And here, as though to make up for this landless world’s lack of livestock, Hopper provides more than enough ham for everyone. 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.
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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. 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. 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). 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. 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). Waterworld is a spectacular seaborne action adventure where the forces of civilisation and savagery meet at the seemingly endless horizon.
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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. 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. 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. What eventually humanises the Mariner is the (initially unwanted) company of Helen (Jeanne Tripplehorn) and her young ward Enola (Tina Majorino). 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. 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. 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. 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.
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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.Īfter 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.
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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. 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.