ALL SCI-FI

[Krel]

I think part of what turned people off of "Mad Maxx Takes a Sea Cruise" was the reported expense and problems. I remember reading that the floating city had to be rebuilt after being sunk in a storm. They say any publicity is good publicity, but that isn't always so.

There may also have been some backlash against Kevin Costner. At the time, deserved or undeserved, he was seen as being arrogant. Personally, I always have like him.

David.

[Bud Brewster]

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I made the screen shot below from the site Butch provided earlier on this thread which shows a slowly rotating Earth and the changes in all the coastlines that would occur if the ice of the poles, the glaciers, and the mountain tops all melted.

Even though it's far less than what we see in Waterworld it's still a global disaster. For example, look at what the new coastline of American would become, with all of Florida, most of Georgia, and major sections of both the East and West coasts underwater!

Run the video for yourself at Business Insider site. It's very impressive.



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bogmeister]

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_____________Waterworld Original Film Trailer


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In the future, the polar ice caps have melted and most of the Earth is covered by water (inaccurate — the oceans would rise only 20 feet in such a situation).

No specific year is given in the film, but it's probable that it takes place at least a few hundred years in the future, long enough for certain humans to develop minor mutations related to living on and moving in the water.

One of these new humans is only known as 'The Mariner' (Kevin Costner). He gets by on his lonesome on a cool, fully functional trimaran, scavenging and occasionally doing a bit of trading at small settlements floating on the ocean.

His life becomes more complicated when he's suddenly saddled with a woman (Jeanne Tripplehorn) and a young girl (Tina Majorino).

The villains are known as 'The Smokers' — a large gang headed by Dennis Hopper. They're headquartered on an ancient ship which used to be known as the Exxon Valdez.

The drive of the plot is that the young girl has a tattoo on her back which is supposedly a map to 'Dryland' — a mythical place which everyone wants to find.


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The film's quality or lack of it took a backseat to all the talk about its huge budget when it was released. The budget had ballooned to nearly $175 million by the end of production, mostly due to filming on the water (which doubles all the usual costs automatically), making this the most expensive film of that time (until Titanic in '97).

Most of the blame was leveled as director Kevin Reynolds. There also developed a rift between Reynolds and Costner, who were buddies up to that point. Dennis Hopper himself described the film as merely The Road Warrior on water and that's as good a description as any. Hopper was the go-to guy for villains in splashy films at that time, due to his roles in films like Speed (94), but he's just average in this one and uninspired. He spends most of the film seated, a cig between his fingers.

There are moments of inspiration in this film, showing us glimpses of how different life would be in such a world, but these are few and far in-between. The most incisive moment, dark in its gallows humor, occurs near the end, involving an old worker deep in the ancient ship and the climactic destruction.

_________________ Waterworld - Atoll Escape


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Watered Trivia: This film was not a box office bomb, just very expensive. It grossed about $88 million in the USA and twice that internationally. However, Costner's next movie, another sci-fi pic called The Postman (97), was a bomb. The character of "The Mariner" is very similar both in name and ability to the famous comic book character, The Sub-Mariner, who was introduced in comics way back in 1939.

BoG's Score: 6.5 out of 10

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BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Eadie]

[Bud Brewster]

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IMDB has quite a few very interesting trivia items for this production.
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~ It is rumored that director Kevin Reynolds and Kevin Costner had a huge squabble over the film, resulting in Reynolds walking off the project and left Costner to finish it. Reynolds was quoted as saying that "Kevin Costner should only star in movies he directs. That way, he can work with his favorite actor and favorite director".

Note from me: Gee, Mr. Reynolds seems to be just a bit bitter.

~ The preferred 3-hour cut of director Kevin Reynolds was drastically edited back to a 135-minute theatrical version by Kevin Costner and the studio, probably in an effort to recoup the film's inflated $175 million dollar budget (since Costner's previous 3-hour movie Wyatt Earp (1994) had been a box office bomb).

ABC later broadcast an extended TV version that restored almost 40 minutes of deleted scenes, which explain more about the world, the people who live there, the Smokers' religious beliefs and their ability to refine crude oil.

The additional scenes also tie up several loose ends in the theatrical release. Being a TV special, this version was also censored for violence and language.

A fan-edit of the film, called 'Waterworld: The Ulysses Cut' (named after a restored scene at the end), was later made in an attempt to create the most complete version of the movie. It was compiled from several broadcast versions, containing all of the additional footage from the TV version while restoring the previously censored parts.

