History Film / Waterworld

* HumanResources: How the residents of the Atoll dispose of their dead... they need the organic material for sustained growth.

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Somehow, the Mariner can inhale water with his gills and exhale breathable air indefinitely to allow Helen to breathe underwater. Um... gills do not work that way.

** Even if we accept the Mariner's gills, has it really been long enough for a giant, three-jawed vertebrate mutant like the one he catches to eat to have evolved?

* ArtisticLicensePhysics

Starring Kevin Costner and directed by Kevin Reynolds, co-released with a tie-in Novel and Game. It used a then record-breaking budget of $175 million, but was a massive flop in the U.S., only grossing $88 million at the box office. However, it did quite well at the foreign box office, where it managed to make $176 million, saving it from becoming a financial failure, or not; [[http://io9.com/5747305/how-much-money-does-a-movie-need-to-make-to-be-profitable it's complicated]].

Set InAWorld [[AfterTheEnd where the polar ice-caps have melted]] (due to a havoc caused by a geomagnetic reversal) the world is covered by water. What's left of humanity is surviving on ramshackle crafts tied together to make Atolls (villages). The Mariner (Costner) enters one of these Atolls to trade, but is discovered to be a mutant and sentenced to death. After a group of pirates known as the Smokers attack the Atoll, a woman named Helen and her adopted daughter Enola bribe the Mariner to take them to Dryland, the legendary last remaining island. Enola conveniently has a map on her back.

The Smokers chase the Mariner and kidnap the girl. The Mariner sneaks onto their base of operations ( the ''Exxon Valdez'', now converted into a city) and saves the girl. The heroes are finally able to read the map on Enola's back, which leads them to Dryland.

'''Contains Examples of the Following tropes:'''

* AfterTheEnd
* AllHailTheGreatGodMickey: Deacon every so often mentions "Old Saint Joe" with the same reverence as an actual saint. [[spoiler:Near the end of the movie it's revealed that the Smokers' base is the remains of the Exxon Valdez and "Old Saint Joe" is a portrait of the ship's disgraced captain, Joseph Hazelwood.]]

* AlwaysChaoticEvil: The smokers seem to fit this to a t.
* AntiHero: In typical 90's fashion.
* ApocalypseHow: Class 2

** If you melted all the ice on the planet, you would cause a 60m (about 180 feet) rise in sea level, which is not nearly enough to create the ocean planet depicted.

** And if the underwater city he visits is indeed Denver there should be any number of islands within spitting distance. Not to mention Everest towering six miles above the sea. Not to mention that they fly TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD in that balloon to get to Everest.

* BarbarianLonghair: Pretty much everybody has barbarian hair except for the villain who is bald.

* CityOnTheWater: Atolls and the Exxon Valdez.
* ChangedMyMindKid: played straight.

* ConflictBall: Helen, listen, first of all, when you've just blackmailed someone into saving your life, expecting trust is a little much. On top of that, in the middle of a firefight when that someone is trying to save your life ''and'' his is a really stupid time to answer any random question he asks you with "Can I trust you?!"

* EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: The Mariner. Subverted in the extended edition, wherein after the heroes reach Dry Land, Helen gives the Mariner a real name just before he heads back out onto the ocean. It's Ulysses, the Latin name of the main character of Homer's ''Odyssey''.

* FantasticRacism: You'd believe that being able to breathe underwater would be quite a disereable trait in a ocean world, but people seemed to think otherwise.

* FutureImperfect: While going through The Mariner's belongings, the Atoll's citizens assume that a yo-yo, flute, and exercise machine are garrote wire, a spy listener, and a torture device.

* LogoJoke: The Universal globe floods to the levels seen in the movie proper.

* MoodWhiplash: So the world has gone crap, few survivors left are squabbling against each other and there's tension between the protagonist and two female he saved... Suddenly, over-the-top Smokers hijinx!
* MoreDakka: the smokers' idea of a siege weapon is a four-barrel anti-aircraft machinegun emplacement trained at your enemy's floating citadel. It gets hijacked by the good guys, and shows itself very effective against ships too.

* OfCorpseHesAlive: The Smokers make the residents of a small trading post, whom they've recently killed, appear to be waving to the Mariner as the latter approaches, intending to draw him into a deadly trap.
* OrphansPlotTrinket

* SpentShellsShower: A Smoker operating a Maxon Mount four-machine gun chassis in the atoll assault scene showers the boat it is mounted on and his crew with hundreds of .50 calibre brass shells.

* TooDumbToLive:

* ArtisticLicenseGeology: If you melted all the ice on the planet, you would cause a 60m (about 180 feet) rise in sea level, which is not nearly enough to create the ocean planet depicted.

** Justified in that, in a world where everything is surrounded by water, she should have been taught to swim.

Set [[InAWorld in a world]] [[AfterTheEnd where the polar ice-caps have melted]] (due to a havoc caused by a geomagnetic reversal) the world is covered by water. What's left of humanity is surviving on ramshackle crafts tied together to make Atolls (villages). The Mariner (Costner) enters one of these Atolls to trade, but is discovered to be a mutant and sentenced to death. After a group of pirates known as the Smokers attack the Atoll, a woman named Helen and her adopted daughter Enola bribe The Mariner to take them to Dryland, the legendary last remaining island. Enola conveniently has a map on her back.

** Which is kind of justified, as he's spent most of his life alone on the ocean, keeping away from people to hide his mutation. Some people deal with that much solitude by going [[CloudCuckooLander bonkers]] (like the sailor they encounter at the halfway point of the film), and others react by emotionally shutting down.

* PlotInducedStupidity: Leaving Enola alone on the ship to get kidnapped by the Smokers.

