Movie Review – Waterworld (1995)

Continuing with the theme of a flooded Earth (like in the book Flood and the movie The Day After Tomorrow), today we’re taking a look at the 1995 post-apocalyptic science-fiction film Waterworld.

Set several hundred years in the future, Waterworld takes place on a version of planet Earth that is almost entirely covered by water.  It’s mentioned that the polar ice caps have melted and flooded the planet, creating one massive ocean.  The people simply call the world Waterworld, and everybody uses boats and lives on large crescent-shaped barges called atolls.  The plot of the movie focuses on a mysterious sailer called “The Mariner,” and a strange map on the back of a young child.  It’s believed that the map leads to a place called Dryland, and people will kill for that information.

Directed by Kevin Reynolds, Waterworld stars Kevin Costner as The Mariner.  Dennis Hopper plays the role of The Deacon, the leader of the villains.  Supporting them are Jeanne Tripplehorn as Helen, and Tina Majorino as Enola, the young girl with a precious map on her back.

Waterworld begins with a brief animation of planet Earth and how the polar ice caps melted and flooded most of the surface of the planet.  We then meet a drifter called the Mariner (Kevin Costner) as he’s alone while sailing his boat, a trimaran.  After meeting another sailor in the open water, the two of them are ambushed by “Smokers,” a.k.a. pirates.  The Mariner uses the sails on his trimaran and makes a clean getaway while the other sailor is caught by the Smokers and brutally killed.

The Mariner continues sailing and eventually arrives at an atoll, a crescent-shaped barge that houses its own community.  He tries to trade dirt, a precious commodity in that world, but the locals suspect that he’s hiding something.  When they ambush him back at his trimaran they discover that the Mariner has gills and webbed feet, proving that he’s a mutant.  He’s quickly apprehended and sentenced to death the following day.

When the locals carry out the execution by lowering the Mutant into a pit of sludge, the entire atoll is attacked by a large group of Smokers led by the Deacon (Dennis Hopper).  Pirates successfully fight their way into the atoll and wreck havoc.  The Mariner is saved by a woman named Helen (Jeanne Tripplehorn) after he promises to help her and a little girl named Enola (Tina Majorino) escape.  Helen and Enola tried to escape with an inventor named Gregor (Michael Jeter), but his airship was accidentally deployed too soon and it floated away before the women could join him.

Helen and Enola help open the gates to allow for the Mariner’s boat to leave the atoll, and he carries them out of the war zone.  The Mariner then uses a harpoon to snare one of the Smokers’ gunships, and they cause the machine gunner to attack his fellow pirates, including the Deacon’s ship.  The rest of the atoll is saved from destruction and the Mariner sails away with Helen and Enola.

Once they’re out of danger, the Mariner threatens to kill Enola as they don’t have enough water on board for everybody.  It’s either die now or have a slow and painful death from dehydration later.  Helen stops him by offering her body for sex as he previously mentioned that he’s been alone on the water for a long time.  The Mariner refuses her offer of sex, but he decides to allow both of them to stay on board his boat.

Meanwhile, the Deacon rebuilds his damaged and destroyed vessels, and he sends a seaplane out to find him.  The aircraft soon locates the trimaran and commences to attack it with a machine gun.  They’re under orders not to kill the girl as the Deacon desperately wants the map that’s on her back.  Helen decides to fight back by using one of the boat’s harpoons, but the act snares the airplane.  The Mariner has to race and cut the rope before the airplane wraps it around the boat’s mast and crashes, killing everybody.  The rope is eventually cut and the airplane flies away.  In a fit of anger, the Mariner cuts both Helen’s and Enola’s hair and uses that to splice the ropes and repair his boat.

Later, the trio encounter another Drifter (Kim Coates), and he trades some vintage paper for sex with Helen.  The Mariner initially agrees to the trade, but he later changes his mind while the Drifter and Helen are down in the main hull of the boat.  The Drifter is angry with the Mariner’s actions, and the two of them get into a knife fight.  When the Drifter crawls back to the top of the boat we see that he’s been stabbed several times.  He quickly dies and the Mariner emerges victorious.

The Mariner spends more time with Helen and Enola, and he starts to bond with the little girl.  Suddenly they’re attacked again by the Smokers, but the pirates fail when they try to snare the boat with rope.  The Mariner realizes that they’ve been after the girl the whole time, and he forces Helen to tell him about the markings on the girl’s back.  When she reveals that the marks are really a map to a fabled place called “Dryland,” he becomes enraged and claims that no such place exists.  His reasoning is that he’s explored much of the ocean and had never seen any dry land for himself.

To prove his point that “Dryland” is just a myth, the Mariner places Helen inside of a diving bubble, and he takes her deep beneath the ocean’s surface.  On the ocean floor Helen sees the remains of what was once a great city.  Scattered on the ocean floor are artifacts (and garbage) from that civilization.  That’s also where the Mariner collects mud which later dries and becomes the dirt that he uses for trading at atolls.

When the Mariner and Helen surface, they discover that they’ve been ambushed by the Smokers.  The Deacon easily captures Enola and takes her prisoner.  The Mariner and Helen quickly jump overboard as the Smokers destroy the trimaran.  When they later re-surface (the Mariner had been breathing into Helen’s mouth to keep her alive while underwater), the Smokers are gone and all that remains of the trimaran is a floating pile of wreckage.  All is not lost as Gregor later arrives in his airship and takes Helen and the Mariner to a new makeshift atoll created by survivors of the original atoll.