In an unexpected turn, the original distributor officially sanctioned this fan-edit by releasing it in a box-set with the other two versions. This Ulysses Cut was remastered in high-definition though, created with original footage rather than lower-quality broadcast material.

Note from me: I have both the theatrical version and (purchased later) the extended version.

~ The 1,000 tonne floating set used up all the available steel in the Hawaiian Islands. When more was required, it had to be flown in from California.

Note from me: It's too bad that lava doesn't contain large amounts of iron ore. Hawaii could send all the tourist home and turn the islands into the biggest steel producer in America!

Okay, that's not really a great idea . . .

~ For the Japanese premiere, Kevin Costner had his private plane flown to Tokyo. He failed to get permission to store his plane at the airport for the duration of his trip. He asked the Navy if he could use their airport at Atsugi. They agreed, but only if Costner showed the movie there, and made a personal appearance.

Note from me: The Navy guys probably either loved this move or hated it. The ones who loved it were the guys happiest when their ships were at sea. The one who hated it realized that the Waterworld had no place to take shore leaves!

~ Kevin Costner stayed in an oceanfront villa with a butler, chef, and private swimming pool, for $4,500 per night. Crew members were forced to live in uninsulated condominiums that were subject to temperature swings of up to 122 degrees (F). This inequity of accommodations contributed to on-set hostility and low morale.

Note from me: Kevin should be ashamed of himself . . .

~ After Kevin Costner showed interest in the film, he insisted that his friend Kevin Reynolds be given the director's position, and Charles Gordon be the producer. Reynolds initially refused because of major disagreements between him and Costner on the set of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991).

Gordon had to bring Reynolds and Costner together and act as an intermediate before the two made amends. Later, Costner had another falling out with Reynolds over the film's direction.

Note from me: I'm starting to get a bad feeling about Mr. Costner.

~ Joss Whedon flew out to the set to do last minute rewrites on the script. He later described it as "seven weeks of hell".

Note from me: I wonder how much of that "hell" was caused by Costner himself.

~ Neither the 2,204,622.62 pound floating set nor any of the 30 boats used by the cast and crew had bathrooms. Filming had to stop so people could be ferried to portable toilets on a barge anchored near the shore.

Note from me: For Pete's sake, couldn't the set builders add toilets to the set which just dropped the waste down into the ocean? They wouldn't really create all THAT much pollution, would they? A passing whale pod would probably squirt out more poop than the whole cast and crew!





~ Kevin Costner demanded the VFX crew hide his receding hairline digitally, which was not a cheap feat in 1995.

Note from me: Dear Lord, the man wore a "virtual" toupee.





~ Two locations were considered to accommodate construction and filming of the enormous sets: the southern coast of Australia, and Hawaii's Kona coast. The choice fell on Hawaii, since production was scheduled for a summer, when it is actually winter in Australia.

The studio didn't spend any money researching weather patterns off Kona coast. If they had, they would have learned that the area was subject to 45 mph winds, which constantly blew the set out of position and ruined shots.

Note from me: A phone call to the National Weather Service would have saved the production millions of dollars. Somebody screwed up . . .

~ The production added more than $35 million to the Hawaiian economy.

Note from me: Ah-HA! I'll bet the producers called the weather folks in Hawaii, and they said, "Weather off the Kona Coast? Oh, it's absolutely beautiful all year long! Come to paradise and make your wonderful movie!"

~ Jeanne Tripplehorn refused to strip for this film, even though she had done nude scenes before (and would do them after this film). She insisted on choosing her body double, as she wanted the naked backside shown to resemble her own.

She had the three finalists come into her trailer and drop their robes. She described it as such an odd experience that none of them could stop laughing. In between takes of the nude scene, Tripplehorn remained off-camera to offer a robe or towel to the double.

Note from me: Maybe the lovely lady had a big, red boil on her butt.





~ If the icecaps melted, the oceans would only rise a few hundred feet; not enough to flood civilization into a floating oblivion.

Note from me: Happily, this is true. I Googled the question and got this.

"There is still some uncertainty about the full volume of glaciers and ice caps on Earth, but if all of them were to melt, global sea level would rise approximately 70 meters (approximately 230 feet), flooding every coastal city on the planet."

~ The child's name, Enola, is "alone" spelled backwards.

Note from me: That's actually pretty clever.





~ LOGO GIMMICK: The Universal Studios logo, the planet Earth, was given a close-up, and as it got closer, the continents began to fade away until there was nothing left... but water. This inevitably takes the viewer into the action, along with the involving accompanying narrative of what's happened to the earth.

