'm about to say this…”sinks” to unfortunate levels of camp in the critical veil between “transformative film experience” and “bloated, blowhardy vanity project”.
I'm not saying Waterworld is either one of those things. I'm saying that there's a 90 percent chance it's either one or the other.
And it's also a damn good idea for a movie.
Think about it. The polar ice caps melt, covering 99 percent of earth's land mass with water. Forget that this is scientifically impossible in the same way it is for the ice in the old fashioned I'm drinking right now to overflow the glass as it melts (your move, Don Draper). That's not important. What's important is what if it could happen? And everyone on earth had to live in or on the water, on boats, floating landmasses, or floating on their asses. To whatever their level of “just barely one bad night's sleep away from death” would endow them.
It's a world where freaking SAILING - something we associate with people whose names rhyme with “Kennedy” or “Roosevelt” - is an essential life or death skill. And you look astonishingly awesome when you do it. And, it's a world where everyone willingly drinks their own piss and eats the dead for dinner at night. It's a world where dirt - a cereal bowl's worth of the kind a college kid wouldn't bother trying to grow weed in - was literally the most valuable thing on the planet. Oh, how low we humans have...oh...I swear this was not intentional…”sunk."
No, seriously. I didn't even realize how that sounded until I'd already started writing it. You don't have to ask me to apologize. I've already offended you enough.
Anyway, this planet of which I speak is basically Mad Max on water. That's either the world's most homoerotic show on ice, or it's the most absolutely kickass thing I've ever heard of. Using that as your metric, where the former is zero (or as low as you want to go, really), and the latter is 11, Waterworld comes in at about...oh...a four. And that's a shame, because there's a lot of potential here. The universe is compelling, but our exposure to it is largely limited to discrete glimpses of the extreme austerity required in a world where pretty much everything has been destroyed. Knowing your way around a boat is a no brainer. Being prepared to start every day with a piping hot glass of your own urine would be prudent. And if it can't float, or isn't breathing, consider it food.
What kind of society might evolve in a world like this? What would they value? How would they maintain hope? Sadly, that's a story for another film, because after a thrilling opening where Kevin Costner outwits a gang of marauders James Bond-style on his sailboat, Waterworld dispenses with all of that. This is a Lone Wanderer story, where a hardened drifter reluctantly defends a tribe of innocents from a power mad lunatic and his horde of leather clad mutants. Despite all the pretense, Waterworld is just bits of trope from other, better stories tacked onto the rickety framework of what was probably once a great idea.
Strike one is the score. It's completely inappropriate for the movie. James Newton Howard is an accomplished composer with a number of great films on his resume. Waterworld is not one of them. It's not that his work is not competent, it's just sounds like it belongs in a Western or a space opera. And with Costner jumping around like Barry Sanders on the deck of his boat, swinging from ropes with a knife between his teeth, it almost sounds like parody. A high concept movie like this might have benefited from a more innovative soundtrack. Oh, but would that were the only crime of which I must write today.
I don't know offhand specifically what percentage of this movie is bears Costner's personal fingerprints. I suspect the answer looks like the back windows of your mother's car after you and your little brother decided to travel with cotton candy when you were nine. It's just a mess. The overarching plot revolves around a mythical child with a tattoo that is really a map showing the way to the last piece of dry land on earth. And of course, there's only one man - called The Mariner (Costner, of course) - who can make that happen. You know, the old “chosen one” story.
But instead of the Wild West, or the Crab Nebula, it takes place in 2,000 feet of water over what used to be northern Colorado. That could have been really cool, but...it's really not.
I'm not sure how long humanity has lived this way by the time we catch up with these characters; the script isn't completely clear on that. But nobody seems to have adapted past the point where as long as they were standing on dry ground, getting curb stomped by a psychotic gang of Surf Nazis would be a welcome diversion. What I'm saying is, it seems like whatever happened, it happened fast. Humanity is still reeling from the apocalypse, and lawlessness rules the waves. Droves of bandits called Smokers patrol the seas, looting and killing. What civilization remains is aboard an armored, man made island.
They are opposed by a bug-eyed lunatic called The Deacon (Dennis Hopper, just being himself) who has commandeered an oil tanker and rules his minions with religious zeal. They follow him because...well, I'm not sure why they follow him. They just DO. Maybe it's because he dresses like a cross between Gaddafi and Cameo (your first two '80s references are free). When The Mariner stops at the flotilla for supplies, he runs into some trouble and is sentenced to be turned into Soylent Green. Luckily (sort of), The Deacon attacks at that exact moment. In the chaos, The Mariner is rescued by a kindly settler (Jeanne Tripplehorn) and her plucky daughter (Tina Majorino), who happens to have an unusual tattoo on her back. They make their escape, of course, and in one of the few truly thought provoking sequences of the film, The Mariner seriously considers throwing them overboard to conserve supplies.
Think about that. In an annihilated world where refined oil and 50 caliber ammunition still aren't too valuable to waste, it's nice to know you can still find a beautiful woman with perfect skin, lustrously conditioned hair and straight teeth. And he wants to throw her - and her kid - into the sea. It's a genuinely disturbing moment, and it makes Costner look immensely practical, yet somewhat less than heroic. It adds a lot to the film, but unfortunately all that is taken away with in moments, when Kim Coates (Sons of Anarchy) appears as what I can only assume is meant to be the most poorly timed comic relief in film history.
And that is where the movie completely falls apart.
Waterworld devotes its second half devoted to being a chase movie on water. This would be cool, except for the fact that the Mariner's subplot is a dark, turbulent descent into hell. Meanwhile, our time we spend with The Deacon is utterly different in tone, and not in a good way. Every time Hopper is on screen it feels like you're watching reels from Joel Schumacher's epic, unfinished post apocalyptic version of Pirates of Penzance. It's like someone crossed Mad Max with Batman Forever, and then pushed the whole mess out to sea.
The upside is that Dennis Hopper is an outstandingly cartoonish villain. Too bad he's in the wrong movie. His performance merely establishes the boundary between Waterworld's bipolar character, and Kim Coates' rapey court jester sends the whole story pinwheeling through the air like Fonzie on water skis. While The Mariner and his passengers are desperately seeking dry land, Hopper and his crew are within a hairsbreadth of breaking out in song and hitting each other with rubber mallets. Is this a high minded sci-fi commentary on human shortsightedness, an action movie, or a Saturday Night Live skit?
Answer: It's all three. There are some interesting things going on in Waterworld, but the schizophrenic nature of both the plot and tone render it essentially meaningless. What started out as an all too rare fresh take on a fundamentally frightening concept - the end of the world - squanders the opportunity by making itself look as much like a really long gag reel as possible. Had there been a director's cut of this movie with a laugh track, it would have taken on a whole new character, and might even have become a comedy classic.
As it is, it's somewhere between as mind numbingly depressing as Ishtar and unintentionally hilarious as Battlefield Earth.