YMMV / Waterworld

• Adaptation Displacement: The show at Universal Studios has proven to be quite popular and still runs to this day. As a result, more people are familiar with the stage show than they are with the actual film or the novel (which expands more on the world).
• Awesome Music:
  • The SNES Waterworld game is known as a pretty bad game. However its OST by Dean Evans has a lot of awesome tracks.
  • "Diving" is a perfect example of an amazing ambient track on this OST.
  • "Mission Theme 1" and "Mission Theme 3"
  • From the film itself, "Escaping the Smokers", arguably the main theme of the entire film and a very heroic-sounding piece. It's also used during the most exciting parts of the stunt show at Universal Studios.
• Awesome Art: Say what you will about the production woes behind them and the story they were built to serve, but the Ocean Punk sets look fantastic, with an amazing attention to detail and aesthetic in every atoll and ship that makes the world feel truly lived-in. The various scenes of said technology in motion — on top of being a very clear show of where a lot of the budget went — is also just a feast for the eyes for fans of practical effects and set engineering.
• Better on DVD: The Extended Cut is the far superior version, as it features more world-building, more Character Development and fills in some of the Plot Holes.
• Common Knowledge:
  • This film was one of the poster boys for Troubled Production and Box Office Bomb. While the Troubled Production is true, its status as a bomb was only domestic - internationally? It made back its entire budget and turned a profit. Back in The '90s, this wasn't considered in its numbers as much as it is today.
  • Also, everyone knows the movie had astronomical budget overruns but blame them on Kevin Costner's ego leading to stuff like the infamous "digital hairline restoration" rumor, or nightmarish production issues like needing to rebuild the Atoll set after it sank in a storm. Neither of these things happened.^note The smaller slaver colony set did tip over at one point, but was quickly repaired. Instead, much of the budget overruns were due to a slow shooting schedule, a consequence of filming on an outdoor ocean set where there were often long waits for the weather to clear or the sun to be in the right position to match previous shots.
• Complete Monster: The Deacon is the leader of the Smokers who pillage and destroys atoll villages in search of the Dryland. Leading an assault on an atoll village, the Deacon has his men massacre the villagers in order to scavenge it and find the map, leaving no one alive, including children. The Deacon interrogates two captives in search of the map, promising to spare one of them should they give him the info he needs, only to go back on his word and kill both of them anyway. The Deacon soon sets up a trap using the corpses of the villagers as puppets to lure the heroes into an ambush, so he can capture the girl in possession of the map to Dryland.
• Critical Backlash: Some people don't find the movie to be that bad. One recurring theme in the film's detraction shares an odd connection with the 1980's film Ishtar, in that a chunk of the criticism for both was each film's utterly gigantic budget and cost overruns, as if the critics were doing double duty as the producers who financed the films. One nickname for Waterworld as it was being made and racking up giant over-expenses? "Fishtar". And it's hard to find a period review that doesn't focus on how the production went out of control, instead of discussing the actual movie.
• Cult Classic: The film has always had its defenders and fans, but today it borders on Vindicated by History: over the years, the shadows of its Troubled Production have faded, and Critical Backlash has led to new audiences wondering what all the hate is about (not to mention the many movies that have since eclipsed it in both categories). The release of the extended cut that restores a lot of the worldbuilding and storytelling left on the cutting room floor hasn't hurt either. The film also has a following in the design community as a rare take on The Apunkalypse that doesn't involve sandy wastelands and dune buggies.
• Designated Hero: The Mariner. Though it's more Anti-Hero with shades of trying to avoid The Call through most of the movie.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The atoll council’s enforcer doesn’t even get a name and is in less than half of the movie, but he gets a lot of love for being the film’s sole Reasonable Authority Figure and being a brave and competent fighter.
  • The smoker in charge of monitoring their remaining oil reserves is only in a few short scenes, but is pretty popular for being decently funny and the only non-malicious member of his faction.
  • The seaplane pilot and gunner, both for their Villainous Friendship and for how their attack on the main characters is sometimes seen as the last really good action sequence of the movie.
• Evil Is Cool: Dennis Hopper seems to be having a great time playing the villainous Deacon. As such, he's one of the most entertaining parts of the movie.
• Fanfic Fuel: Suppose there were other, non-villainous Smoker factions out there.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: It's worth noting that in addition to the popular stunt show, it also has its own themed area at Universal Studios Japan. And let's not forget the film earned tons of money outside of the US, saving it from being an actual, rather than perceived, bomb.
• Ham and Cheese: Depending on your opinion of the movie, Dennis Hopper may qualify (on the "cheese" part, anyhow; Hopper is definitely Chewing the Scenery either way).
• He's Just Hiding: Some fans like to hope that a few of the Smokers (the seaplane pilot, the incompetent gunner, the kids etc.) survived the sinking of their ship.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: It's kinda amusing that Jack Black and Dennis Hopper were in the same film, seeing as how in Super Mario Bros. (1993), Dennis Hopper played Koopa, also known as Bowser, a role Jack Black himself would take in The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
• Inferred Holocaust:
  • Regardless of finding dry land or not, humanity is in an extinction phase, as there simply aren't enough people left to avoid fatal inbreeding. And that assumes there will be more people reaching dry land at all, rather than keeping it a Hidden Elf Village. Plus, while the Smokers were clearly bad guys, they probably comprised most of what was left of humanity before the Mariner wiped all them out and scuttled every bit of technology they had salvaged.
