CineTV Contest #65 - Favorite Movie with Water : Waterworld.
The waters cover the land as the ice of the polar ice caps have melted due to the greenhouse effect. The people who survived try to survive in cities built on silver floating forms or atolls (a kind of reef). Violence reigns, and the main occupation of the people was the search for fresh water.
The survivors hold out hope that one day they will set foot on dry land. An old legend indicated that somewhere there was dry land.
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Mariner, a lonely man who lives aboard a trimaran, (a boat made up of a main hull and two smaller parallel side floats, whose main characteristic is that by increasing its speed it can increase the sailing distance). Mariner presents a fascination for the world before it was flooded. He explores submerged cities in search of land to sell on the atolls, and also rescues pre-flood items that he keeps inside his trimaran. Land in this future fetches a high price.
This man is a kind of mutant agile and fast on land, fast underwater, being able to swim and jump out of the water at an astonishing speed.
The gills behind his ears allow him to breathe underwater as easily as he does in air, he can even breathe underwater for others, transferring oxygen to them, he can withstand very strong pressures at great depths, and his eyes are adapted to allow him to see both underwater and in the air. He is an expert survivor and navigator, adept with harpoons and firearms.
The Smokers are pirates driven by irrational religious fanaticism who raid atolls and wandering ships alike. Their leader is Deacon, who plans to build a city ruled by him on terra firma, but he needs to know the location of this precious place before he can do so.
Enola, is a girl who has on her back what is believed to be a map with coordinates for the mythical mainland. Helen, is a woman who cares for the welfare of the orphan girl who belonged to a tribe that lived on the mainland.
These four characters find themselves on an atoll where the hostile inhabitants attack Mariner for being different from them, and subject him to torture. Just at that moment, the Smokers arrive to attack the atoll because they are looking for Enola due to the map tattooed on her back. Helen manages to free Mariner after her attempt to flee with the girl fails.
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Enola, Helen and Mariner escape in the trimaran to be pursued by the Smokers, whose base of operations is the old oil tanker Exxon Valdez, famous for having had an oil spill that caused an unprecedented ecological catastrophe in the world.
Mariner is the image of the warrior, lethal, effective and passionless, born out of a traumatic experience; terribly individualistic and extremely independent, reluctant to any positive assessment of the goodness of life.
Its special effects are effective and mostly made in the old style, with models, stuntmen and lots of pyrotechnics.
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Shooting a movie at sea must be very complicated due to the amount of natural variables and light changes, here the cinematographer has done an excellent job.
James Newton Howard in the musical section shines and thanks to them the film is able to enhance the action scenes.
The performances of Kevin Costner (Mariner), Dennis Hooper (Deacon), Jeanne Tripplehorn (Helen) and Tina Majorino (Enola) are correct, being the most exaggerated that of Dennis Hooper.
Kevin Reynolds, the film's director, was constantly arguing with Kevin Costner, so the shooting was complicated and it is even said that Costner finished shooting the film.
There were many additional inconveniences in the filming:
The first problem arose when building the floating city , they used all the steel from the island of Hawaii, and when it was finished it was necessary to bring more from the United States. They loaded everything on a Boeing 747 and added two boats to be used by the main character. They forgot one small detail. The runway at the airport in Hawaii was too short for the landing of this type of aircraft and an extension had to be made, which was paid for by the studio.
Additionally, two hurricanes destroyed the sets, which had to be reassembled. As most of the filming took place in the ocean, the floating city had to be moved five hundred meters away from the coast every day to avoid the island of Hawaii appearing in the background of the shots.
Tina Majorino was constantly stung by the bad water or jellyfish. During one day's work, a violent wave threw her and Jeanne Tripplehorn into the sea. The girl, who did not know how to swim well, remained near a propeller of the boat that was in motion. A diver jumped into the water and prevented the propeller from tearing her apart.
It is a film that is not perfect but entertaining, with a quite atypical ending in which the protagonist does not stay with the girl, and rejects the earthly paradise. This happens because he is a mutant, a man of the sea, it is not his world, his happiness is in wandering the ocean.
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Waterworld was released in 1995, the studio spent $170 million on the film plus $65 million in advertising, bringing the final cost to $235 million. In the United States it grossed $88 million and in the rest of the world $176 million, so miraculously Universal managed to recover its investment.
The film is an underrated title, but it contains enough elements to be considered not only a worthy science fiction film, and a film aware of the imminent problems of twenty years ago, and that today, with expected punctuality, are still here, aggravated. That climate change, so denied by some, imagined in the film by the rising water levels that would cause the melting of the north and south poles.
Really, the story behind the film gives for a more extensive publication.
This is my entry in the CineTV Contest #65 - Favorite Movie with Water initiative. Link Here
A big hello to all, good luck to the other participants.
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This movie has always been one of my favorites, it has all kinds of action, comedy, romance, anyway. The scene that makes me very funny is the one where the girl's hair is cut, it is cruel but very funny because he had to cut the hair of the woman who defends her
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Hi, Thanks for stopping by. I review the film from time to time and I think what sunk it was bad publicity, Kevin Costner's eccentricities and all the calamities caused by nature that leaked out during filming. It is not a bad movie at all.
A movie integrate you find all genres in it, it made me laugh and cry , The mutant, even though he seemed emotionless, was full of goodness. I liked that movie
Unjustly treated in its time, however today it is a cult movie. I have seen many very bad blockbusters compared to this movie. Cheers.