Kevin Costner’s ‘Waterworld’ is bad, but I can’t stop watching it

When it hit theaters 26 years ago, water world already had a number of things working against him. Its extremely troubled production was widely reported, with several journalists criticizing the film as the worst kind of Hollywood hubris. These critics were 100% right. And although this arrogance can sometimes result in a great movie (see below). James Cameroncareer), water world was not one of those times. It’s a boring, boring job with a repulsive lead actor built entirely around said actor’s sizable ego. However, every inch of this movie is mesmerizing and I couldn’t stop watching it for the last quarter of a century.

water world Is it worth watching a bad movie?

To be clear, I’m not talking water world it’s a good movie and I never will. I approach it with the same obsessive joy as when I review Congo for the 80th time. It’s a truly breathtaking artifact with so many broken parts that I can’t help but giggle like an idiot every time I start thinking about watching it again. There are also a few things in water world that really work. But I’ll start with the film’s biggest problem, Costner himself. Made at the height of his power as a superstar water world such a selfish project that I’m genuinely surprised Costner’s face wasn’t pasted onto every flat surface shown in the film. Each of the Smokers’ jet skis is to take on a vague form of Costner, making vroom sounds with Costner’s voice as they cut across the ocean.

Aside from the distracting brashness of his hair (the film makes big leaps to disguise the fact that he’s going bald, including his mane being incredibly close to his head every time he steps out of the water), Costner is just a black hole of anti-charisma plopped into the middle of the production. like a wet cereal box. He stars in films that lean on his “hell” Midwestern charm, but water world trying to make him a rude anti-hero, and he just looks like an incorrigible asshole. The first thing we see him do is sell Helen and Enola to a crazy drifter, barely changing his mind in time to save them from harm. And yes, I understand - the filmmakers wanted the Sailor to be a character who is selfish and villainous at first, but eventually learns to care for other people. But the movie forgets to make the Sailor likable at every moment, and despite its popularity, Costner never had the acting ability to achieve any of the nuanced performances. Therefore, the Sailor is just a fucking scumbag, until suddenly he becomes one. And it’s hard to feel excited during an action scene when your character is an expressionless bastard.

Dennis Hopper: Great in horror movies

Dennis Hopper, on the other hand, just can’t help but be entertaining, no matter how shitty the movie is around it. As I said earlier, there are some good ideas in water world, and by far the best of them all is Hopper as the leader of a group of oil-worshipping doomsday pirates. He lives among the wreckage of Exxon Valdez, which in 1995 was an environmentalist, but in 2021 he must live on one of Jeff Bezo’s abandoned superyachts. The movie tries to get us to call Dennis Hopper “Deacon”, but it’s only interested in being Dennis Hopper, for the good of all of us.

Hopper, for some reason, is obsessed with catching Enola and using her back card to find the Dry Land. I think because living in the ocean sucks and because they ran out of oil in their tanker. Either way, Hopper and the pirates are the engineers of their own destruction, sabotaging themselves like Wile Coyote in almost every action sequence, up until the finale in which Hopper is killed after crashing his jet ski into another jet ski. several hundred nautical miles per hour, because he was literally not paying attention. In another scene, Hopper turns his head too fast and his fake eye pops out of his skull and rolls across the floor, and the movie acts like it’s not the craziest thing ever caught on film. Yes, “Dennis Hopper spits a wooden eye out of his gangrenous face” is a box water world emphatically noted.

Great idea, terrible execution

Ironically, the best parts water world that’s what made it such a colossal failure. First of all, this is a very cool idea! A gruesome dystopian action movie on a planet completely covered in water sounds pretty damn cool, especially when you mix in crazed pirates and giant mutant sharks. (Honestly, the movie would benefit from more of these turbo sharks.) All different boats have a corresponding Crazy Max feel for them, effectively conveying “Road Warrior on the ocean”, which the filmmakers aspired to. The production design is excellent, creating a believable universe for the characters. The atoll built for the film is no less impressive and is the setting for the film’s signature action sequence. This is the same sequence recreated in water world a live stunt show at Universal Studios that opened the same year as the film and is still running as of this writing. Incidentally, the idea that kids visiting a theme park in 2021 from our Lord might be so excited after watching a stunt show that they’ll beg their parents to rent water world only to have their hopes dashed when a bloated vanity project washes onto the screen like a dead whale is something I often think about.

Unfortunately, making a film set entirely on the open ocean, with cast and crew scattered across countless boats and actual floating sets, is incredibly expensive and time consuming. Jaws (also produced by Universal) was known to be over 100 days over the schedule and it was just three guys sitting on a boat. water world created a whole post-apocalyptic marine world, including several massive action scenes. Even though it was filmed in a saltwater enclosure, it was still in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, which, as you know, does not give any idea of ​​how many shots you need to take on a given day. Numerous production delays and an ever-growing budget were a favorite topic of journalists throughout the filming of the film in 1994, so by the time the finished film was released, the audience was well aware of its problems, and critics were ready to find fault with it. (In addition to being nearly $100 million over budget, the stuntman was briefly lost at sea, and Costner himself nearly drowned in a storm while filming a scene in which he was tied to his ship’s mast.)

Nicknamed critics water world “Fishtar” and “Kevin’s Gate” and honestly I can’t be mad at them because they’re pretty smart. It’s not the worst movie ever made, but it’s definitely not the best, and its $200 million price tag didn’t help Costner’s career. This was sort of the beginning of the end for him as he followed water world with a string of other pompous failures such as Wyatt Earp And Postman. (I actually like Postman, but that’s an article for another time). However, I am grateful water world exists, if only for any other reason than a scene in which a man trapped in an Exxon Valdez tanker breaks away from his task, sees an approaching wall of flame, and says “Oh, thank God” just before exploding. In fact, that’s the end of the film.