Against My Better Judgment
...I re-watched Waterworld (1995)
After I decided to do a month on climate change in cinema, I quickly realized that probably meant re-watching Waterworld (1995). I saw it in theaters when it came out as a thirteen year old, but all my memories of it were unremarkable. By then I had an interest in film, but did not really understand much about technique or the industry. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) came out when I was nine or ten and I was a huge fan of that one, which played constantly on HBO. But in retrospect, it was the ensemble cast that really drew me in--Alan Rickman’s brilliant, villainous performance, as well as Christian Slater, Morgan Freeman, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Michael Wincott. I don’t remember ever being a “fan” of Kevin Costner, and seeing Waterworld probably turned me off from the guy. I genuinely hoped I would positively reassess it in 2023 with a wiser gaze then before, but… no. Waterworld is Hollywood at its most excessive and mediocre, but there are still things to learn by thinking and writing about it.
In the future, the polar ice caps melt, leading to the decline of civilization and marauding, tribal, pirate-like gangs sailing around the world, attempting to survive. Kevin Costner is our nameless protagonist, simply named “Mariner” in the credits, who is an everyman loner type, clearly based on Western genre tropes. We then find out that he is an evolutionary mutant who has gills and webbed feet, effectively marking him as an “other” who cannot peacefully exist with the excuse of a community found on the water. He escapes an outpost with a woman (Jeanne Tripplehorn) and child (Tina Majorino) in tow. The kid, Enola, has a tattoo on her back which supposedly is a map to “Dryland.” A gang of pirates, or “smokers” as they are referred to, tracks down and continuously attacks the trio in larger and larger, explosive set pieces. Dennis Hopper as Deacon, the primary antagonist, is probably the most rewarding thing about the movie.
Waterworld would have been better if made under the conditions of a smaller film like Soylent Green or Day of the Animals. The creativity involved in making a lot with little money is one of the great benefits of small budget filmmaking. If an Italian exploitation film crew was given the material, it would have fared better. It is specifically the safety and mediocrity of Hollywood that contributed to Waterworld being so mind numbing. To contextualize it with other Hollywood blockbusters, it had come out in between Jurassic Park (1993) and Titanic (1997), with a budget of $175 million, an immense amount of money, especially for 30 years ago. Shooting in the water is admittedly time consuming, difficult, and expensive, but the budget is unforgivable, only made worse with an additional 60 million spent on promotion. The score by James Newton Howard firmly plants it in fluffy, exciting, classic Hollywood territory, which is its biggest problem. If Waterworld had a synthy sci fi score more along the lines of John Carpenter, it would have been far more watchable.
“Mariner” is a jerk, and does not even really have any flaws that provide an endearing depth. The filmmakers decided to do this strange thing, where the protagonist is an average guy who audiences would hopefully identify with or tolerate, while also being a mutant who represents some kind of oppressed other in this imaginary society. Mariner’s gills and webbed feet are not easily visible, so he can pass as human the vast majority of the time, so his otherness does not have any particular weight. This is not The Shape of Water (2017) over here. The film would operate in the exact same way if the protagonist was just a regular white male. All this mutation really does is allow for people who would normally identify with Kevin Costner, the most basic Hollywood superstar of the 1990’s--to imagine themselves as someone from an oppressed minority group, without actually engaging with any metaphors about oppression or victimization.
Waterworld does not appear to be a sci fi story which stands in for our society in the 1990s, and it does not attempt to include any hard science that might inform the audience about ways to combat climate change. If it had gotten more young people into climate science, then maybe our situation would not be as dire as it is today. Instead we have gangs of post-apocalyptic barbarians that are basically the same as the ones you saw in the earlier Mad Max movies, just more water-logged and sun-beaten. The wardrobe department might have been the most successful on the production, creating looks reminiscent of punk and fetish culture combined with professional wrestling and primitive tribalism.
Back in 2014 or 2015 I remember reading a review of an art show held at The San Francisco Art Institute, where I was a student at the time. The critic described entering the campus through a small crowd of art students who “looked like extras from Waterworld.” It was clearly meant as a joke at the expense of weird, hipster artists, but what made it funny is that it was true--I specifically remember seeing a student earlier that day working in the film equipment checkout area wearing a fishnet shirt, dangly earrings, and patched up pants which absolutely could be considered Waterworld chic. To think that Waterworld made enough of an impact on this art critic that they would reference it twenty years later, speaks to the pervasiveness of Hollywood industry saturation as well as the effectiveness of John Bloomfield’s costume design.
Since 2015, there has been a specific counterpoint to Waterworld and everything it stands for, in the form of George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road. Almost everything that happens in Waterworld also happens in Fury Road, only better and more complex. The films are basically each other’s opposite--in Waterworld, dirt is an expensive commodity that charlatans hunt for, whereas Mad Max: Fury Road takes place in a desert wasteland where water is the primary commodity. The fact that Waterworld was clearly influenced by the earlier Mad Max films makes it even that much more disappointing. George Miller’s films, specifically Fury Road, show an intentional consciousness of the complex issues that would occur in a post-apocalyptic landscape, in particular the gender politics of such a scenario.
Mariner is given an ambiguous kind of morality, where we learn that he is unwilling to take sexual advantage of Helena and Enola, although Helena offers her body to him in a transactional way. Later on, he also saves Enola from a pederastic, would-be rapist on the high seas. It is great that Mariner is not a lecherous creepster, but at the same time that does not really make him the kind of guy you would want to hang out with. Waterworld seems to be saying that even men who are brutal defenders of justice are still worthy of love, as the trio fall into a kind of family formation close to the end. Yet, he can’t deal with living on land and must sail off once again, like a cowboy who has no place called home.
Meanwhile, Fury Road is over there like a jazz/metal solo, compounding each sequence with increasing suspense and… fury, for lack of a better word. I’ve often wondered why it is even called Mad Max in the first place, as he is not the central figure. Max (Tom Hardy) and Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) share the screen and the battle equally, with the latter character being the one audiences clearly remember more after the credits roll. The movie is occasionally too melodramatic and a bit on-the-nose with its patriarchy-fighting, “we are not things!” plot, but since 2015, mass audiences have only needed this kind of representation even more in the face of misogynistic politicians, and a dehumanizing supreme court. If Hollywood needs to make embarrassingly expensive, CGI-filled baloney, then they should make it more like Mad Max: Fury Road.