If You Only Watch One Kevin Costner Movie, Don’t Miss This One
Kevin Costner is largely known for playing cowboys and guys obsessed with baseball, but one role had him trading in the deserts of the Old West for an ocean so big it covers the whole Earth. Waterworld has long been considered one of Kevin Costner’s biggest failures, but in hindsight, it might just be his best movie. Okay, maybe not the best, but certainly the most interesting.
Waterworld may not be the best Kevin Costner film, but it’s certainly the most interesting.
The success of the Mad Max films in the early ’80s spawned countless post-apocalyptic rip-offs featuring savages in punk attire roaming desert wastelands and fighting over supplies. Kevin Costner took that tired formula and decided to combine it with the real-life, ongoing climate crisis. The result was Waterworld, a movie set in the year 2500 CE, where the polar icecaps have completely melted, submerging every city on Earth under miles of undrinkable saltwater.
Waterworld may not be the best Kevin Costner film, but it’s certainly the most interesting.
The Dances With Wolves actor cast himself as the mysterious Mariner, a man who looks mostly human but has evolved gills behind his ears and webbed toes to help him survive in a world that’s nothing but H2O. Kevin Costner’s Mariner travels around Waterworld, occasionally stopping at atolls—man-made islands that function as the post-apocalyptic equivalent of cities—to barter using lost treasures he salvages from the forgotten land below the sea.
It’s on one such atoll where The Mariner comes across a little girl with a giant tattoo on her back that supposedly shows the way to “Dryland” a mythical stretch of land that exists somewhere out in the endless ocean.
When the atoll is attacked by the vicious Smokers—a gang of degenerates operating out of the salvaged wreck of the Exxon Valdez—Kevin Costner’s Mariner takes the girl and her guardian aboard his trimaran and escapes. When the Smokers find out about the tattoo and the map to Dryland they pursue the trio with plans to abduct the young girl.
The scenery-chewing, over-the-top bad-guy energy Hopper brings to the role gives Waterworld a whole other level of trashy goodness you don’t get from many of Kevin Costner’s more respected films.
The simple concept of “Mad Max on the water” was originally thought up by writer Peter Rader in 1986. The initial Rader script went through extensive rewrites, eventually catching the eye of Kevin Costner and director Kevin Reynolds. The two Kevins had previously worked together on three earlier films, including Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
Along with Kevin Costner, the impressive cast included Tina Majorino as Enola, the girl whose back tattoo serves as the film Mcguffin, and Jeanne Tripplehorn as her guardian, Helen. Legendary actor Dennis Hopper played Deacon, the leader of the evil Smokers, a gang that included a pre-fame Jack Black as well.
Though rarely brought up in conversations about his filmography, Hopper’s role as Deacon stands side by side with his portrayal of King Koopa in the live-action Mario movie as one of his most criminally overlooked roles.
The scenery-chewing, over-the-top bad-guy energy Hopper brings to the role gives Waterworld a whole other level of trashy goodness you don’t get from many of Kevin Costner’s more respected films. That kind of shlocky B-movie energy permeates the whole film, ironic considering the movie’s budget was far from B-level.
Waterworld’s Massive Budget
In fact, due to a series of production setbacks that plagued the film throughout shooting, the original budget of $100 million—already a massive amount in 1994—ballooned up to an estimated $175 million by the end of production, making Waterworld at the time, the most expensive movie ever made.
Part of the problem was filming on the water, something Jaws director Steven Spielberg warned Kevin Costner about prior to the start of Waterworld‘s production.
Some of the setbacks can be chalked up to simple bad luck. Construction of the main atoll set—a pre-CGI physical man-made island—used up all of the available steel in Hawaii, requiring the production team to fly in more steel from California. This, in turn, required the runway at Kona Airport to be extended by a quarter mile to accommodate the heavy steel-laden planes that would be landing there.
Once the atoll was completed, it promptly sank and had to be rescued and repaired, leading to more downtime and adding more money to the already overblown budget. To say that all of the difficulties while filming made the set a tense one to be on would be an understatement.
At one point, it got so bad that the director, Kevin Reynolds, quit the film, leaving Kevin Costner to finish filming and oversee editing. This may have been what prompted the Reynolds quote, “Kevin Costner should only star in movies he directs. That way, he can work with his favorite actor and favorite director.”
It’s unfortunate that the movie’s negative reputation overshadows everything else because, honestly, Waterworld is a lot of fun.
After all of the work that went into the film, Waterworld sank at the box office. After spending $22 million of his own money on the movie, Kevin Costner was no doubt crushed when the film, which cost over $235 million with marketing and distribution costs factored in, grossed a paltry $88 million at the North American box office.
The movie fared better overseas, where it brought in an additional $176 million in foreign box office, bringing the worldwide total to $264 million—a sum that’s even more disappointing when cut in half to account for the money that the theater chains get to keep.
The movie received mixed reviews, critically, with most critics complaining that the movie was nothing more than a Mad Max ripoff. Many critics did take note of the film’s lavish sets and practical effects. When watching Waterworld today, you can definitely see where all the money went. Waterworld’s aesthetic has a tangibility not found in modern blockbusters, thanks to everything being done on set as opposed to post-production CGI.
Today, Waterworld is best remembered as one of the biggest disasters in Hollywood history and Kevin Costner’s biggest misstep as an actor and filmmaker. It’s unfortunate that the movie’s negative reputation overshadows everything else because, honestly, Waterworld is a lot of fun. From the death-defying old-school stunts to the amazing sets, Waterworld creates a universe on screen that is breathtaking and fully realized.
If you like post-apocalyptic movies or just want to see Kevin Costner drink his own pee, you can stream Waterworld right now on Peacock.
