Mad Max Ripoffs: Waterworld!

Theme: Flood I - The Sisters of Mercy

1995's Waterworld is more famous for its troubled production than for its actual content. Plenty of people went to see it, and the extent to which it was considered a flop was entirely due to spiralling costs due to exceeding its schedule. Much derided at the time, it's since become a favourite of revisionists who want to ackshyouwally that it's really pretty good. Un/fortunately, it really is that bad, though.

I'll allow that it has some really fun action in between 400 scenes of people bickering aboard a sailboat.

In the far future, global warming has flooded the world, leaving the survivors searching an interminable ocean for a hint of dry land. One survivor (Kevin Costner) TEAMS UP with Jeanne Tripplehorn and her funny name, and her adopted daughter, whose back bears a cryptic tattoo that may or may not be a map to the fabled land, pursued by Dennis Hopper and his crew of evil smokers, so named because they smoke cigarettes, which is the 90sest thing I've ever heard.

There's something so incongruous about a post-apocalyptic warlord fucking smoking. It just looks like he's come back from a break between takes and the continuity editor didn't notice.

The problems are three: firstly, the movie drags. It's easily half an hour too long. I think this about ~90% of movies, but I think it harder about this one. Secondly, the protags are unlikable: Costner is a douche to Tripplehorn and the brat, and both are annoying right back at him. It's clear they wanted a grumpy-protag-gradually-warms-to-his-unwanted-charges dynamic, but Six String Samurai did it much better. As with most H*llywood slop, this leaves only the villain to root for, because at least he's entertaining. Not coincidentally, the scenes that drag are all the ones without Hopper chewing the scenery, whether modelling a wooden eye or donning a pirate hat just for jolly wouldn't you?

In a world of Kevins Costner, be a Dennis Hopper.

Thirdly and worstly, though, the movie sucks because Costner's protagonist is a horrifying Innsmouth monster with webbed feet and gills.

Yessireebob, I reckon them eldritch blasphemies got as much right callin' themselves American as you or I do. If they want to worship Dagon with perverted rites out of the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred til the stars are right and great Cthulhu crawls out of the sea to drive men mad, well I say count it a blessing of liberty, partner. They can lay their eggs in my daughter anyday.

Note that this isn't, like many Mad Max ripoffs, a post-nuclear wasteland; the apocalypse was global warming, so there's no reason to have mutants except for rampant incest, which the writers seem to be aware of:

One generation of fucking your immediate family is OK, but two is pushing it, and three? Well, that's just plain distasteful.

As an horrific mutant myself, let me be the first to state that Representation does not Matter when it comes to heroic leading men. If I wanted a protagonist with hideous deformities, I'd write my autobiography.

Post-apocalypse checklist:

MOHAWKS: I think I spotted the odd one among the smokers.

SHOULDER PADS: Hopper's first outfit counts.

CUSTOM CARS: Not really, plenty of boats though.

MUTANTS: Ol' Kev.

GOGGLES: Several smokers wear them, Costner dons them when he boards the Deez.

TOTAL: 4/5 - pretty damn post-apocalyptic.