Waterworld (1995)

Today on Movie Russian Roulette, Alex finds the movie supplying a perfect visual summary of itself within its first two minutes.

The jar represents you, the viewer, and the piss represents... well, you get it.

Occasionally, I need an easy target.

Overview: Shitty writing ruins what could have been a fascinating world.

Costner stars as a man known only as Mariner, who sails a post-apocalyptic world where the polar ice caps have melted, going all Wind Waker on the world. He's also a mutant who has gills, which people hate him for due to unexplained reasons. After selling some precious soil to a local floating city, he escapes with a young lady and a little girl in tow. He reluctantly agrees to help them search for the mythical "dry land." Adventure sort-of ensues.

Notable moments/quotes: Mariner: "Nothing's free in Waterworld!"

When the city finds out Mariner is a mutant, they sentence him to be "recycled," a fate generally inflicted on the dead which turns them into... something. In the movie this is shown by him being slowly lowered into a pit of mud or something. Even when fully submerged, he is able to escape without any harm seeming to have been done.

When the evil "smokers" attack, the people of the city think they're safe behind their walls... until the gang use their seaplanes and jetskis to circumvent the walls. For a brief, glimmering moment, I had hope for this movie.

Main bad guy whose name I never quite caught due to shitty audio quality: "We gotta keep an eye out for that creature."

It's funny because he's horribly disfigured!

Emo fishman: "Couple hours ago, I was potential dirt to you."
Obvious love interest bait that fish never quite takes: "We're not like that!"
"You all are."

Shortly after this conversation, the woman holds Mariner at harpoongunpoint to try to convince him to take she and her daughter to safety. Mariner, unimpressed, traps her under a canvas sail and knocks her the fuck out with an oar. Our hero, everyone!

Henchman explaining the bad guy's replacement eye: "There may be some problem with depth perception..."
Dennis Hopper, having the most fun possible in a movie this bad: "Well it better not screw up my short game."

When the little girl backtalks Mariner, he casually tosses her overboard, knowing she can't swim.

One henchman to another, after they do a fly-by gatling gun sweep of Mariner's tiny boat from high above: "Don't hit the kid!"

Random Scottish dude casually discussing buying two human beings: "There's no such thing as not for sale!"

Dull, vapid female lead: "I can't breathe like you!"
Even more dull, emotionless male lead: "I'll breathe for the both of us!"

The ever-enjoyable bad guy: "He's like a turd that won't flush."

Crazy old man having some kind of epiphany that's never explained yet is vital to the plot: "Of course! South is north, north is south!"

Little girl, sullenly trying to get Mariner to stay on dry land: "It's only landsickness."

My thoughts: I really, really, really wanted to like this movie. I came into it knowing that it was infamous for being (maybe, sources conflict on its foreign profits) one of the biggest-budget flops in history, having a $175 million budget and only making around half of that back in the U.S.

Despite that, I really do like the world the movie presents. A world where the surface is covered in water and scavengers and pirates rule the waves as they try to eke out a living in the ruins of the old world? Fuck, son, you've basically just described one of the later Mad Max movies but with pirates. Literally the only way I could have a more raging erection is if the movie featured the entire world was air and we had dramatic airship battles and chases... eh, what was I on about again? Right. My massive weakness for stuff with pirates. Yes.

One could say I am a movie reviewer who likes sky pirates.

So, given my tastes, I was 100% ready to go down on this movie and swallow, swallow, swallow if it showed me even a hint of promise. Once I realized what kind of world they were developing, I was almost ready to rejoice right then and there and stop watching it like I do for the blog (taking notes, the odd screencapture, etc.) and just enjoy it as a regular movie.

But then...

The movie has this neat world, but never really does anything with it. Now, I know full well that a work of fiction can be about a world rather than characters or even plot. The Lord of the Rings is a classic example from literature, and plenty of longer-form formats like TV or video games have done it as well. However, with film things are a little tougher; there's not nearly as much time to spread out the worldbuilding. It can be a tricky thing to get right, as cramming too much world too fast down an audience's throat can feel rushed and hackneyed, while too little leaves us feeling wanting. I'm not saying movies can't pull it off, but most of the movies I've seen that try to use an interesting setting as the driving force behind them come across feeling lacking. At best. However, even the most world-driven works of fiction have some kind of at least vaguely memorable or interesting characters if they rise above the rest.

And this movie? This movie doesn't have anything like that.

We really have a core cast of three: Mariner, the sort-of love interest, and the little kid. Mariner wins some points because he's a mutant drifter and has a cool detachment in that awkward 90s antihero way, so I can give him something of a pass. But the woman and the little girl? Every time they take action, literally any action, they make the situation worse. To begin with, Mariner doesn't want them along, and he threatens to leave them behind--and nearly does--multiple times during the movie. The only reason he doesn't before character development happens is "Well, if he did that we wouldn't have a plot."

The only real saving grace here is Dennis Hopper as the Deacon, our cartoonish bad guy. As usual for a crap movie, they go way too far in trying to make him eeeeevil. Meanwhile, he's just having fun with it and screaming his lines or being bitterly sarcastic to his minions. The only scenes I enjoyed were the ones where he was on screen.

There are of course the usual derp moments like people hating Mariner because he has an adaptation that helps him survive, people assuming for no reason at all that a little girl's mysterious tattoo will lead them to land, and the movie suddenly going full Biblical for five seconds with a dove landing on the main characters' ship as a sign of land. Ultimately, this movie sets up a neat world, but it never really goes anywhere. Every mystery and secret is wrapped up just a bit too cleanly, and although the ending is happy, it's more of a "Oh, okay, I guess" than a "Wow, they finally made it." This movie is an agonizing 135 minutes long, and I felt every last bit of its length.

This is a movie that I can't wait to forget. I'm doing it already, as I'm sure there are plenty of other things I could be getting angry about. Many bad movies, I want to hold at least moments of them in my heart forever. This movie just makes me sad and disappointed. I understand what they were going for, but they screwed it up, and not in an entertaining way.

I give this movie a Nic Cage Engages in a Wacky Chase Scene out of five. Face the books and please for the love of the gods help my cat and I to eat (but not really take care of yourself first but man unemployment hurts).