The Mariner is determined to rescue Enola.  He uses a captured Smoker jet ski and sets out in search of the Smokers’ headquarters.  He soon finds it and uses the cover of fog to sneak up to and infiltrate the ship.  The Mariner then uses his stealth and combat skills to search the ship and kill any Smokers that he finds along the way.

Meanwhile, the Deacon celebrates the capture of Enola and her map to Dryland with the huge Smoker crew.  He proclaims that he now knows the way to Dryland, and he sends the crew below to begin rowing.  Unknown to the pirate crew, the Deacon was really bluffing.  He has no idea on how to read the map on the girl’s back.  His strategy is to always stay one step ahead of his crew until he finds a solution to the problem of reading the map.

The Mariner then walks on the open deck of the ship and approaches the Deacon.  He threatens to drop a lit flare a cargo hold on the ship where they store their fuel.  When the Deacon refuses to release Enola, the Mariner drops the flare into the cargo hold.  The flame ignites the fuel and causes a massive explosion that destroys most of the ship.  The Mariner is able to escape with Enola by climbing a rope up to Gregor’s airship.  When the Smokers’ ship sinks, it’s revealed to be the rusted remains of the Exxon Valdez.

The Deacon also climbs up the rope and tries to grab Enola, but Helen throws an item and causes the Deacon to fall into the water.  He uses a pistol and shoots one of the ropes, causing Enola to also fall into the water.  The Deacon then climbs onto a jet ski, and he and two other Smokers all race to converge on Enola’s position so they can re-capture the girl.  Acting fast, the Mariner ties a rope to his feet and then jumps over the side of the airship.  He falls to the water, grabs the girl, and the tension from the rope yanks both of them high into the air.  The three jet skis all collide and explode, killing the Deacon.

Gregor takes another look at Enola’s back and uses an old China Airlines magazine to interpret the inscription.  He discovers that the symbols are really coordinates, and he steers his airship in that direction.  They eventually find Dryland and discover that the island is a lush tropical paradise with plenty of fresh water, dense vegetation, and dozens of species of birds and other animals.  Inside of a hut are the remains of two people, and Enola realizes that they are her parents.

Waterworld ends with the Mariner choosing to live on the ocean instead of on the island with everybody else.

So is Waterworld a good movie?

It’s hit-or-miss.  While some of the action scenes were pretty neat, the story itself and the characters needed some work.  The film also has its share of plot holes involving the story as well as the watery world itself.

I think that one of my biggest problems with Waterworld is the shocking primitive technology used throughout the film.  This movie is allegedly set several hundred years in the future, but all of the technology seems like it’s still trapped in 1995.  Hell, they could have used half of this movie as a sales pitch to get people to purchase jet skis and personal watercraft.

The movie claims that the melting of the polar ice caps caused the flooding which covered almost all of the Earth’s surface.  That type of flooding would literally take decades to reach that sort of level.  During that time period you know that scientists and engineers would be building vehicles and habitats that would be able to handle the water.  It’s extremely doubtful that gasoline (called “go-juice” in the movie) would still be available unless people have been treating it and keeping it flammable for hundreds of years.  The same goes true for all of the engines for all of the vehicles, and the machine guns as well.  If the manufacturing companies all literally went underwater a long time ago, then any ammunition (that still worked) would be extremely rare by the time the events in this movie take place.

In theory, the people in Waterworld should have been on an entirely different level for the technology and lifestyle depicted in the film.  But they’re not.  All of them are stuck in the past as if there was a giant time warp that transported people from 1995 several hundred years into the future.

Unfortunately, the technology and lifestyle dominate the film.  It’s something that cannot be overlooked, like how three jet skis can collide and magically explode in a huge fireball.  Those personal watercraft have fiberglass hulls.  They would have collided but there would NOT have been an explosion.  Boats like that are frequently involved in accidents throughout the summer, and you never hear of any explosions in the news.

What’s the deal with the island at the end of the movie?  Wouldn’t there have been other people that lived on the island since the two dead people are allegedly Enola’s parents?  How did Enola leave the island?  Other people in Waterworld would have known about the island, and it would have been settled by that point in time.  Plus the island is huge and other people would have discovered it by chance, especially since the people *do* have air travel in the forms of airplanes and balloons.  Scouts would have discovered the island a long time ago.

What about the Mariner?  We know that he’s a mutant (as identified by the people at the atoll), yet he chooses to live above the surface when he could easily live peacefully underwater.  Shouldn’t there be other mutants out there as well, perhaps entire communities that live underwater?  There could have been a whole new element in the movie involving mutants having territory battles with both the humans and the pirates.  On top of that, the Mariner has a pretty poor attitude towards Dryland.  Since he hasn’t seen it for himself, he *knows* that it does not exist, only because he has explored more of the ocean than the average person.  Wow.

Waterworld (1995) – movie trailer

It’s hard to like Waterworld.  The movie has some fun action scenes, but the rest of the movie needs a lot of work.  The characters are lame, the technology is a huge plot hole, the story sucks, and the death of the Deacon is hilariously bad.  Also, the ending on the island could have used some adjusting as well.

Enjoy Waterworld for the action scenes.  The movie has some interesting concepts, but in the end it fails in delivering a good movie.

Narrator – “The future… The polar ice caps have melted, covering the earth with water. Those who survived have adapted, to a new world.”

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Deacon – “Don’t just stand there, kill something!”