Plenty of people still remember the massively-expensive project that was Waterworld since at the time it was one of the most expensive movies ever made. If you want the extensive story of how this movie came to be and the trials and tribulations it had to go through in order to reach its final place on the big screen Ryan Lamble of Den of Geek! has an article that will detail every major turning point that led to the spendy, water-based adventure. In truth though at the time the reason why it was one of the most expensive movies ever made is pretty simple, shooting so much on the water isn’t cheap and having to make sure that your sets aren’t going to sink or just float away is a constant struggle. Plus, blowing stuff up on the water is bound to get the attention of at least a few people that might show some concern and as a result it was bound to need permission or at least a way to appease a great number of people in order to allow the movie to go off as desired. This quickly escalated the proposed $5 million dollar budget to something to the tune of $175 million, which at the time was a massive project in the making but as some people saw it wasn’t really the payout they were hoping for.
I’ve said it about more than one movie in the past and every time it’s true enough if people are willing to look, this movie had a great story and was only a letdown because of the pace, the lack of any real development with the characters, and the overall scope of the project. Waterworld was an ambitious movie that had a grand design and a very compelling story but didn’t go into enough detail either because there was limited time or limited funds, or both. Thinking that this was a worthless attempt is easily a misstep since it has all the elements of a great, post-apocalyptic story, especially nowadays with the constant talk about climate change and what it could mean for the world at large. After all one of the main plot points of the story is that the world was covered by a deluge, and generations later people have largely forgotten that they were born and raised on solid ground, or ‘dry land’ as the tales go in this particular story. This is a world where dirt is a valued commodity and can be used as the most rare of currency, while things such as items from the old world, paper being among one of the most prized, are hard to come by. In a way it does look like The Road Warrior on water, and while it’s true that many movies did attempt to follow the same pattern as the story that helped to make Mel Gibson such a well-known name, this one at least had the distinction of taking things to a whole new level, no pun intended.
Can anyone even imagine what it would be like to live completely and totally off the ocean without any dry land in sight? The only dry areas are the atolls, giant floating cities that scavenge what they can from the tides, creating entire civilizations out of flotsam that’s taken from the sea, while the most dangerous individuals in this world are those that have next to nothing but will gladly take everything by force. The Smokers, led by the villainous Deacon who was played by the late Dennis Hopper, were a band of misfits that, despite being dangerous in numbers, were kind of hard to take seriously on their own since there wasn’t a single real warrior among them, not even their leader. The fact that their home was the wreck of the Exxon Valdez, or The Deez, as it was called in the movie, was kind of amusing since Joe Hazelwood became St. Joe in their own gathered mythology and the Deez was basically a mobile breeding ground that had existed on its precious store of oil for who knows how long. Despite the sillier elements of this movie and those that didn’t really pan out as well, the book was entertaining as it was told by the woman that began the story as a child, Enola, the strange little girl that supposedly had the map leading the way to dry land tattooed on her back. The race to find dry land took the story in a couple of different directions, but the realization of what had really happened to the world, when it was finally revealed, was kind of chilling really.
In any case this move does deserve another chance, but perhaps a two-part ordeal or even a trilogy since there’s so much to think about and a lot of different directions to travel in on the open sea. The Mariner, played by Kevin Costner, could use a lot more explanation at the very least.
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