Note from me: Take a look at the extended Universal logo below, and then a video which shows what the Earth's landmasses would really look like if all the ice on the planet (including glaciers) melted.

_________________ Universal Pictures (1995)


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_____ How Earth Would Look If All The Ice Melted



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~ One script (later rejected) called for a second moon to appear in the sky, intimating that the cataclysm which created Waterworld was gravity-related, rather than warming.

Note from me: That's an interesting idea, and I suspect that the author was aware that global warming wasn't enough to drown the world.

But I can't quite figure out (a) how we got a second moon, and (b) exactly how that would make the seas rise so much higher than just the melting of all the ice would cause.

~ Although the exact year that the film takes place is never mentioned, production designer Dennis Gassner has suggested it's set in 2500. This is mentioned Janine Pourroy's "The Making of Waterworld," published by Boulevard Books in 1995.

Note from me: If the story takes place in 500 years, shouldn't we have seen some surviving examples of advanced technology?

I Googled the question, 'How long would it take for all the ice in the world to melt?", and this is the answer.

"There are more than five million cubic miles of ice on Earth, and some scientists say it would take more than 5,000 years to melt it all. If we continue adding carbon to the atmosphere, we'll very likely create an ice-free planet, with an average temperature of perhaps 80 degrees Fahrenheit instead of the current 58."

Let's give the movie the benefit of the doubt and say that the melting DID take only 500 years. With that in mind, wouldn't that give mankind enough time, while the landmasses were shrinking, to build floating cities, undersea cities, and giant space stations?











Think of this story as being somewhat like When Worlds Collide — except that the Earth isn't destroyed, it becomes so different that mankind has to "colonize" it — as if it was an all-water planet in a nearby star system!

I love Waterworld just as it is — but I'd love to see a very different kind of story based my concept above.

~ Kevin Costner and Kim Coates became good friends after this movie and later worked together on Open Range (2003) which was directed by Costner.

Note from me: Phantom, Gord Green, and I recently watched Open Range in the Chat room. Great movie!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

"Waterworld" was plagued by huge cost overruns and production setbacks.

Universal Studio authorized $100,000,000 for the film but it came in at $175,000,000 which was a record sum at the time.

The atoll set collapsed due to a hurricane and sank, so another one had to be built.

Steven Spielberg warned Kevin Costner & Kevin Reynolds about the tremendous challenges shooting on open water based on Spielberg's experiences filming "Jaws."

Costner nearly died when he was caught in a squall while tied to the mast of the trimaran.

Joss Whedon was called in to do rewrites of the script.

Joss said it came down to his editing Costner's ideas for the movie as opposed to Joss really being able to contribute any original concepts. Whedon referred to the experience as seven weeks in hell.

The production of the movie added $35,000,000 to the Hawaiian economy.

The movie was inspired by George Miller's SF movie "Mad Max".

The film was Kevin Costner & Kevin Reynolds fourth collaboration.

They had worked together on "Fandango" (1985), "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," (1991), and "Rapa Nui," (1994).

Despite the clashes between Costner & Reynolds, the two would reunite two decades later to shoot the History Channel's miniseries "Hatfields & McCoys."

The impressive looking man-made floating atoll weighted 100-tons and was 1/4-mile in circumference.

The atoll required so much steel for construction that the production exhausted Hawaii's reserves. More steel was ordered and shipped from California.

Kevin Costner's stunt double Norman Howell nearly died of an embolism.

Little Tina Majorino was stung so many times by jellyfish that Costner nicknamed her "Jellyfish."

[Morbius]

I thought this movie was great, thought provoking, with a touch of evolution. Had to search for the photos

[Bud Brewster]

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I wonder where the Mariner's trimaran is located now.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

[Bud Brewster]

[tmlindsey]

I thought the film was enjoyable and didn't deserve all of the critic-hate it got well before the movie was even released.

Is it a masterpiece? No. But it is a fun ride with an interesting premise that should have been more successful than it was.

The premise isn't any more ridiculous than the Mad Max movies where people endlessly chase each other in cars to acquire the most precious thing on Earth; gasoline (?) Like, what are you burning up with all of those car chases?

I think the critics just did what critics do; praise someone (Costner) and build them up, just so they can leap on the first opportunity to tear them down later.
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"Have you never wondered what it would be like to walk between the ticks and tocks of Time?"