* RecycledInSpace: It's ''MadMax''... on JET SKIS!

* CrapsackWorld: NathanRabin [[http://www.avclub.com/articles/my-year-of-flops-case-file-42-waterworld,14834/ said it best]]:
-->Consequently, successful post-apocalyptic joints must offer something to offset their innate pessimism and ugliness [...] 'Waterworld'', by comparison, offers only pessimism and ugliness, spiritually as well as aesthetically, most spectacularly in the form of the some of the most hideous sets ever created, extravagant eyesores even the film's production designer must have been happy to be seen torn down.

* EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: The Mariner. Subverted in the extended edition, wherein after the heroes reach Dry Land, Helen gives the Mariner a real name just before he heads back out onto the ocean. [[spoiler: It's "Ulysses", a derivation of the Latin version of the name of the sailor who was the main character of Homer's ''Odyssey''.]]

* MadeOfExplodium: [[spoiler: The Deacon knocks Enola out of the balloon, and the Mariner bungees her to safety, causing a WronskiFeint between two smokers on jet skis, and, of course, a resulting giant-fireball explosion.]] What fuel they used to create the massive, towering fireball is still unknown. There are also traces of OutrunTheFireball [[spoiler:[[DieHardOnAnX but on a bungee]]]].

* OfCorpseHesAlive: The Smokers make the residents of a small trading post, whom they've recently killed, appear to be waving to the Mariner as the latter approaches, intending to draw him into a deadly trap. [[spoiler:Unfortunately for them, the Mariner isn't fooled by the charade.]]

* TooDumbToLive: Enola, who lives in a world covered in water and doesn't know how to swim.
** The people who persecute "mutants" who can breathe under water ([[BellisariosMaxim never mind]] [[LamarckWasRight how this makes any sense]]). You live on a planet of water, guys. Why are you chasing away one of the most useful people you could possibly find? In fairness it is actually a somewhat believable reaction, considering most peoples' instinctive (if unfortunate) tendencies to fear anything that's different to them. No-one said it was a ''smart'' reaction, though.
** Enola is actually justified by reality, too. [[RealityIsUnrealistic You might think that a sailor not knowing how to swim was the stupidest thing you'd ever heard]], but it used to be exceptionally common. Besides, if the water was full of stuff like what the Mariner killed by ''using himself as bait'' (meaning: yes they do see humans as food), would ''you'' want to hop in and learn to swim?
*** Thing is, sailors not knowing how to swim was either because it wasn't part of the requirements, making employment easier, and/or because the crews viewed anybody who tried to swim away from a sinking ship a coward. That's hardly the case in this water covered Earth.
**** Indeed, in the days of press gangs, men who didn't know how to swim were ''more desirable'' as impressed sailors, as they wouldn't be liable to escape!
*** Also, in some areas (such as the North Atlantic) swimming in icey cold waters would probably kill you quicker than drowning, so swimming wasn't really a useful life saving skill for some sailors.
**** On top of that even if you could swim, where would you swim to if you ship went down out at sea? If anything it would just mean you suffered longer then your fellow non-swimmer sailors.

The Smokers chase the Mariner and kidnap the girl. The Mariner sneaks onto their base of operations (an old oil tanker, now converted into a city) and saves the girl. The heroes are finally able to read the map on Enola's back, which leads them to Dryland.

* DidNotDoTheResearch: Everything about the ice melting and covering the entire Earth.
** And about the result being undrinkable.
** The total mass of ice is so enormous that complete melting would take centuries. And even if it all melted, it'd only take out coastal areas; there'd still be plenty of land.
** Oh, and the Exxon Valdez had long since been renamed and sold by the time of production. As of 2012, it's being prepared to be broken up into scrap metal at a shipyard in India.

** The people who persecute "mutants" who can breathe under water ([[BellisariosMaxim never mind]] [[LamarckWasRight how this makes]] [[DidNotDoTheResearch any sense]]). You live on a planet of water, guys. Why are you chasing away one of the most useful people you could possibly find? In fairness it is actually a somewhat believable reaction, considering most peoples' instinctive (if unfortunate) tendencies to fear anything that's different to them. No-one said it was a ''smart'' reaction, though.

** Oh, and the Exxon Valdez had long since been renamed and sold by the time of production. As of 2010 it's not even an oil tanker anymore, but now an ore carrier in the Far East. [-[[TheMoreYouKnow On the other hand]], the very fact that it's [[FridgeHorror still out there]]...-]
*** It's not the ship's fault it ran aground.
*** And leaking a huge quantity of oil is far more damaging to the environment than spilling ore into the sea.

* AdaptationDistillation: Not for the movie itself, but the Universal Studios show based on it is actually quite good and has been running for a fairly long time.

Set [[InAWorld in a world]] [[AfterTheEnd where the polar ice-caps have melted]] (due to a havoc caused by a geomagnetic reversal, not pollution) the world is covered by water. What's left of humanity is surviving on ramshackle crafts tied together to make Atolls (villages). The Mariner (Costner) enters one of these Atolls to trade, but is discovered to be a mutant and sentenced to death. After a group of pirates known as the Smokers attack the Atoll, a woman named Helen and her adopted daughter Enola bribe The Mariner to take them to Dryland, the legendary last remaining island. Enola conveniently has a map on her back.

* ArtisticLicenseGeology: If you melted all the ice on the planet, you would cause a 60m (about 180 feet) rise in sea level, which is not nearly enough to create the ocean planet depicted. Even this would take almost 6,000 years at the current rate of global mean temperature increase.

** The total mass of ice is so enormous that complete melting would take centuries, even at the rate we're doing it. And even if it all melted, it'd only take out coastal areas; there'd still be plenty of land.

* GlobalWarming