00:00 A man who still searches.
00:03 A woman who still hopes.
00:06 And a small child who carries the secret to a new beginning.
00:12 Waterworld is an action-adventure film from 1995 starring Kevin Costner and Dennis Hopper.
00:17 It's basically a story of what would happen if the ice caps melted and the world was, as far as they know in the film,
00:22 completely covered with water with everyone existing and living on the water
00:26 and in sort of little floating towns and villages and things like that.
00:30 Often referred to as one of the most famous box office flops really, isn't it?
00:34 Or critical flops. So why did you pick it? Is it to do with that or is there another reason?
00:39 So I picked this film because I thought maybe, maybe it was underrated.
00:43 So I saw this film when I was a kid and I really loved it and it wasn't until I got quite a bit older
00:48 that I came to know about this reputation that it had as being quite bad
00:52 and that a lot of people didn't really like it very much.
00:55 So at the time of recording, it gets a 6.3 on IMDb and then over on Rotten Tomatoes,
01:00 it gets a 45% from the critics and a 43% from the audience.
01:05 So I did think going into it that it might be underrated. I thought it was really good.
01:10 I thought, nah, everybody's wrong. I know the truth and they're all just missing something.
01:14 But having watched it again for the podcast, I will admit that I was wrong.
01:19 There is quite a lot wrong with this film and there are a lot of things to not like about it.
01:24 But let's start with the positives and let's start with some of the things that I did like about it.
01:28 So I absolutely love the concept.
01:30 You know, what if climate change really did happen in its most extreme way possible
01:34 and nearly the entire planet was covered in water?
01:37 I think the opportunity for creativity here is endless and you do get some of that in the film.
01:42 You learn a little bit about how these characters, how civilization as it is in this film,
01:46 has managed to last the 500 years since the disaster happened.
01:50 Also, some of the visuals I thought were really impressive.
01:52 You get these really cinematic wide shots of vessels and ships and all sorts coasting along the horizon.
01:59 Some really good world building, that idea of what if the world was all water?
02:03 How would society work? How would people buy things, use things, eat things?
02:07 I think the highlight for me was probably Dennis Hopper,
02:10 because he's just absolutely chewing the scenery in this film.
02:14 Tell me a little bit about why it is flawed, why it isn't what you wanted it to be.
02:18 So there are many reasons for this. Some of it's around the script,
02:22 some of it's around the story development, some of it's around the character development.
02:25 But I think the huge glaring thing for me here is that the genre feels completely muddled.
02:31 Sometimes it feels like an action film, sometimes it feels like a fantasy film,
02:35 sometimes it feels really family friendly, and other times it absolutely does not.
02:39 There's some quite grotesque and some dark subject matter that we explore in this
02:43 that naturally would come with this dystopic world that we find ourselves in.
02:47 Because it doesn't really commit to any of these things, it just feels really jumbled up.
02:51 And I kept thinking, who is this really for? Who is the target audience?
02:55 After watching it, watching it with more mature and more analytical eyes,
02:59 there are a lot of problems with this film, so I think maybe it is probably appropriately rated.
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