  • This is in fact confirmed in the extended cut/novelization of the film, where Helen notes that every year, there are fewer and fewer atolls around (it's been months since they had contact with another one prior to the events of the film), and their technology is breaking down with no way of fixing it. Even the smokers note that there are fewer and fewer atolls to raid, and that they will exhaust their oil reserves in a matter of months.
• Memetic Mutation: "Oh, thank God."^ExplanationThe "Depth Gauge Guy" who lives in the Smoker's Oil Tank and serves as a living Depth Gauge of how much oil is left in the tank says this after a flare is dropped into the oil, setting off a massive explosion that kills him. Usually used by people to express relief at the coming of an event that will relieve them of their suffering
  • It’s common on the Internet for any catamaran or trimaran to be compared to the Mariner’s ship from this movie, since outside of historical Polynesian settings such ships are rarely seen in popular culture.
• Narm:
  • The scene where Mariner blows up at Enola over the crayons. The scene where Helen screams "FOOD!" also qualifies. The sentence it's a part of isn't actually that bad, but the fact that she just randomly screams the last word makes it all fall apart.
  • And there's the infamous "My boat".
  • The beginning of the movie also has the awful line "Nothing's free in Waterworld!" which appears to only have been added to have some kind of title drop, as it's awkward and enormously unnecessary^note A better line with the same context would have been "Nothing's free in this world" or "Nothing's free in this life".
  • The part where Deacon promises not to kill an Atoll survivor after interrogating him and then lets The Nord finish him off would be a lot more horrifying if the victim didn't react by taking a sharp, deep breath and comically yelling "NAAAAAAAAAH!!" just before he's shot
• Older Than They Think: The setting has more than a few similarities to the French comic series Aquablue.
• Once Original, Now Common: While it didn't entirely invent the concept of an Ocean Punk post-apocalypse, it certainly codified it and brought it to mainstream attention. At the time the idea was such a novelty that it almost inverts the trope - it was so radically different that some of the flak it received was over a setting that today doesn't seem so off-the-wall and unrelatable.
• Padding: The film has a lot of scenes that could've been removed or shortened, such as all the sailing montages (seeing as everything is covered in water there's not even nice scenery to justify it). The film's middle section in particular suffers from this. The main story itself is quite a simple one but it's unnecessarily stretched out over two hours (which borders on three in the extended cut!), to the film's detriment. Ironically, what hit the cutting floor were various small scenes dedicated to world-building, but sequences of nothing in particular made it to the final production.
• Periphery Demographic: Hobbyist sailors, since the film has a racing trimaran in it and passable sailing scenes, both being a very rare sight in movies. And the villains are those annoying motorboat and jet-ski users.
• Presumed Flop: The film is remembered as a massive flop that critics hated and ruined Kevin Costner's career (or at the very least, severely stalled it). However, its score on Rotten Tomatoes is 42% (which is not great, but is certainly not abject hatred), and it made $264M on a $175M budget, and eventually earned a profit on home video. While that is not a stellar box office take for a movie of its budget, its reputation as a failure comes more from the constant stories of its Troubled Production than anything else.
• The Problem with Licensed Games:
  • The SNES and Virtual Boy games based on the film were seen as pretty bad, especially the latter (it's noteworthy for being the only movie-based game/American game on the short-lived system) for being an arcadey Endless Game on a system that causes harm to the user for prolonged play.
  • The pinball machine made by Sega was critically ravaged as well. This is notable in that licensed adaptations of pinball machines are rarely that bad.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Hey, that's a pre-fame Jack Black as the Smoker plane pilot!
  • And a young Kim Coates as the crazy Drifter!
  • Tina Majorino has the map to dry land!
  • For some who watched the Japanese dub, Ikue Otani, who does the voice for Enola, is known for providing the voice for Pikachu years before Pokémon.
• Signature Scene: The atoll battle is a gripping action scene that expertly showcases the skills of both sides and puts the rest of the movie to shame.
• So Okay, It's Average: Despite being a box office flop in the U.S., the film has gotten mixed or average reviews from many film critics, who gave it an average score of 56 out of 100 according to Metacritic. It's also gained a cult following among audiences, especially fans of Ocean Punk. The general consensus is that the film suffers from poor pacing and some awkward dialogue, but it's also a decent action-adventure movie with an interesting take on the apocalypse.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Upon release, a lot of reviews that weren't obsessed about cost overruns were instead in tone of "Post-apo movie that isn't set on a desert? How dare they!", further reinforcing Critical Backlash effect.
• Vindicated by History: In The '90s and the Turn of the Millennium, the film was seen as a poster child for overhyped and overbudget movies. However, it's since developed a Cult Classic status and people have looked back and found the movie to be So Okay, It's Average or even seen as somewhat influential in its Ocean Punk setting - even The Nostalgia Critic actually pointed out there's a lot of redeeming qualities about the movie.

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