Two decades on Water­world remains a mad, fas­ci­nat­ing folly

After an altered ver­sion of the Uni­ver­sal ident shows the world’s con­ti­nents reced­ing slow­ly into the blue mass of the oceans, Water­world launch­es us into a future where the polar ice­caps have melt­ed and the land­mass­es have been sub­merged. Here the entire world is one big body of water, and every man is an island.

Our protagonist’s par­tic­u­lar island is his mod­i­fied tri­maran, which we first see in an aer­i­al zoom that empha­sis­es its extreme iso­la­tion in a sea of blue. On its deck, this ​‘man with no name’, cred­it­ed only as ​‘the Mariner’ (and played by Kevin Cost­ner), is first seen from behind as the low-angle cam­era tilts up his legs to his butt. If the shot appears to be tak­ing full, objec­ti­fy­ing advan­tage of Costner’s sta­tus as a sex sym­bol, the urine trick­ling between his legs serves to under­mine any main­stream erot­ic appeal.

After col­lect­ing his urine in a jar, the Mariner puts it through a makeshift series of fil­ters, and thirsti­ly drinks the liq­uid that comes out the oth­er end. He is a sur­vivor, though he is run­ning on emp­ty, and this is true of the oth­ers he encoun­ters, all recy­cling or steal­ing every­thing – even corpses – and grad­u­al­ly dying out for not only a lack of resources but also a sur­feit of scav­engers and mer­ci­less maraud­ers. Such com­mu­ni­ty as there is com­pris­es float­ing ​‘atolls’, bar­ter­ing what­ev­er goods come their way while try­ing in vain to keep trou­ble out, and the ​‘Smok­ers’, a navy of petrol-head­ed, cig­a­rette-cov­et­ing pirates led by the Dea­con (Den­nis Hop­per) and based in the rusty wreck­age of the Exxon Valdez.

This is the pio­neer­ing bad­lands of the Wild West, or the post-apoc­a­lyp­tic waste­lands of The Road War­rior – except utter­ly aque­ous – where a thread­bare civil­i­sa­tion is belea­guered on all sides by mur­der­ous greed and ani­mal­is­tic indi­vid­u­al­ism. The lat­ter is embod­ied by the Mariner, a rugged lon­er who, owing to an amphibi­ous muta­tion that has gift­ed him with work­ing gills, is a lit­er­al fish out of water (or ​‘ichthyos­api­en’), unable prop­er­ly to inte­grate into the left­over dregs of human society.

What even­tu­al­ly human­is­es the Mariner is the (ini­tial­ly unwant­ed) com­pa­ny of Helen (Jeanne Trip­ple­horn) and her young ward Eno­la (Tina Majori­no). The lit­tle girl – whose very name revers­es ​‘alone’ while also evok­ing the first air­craft to drop an atom­ic bomb – is a liv­ing, breath­ing MacGuf­fin with a poten­tial­ly explo­sive pay­load on her back. For tat­tooed there is a cryp­tic map rumoured to show the way to the myth­i­cal ​‘Dry­Land’, ensur­ing that every­one wants a pound of her flesh, and even­tu­al­ly dri­ving the Mariner to make one last stand against the Smokers.

In Water­world, the most unlike­ly items – ​‘pure’ dirt, fresh water (or ​‘hydro’), pot­ted plants, paper – have assumed great val­ue, but Eno­la, and the dream of a bet­ter life that her tat­too encap­su­lates, fast becomes the most valu­able com­mod­i­ty in a world where ter­mi­nal des­per­a­tion has become the norm, and where sol­id ground is the ulti­mate utopi­an El Dorado.

Water­world is a spec­tac­u­lar seaborne action adven­ture where the forces of civil­i­sa­tion and sav­agery meet at the seem­ing­ly end­less hori­zon. This is not all that is end­less about the film – its pro­duc­tion, plagued by con­flict between producer/​star Cost­ner and cred­it­ed direc­tor Kevin Reynolds (who, frus­trat­ed with Costner’s con­stant inter­ven­tions, sur­ren­dered the helm mid­way), was over­long (Cost­ner him­self was on set for 157 days) and went way over bud­get (esca­lat­ing to $175 mil­lion). As an exer­cise in world-build­ing, the film is excep­tion­al, cre­at­ing an inno­v­a­tive aque­ous ecosys­tem in which all man­ner of ever more urgent ideas about glob­al warm­ing and envi­ron­men­tal deple­tion can be floated.

Yet where the film falls flat is in its char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion (from a screen­play writ­ten by David Twohy and Peter Rad­er, with mid-pro­duc­tion rewrites – at Costner’s insis­tence – by Joss Whe­don). That Costner’s anti­hero should be so fun­da­men­tal­ly dis­lik­able is entire­ly accept­able – after all, the Mariner’s arc makes him an eter­nal out­sider, with his human­i­ty only occa­sion­al­ly sur­fac­ing for breath – but that he should also be dead­ly dull is far less tolerable.

Hopper’s aston­ish­ing turns in the 1986 films River’s Edge and Blue Vel­vet served the dual pur­pose of show­ing what a com­plex, ver­sa­tile vil­lain he could be, and of send­ing his career down a path that would grad­u­al­ly milk that side of him dry. By the time he came to play the one-eyed antag­o­nist in Water­world, he had become both the go-to (bad) guy for unhinged dev­il­ry, and a mere par­o­dy of him­self. And here, as though to make up for this land­less world’s lack of live­stock, Hop­per pro­vides more than enough ham for everyone.

So, at its time the most cost­ly film ever made, Water­world also feels like some­thing of a fol­ly, as expan­sive as it was expen­sive. The the­atri­cal cut came in at an already epic 135 min­utes, but this three-disc Arrow Blu-ray release comes with two addi­tion­al (and longer) ver­sions of the film: the extend­ed cut for US tele­vi­sion which came with an addi­tion­al 40 min­utes of footage, and which hilar­i­ous­ly dubbed over any of the original’s bad lan­guage; and the so-called ​‘Ulysses’ cut, which restores the cen­sored dialogue.

This last, orig­i­nal­ly com­piled as a boot­leg ​‘fan edit’, has here been restored in a new widescreen ver­sion from the orig­i­nal film ele­ments. Both these extend­ed ver­sions will be wel­comed as an archival trea­sure trove by com­pletists, while unnec­es­sar­i­ly pro­long­ing the agony for any­one else. Enlarg­ing upon this universe’s mythol­o­gy just makes it wet­ter – and Peter Boyle, the edi­tor of film’s the­atri­cal ver­sion, under­stood all too well that less is more, and that the first cut, as they say, is the deep­est one.

Water­world failed to recoup the vast­ness of its bud­get at the box office, although home sales did – and still do – make it prof­itable. You would think that after the ordeal of this tor­tured pro­duc­tion, Cost­ner would know to steer clear of over-inflat­ed post-apoc­a­lyp­tic dystopi­an alle­gories, yet only two years lat­er he would pro­duce, direct and star in The Postman.

Water­world is released by Arrow Video on Blu-ray on three ver­sions (the the­atri­cal cut, the TV cut, the ​‘Ulysses’ cut) over three col­lect­ed discs, all restored from orig­i­nal film ele­ments, on 21 January.