Ní Fhlainn notes how the film repeatedly shows a “limited understanding of female complexity”. Waterworld’s treatment of its female characters isn’t any better. Rader acknowledges this aspect of Waterworld is particularly “glaring” in this “day and age”. Its lack of diversity is appalling, as the cast is almost entirely white and male. These big budget blockbusters were the antithesis to the Hollywood indie wave movement of the 1990s, says Ní Fhlainn, especially with “the emergence of new directors like Quentin Tarantino” and a wave of “commercially successful and critically exciting films”.īut while Waterworld might be more entertaining than is generally remembered, there are two aspects of it that are disgustingly dated.
Both Wyatt Earp and The War really were financial failures, as neither managed to gross even half of their budgets.Īround this time, Last Action Hero and Cutthroat Island bombed, too. On top of that, Costner’s incredible run of movies, which started in 1987 with No Way Out and The Untouchables, and was followed by Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, Dances With Wolves, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, JFK, The Bodyguard and A Perfect World, had already come to a crashing halt in 1994. The doubling and then tripling of Waterworld’s production costs, the destruction of a multi-million dollar set in a hurricane, and Costner’s creative battle with Reynolds, which resulted in the director leaving production before editing was complete, soon became the perfect fodder for these shows. This primarily covers “box office figures and film productions, especially if they have problems and go over budget”. First of all, there was a “huge increase in what’s called enfotainment” – the combination of entertainment and industry news. Particularly its silent opening scene, which details how Costner’s Mariner distils his urine, and is regarded as such a fine example of visual storytelling that, Rader tells me, it’s taught at the University of Southern California’s renowned film school.īut if film fans are now beginning to appreciate Waterworld, why was it so eagerly dismissed and savaged when it originally hit cinemas? According to the University of Liverpool’s Yannis Tzioumakis, a perfect storm of issues blighted its release. While Rader, who was replaced as writer by David Twohy when star Kevin Costner and director Kevin Reynolds joined, admits that he was ultimately disappointed with the tone of Waterworld, there is still plenty he adores about the finished film. “It has some exciting set pieces and important points to make about our ecology, fossil fuels and environmentalism in the 1990s.”Īnd Waterworld has been critically reappraised in recent years, with The Guardian calling it a “cult classic in the making” and Forbes claiming that it is the “biggest box office bomb that wasn’t”. What does that tell you about the concept? It is so primordially appealing.”Įven as a film, Waterworld “is not as terrible as some critics claimed”, says Dr Sorcha Ní Fhlainn, a senior lecturer in Film Studies and American Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. They’ve all had at least three, in some cases seven, movies. “Hundreds of millions of people have been exposed to the whole Waterworld idea. This attraction, which is one of the most popular rides at their locations in Singapore and Japan, too, has generated “billions in revenue” for the studio, according to Rader. With good reason, too, as Waterworld: A Live Sea War Spectacular has been key to Universal Studios theme parks ever since it debuted at the Hollywood site just a few weeks after the film was released. The film’s original screenwriter Peter Rader, who created the post-apocalyptic action adventure set in a future where the polar ice caps have melted and water covers the Earth, tells BBC Culture that Waterworld is actually “one of the most successful movies” in Universal’s vast catalogue. The film that exposed our misogynistic cultureīut 25 years on, Waterworld’s legacy and impact deserve a reappraisal. By the time Waterworld had arrived in the UK just two weeks later, its status as the most expensive film ever made at the time, its well-publicised production problems, average-to-negative reviews, and comparatively poor domestic box office performance had all combined to leave it dead in the water. When Waterworld splashed into US cinemas in July 1995, it did so with a belly-flop.
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