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Water World Centuries of global warming have caused the polar ice caps to melt, flooding the earth as civilization is left adrift. The inhabitants of this once-flourishing planet cling to life on incredible floating cities, their existence constantly threatened by Smokers--bands of marauding pirates who roam the featureless surface of Waterworld. For the survivors, one chance remains: a solitary hero, known only as the Mariner. Battling the Smokers and their ruthless leader, the Deacon, the Mariner sets out with a beautiful woman and a mysterious little girl on a search for a new beginning.
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The Reviews But Waterworld may end up surprising its critics, because the long-awaited,much-prejudged movie is good--a highly imaginative romp through a postdiluvian future. Hundreds of years from now, the polar ice caps have melted--thanks to the greenhouse effect, the movie implies--and the earth's surface has been flooded. Fresh water is rare and expensive; food is both scarce and uninviting. But the most precious commodity of all is dirt--worshipped like gold by the desperate denizens of Waterworld. In this post-apocalyptic milieu, it is every man, woman and child for him- or herself. While the Atollers struggle to survive on makeshift floating communities--lonely outposts in a uniform sea of despair--the violent, nomadic, cigarette-addicted, fossil-fuel-burning Smokers (led by a grimacing, one-eyed Dennis Hopper as the Deacon) loot and pillage like nicotine-crazed Vikings. Joe Chidley Maclean's, August 7, 1995
Waterworld IS A PRETTY DAMN GOOD summer movie. There, I've said it. The world, and Universal Pictures, can take a deep breath. The most expensive movie ever made--estimates range from $172 million to $200 million--is actually fun. And "fun," Lord knows, is the bottom line of that corporate invention known as the summer movie--a concept, like cyberspace, we didn't ask for, but which has become a permanent part of the American landscape. But director Kevin Reynolds has found a jaunty, comic-book epic tone he can call his own, however derivative the elements. From our first glimpse of the hero (Kevin Costner), a strong, grouchy, silent type known as the Mariner, the movie lets us know it possesses some convention-tweaking wit. Shot from behind at a heroic low angle, the Mariner's first act is to piss in a plastic pot. He funnels the liquid through a Rube Goldbergish contraption, fills his mug with his purified urine and takes a swig. I'll take my hat off to any $200 million movie that gives me that for openers. Costner has long since mastered the movie-star art of making a little go a long way. Beyond taciturn, his Mariner is a moody, uncivilized, selfish s.o.b., who tosses kids in shark-infested waters, thwacks his leading lady with an oar and barters her body to a popeyed, cuckoo scavenger for a few pieces of paper. The drollery of Costner's performance is his dare that we will fall for this brooding lout, which of course we do. His cool, collected charisma is always on the edge of clumsy, but it's real, and it works. David Ansen Newsweek, July 31, 1995
Links Universal Studios Hollywood Waterworld Show
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