YMMV / The Postman

Both works

• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Brin reported that activists for democracy in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan enthusiastically welcomed both his original story and Costner's retelling as democratic symbols.

Book

• It Was His Sled: The presence of Holnists and their entire army roaming Oregon is something that doesn't show up until two thirds of the book. But thanks to people being far more familiar with the film adaptation, they expect said Evil Army to show up from page one. What thankfully still remains outside common knowledge is the augment deal, George Powhatan and everything related with Cyclops and its Servants, as they weren't present in the film adaptation.
• Misaimed Fandom: There are people who genuinely buy into the Holnist’s ideals, along with their Might Makes Right, Ludd Was Right and Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids! - or at the very least their Crazy Survivalist Right-Wing Militia Fanatic approach, missing entirely the "crazy" and "fanatic" part of it. Despite the book presenting them in the worst possible light, with zero redeeming qualities and punching holes in their ideology, presenting it as nothing short from insane.

Film

• Audience-Alienating Premise: It's hard to explain the movie's premise in a way that makes sense within a standard 30-second television ad; it's somewhat unintuitive to think of postmen as charismatic action heroes, as opposed to being the butts of jokes.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • When the Holnists throw stones at a man for switching out The Sound of Music (bizarrely, this is meant to have a point—the Holnists are almost all conscripts and thus are not the psychopaths that you might initially think).
  • It also can be viewed as a Mythology Gag (the Augments in the novel) or a Take That!. The film shown: Universal Soldier.
• Critical Backlash: Upon release, it was shot dead in the water. Nowadays, it's felt that despite the nearly-three-hour length and slow pacing, it's not as bad as the initial reaction made it out to be. The writer of the original novel liked it a lot, in contrast to most audiences.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Sheriff Briscoe only has about fifteen or twenty minutes of screen time in a three-hour movie. However, he's pretty well-liked for his Character Development, bravery, and how he's the first person to see through the Postman's disguise but can't bring himself to discredit a Hope Bringer.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Holnist uniforms. Modern military uniforms are designed to allow better camouflage. Holnists use bright and defined colors, so they are visible from far away and can scare people with their presence and numbers.
  • A movie based on mail carriers After the End? You mean it's a Post Apocalyptic movie?
• He Panned It, Now He Sucks!: Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times in his review called the film "Mad Max directed by Frank Capra". In return David Brin, the author of the original book, called him out for being a cynical old man who managed somehow to miss the entire point of the story and then complain about it in his review.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In-universe, the fact that Utah's Great Salt Lake dried out and became a salt flat is used for dramatic effect to show just how bad the situation has gotten. In Real Life, by the 2020s, without even needing a global nuclear war to cause it, the lake's water level had dropped dramatically due to drought and too many diversions of the streams that feed the lake, and some estimates made in 2023 have it drying up in 4-7 years if no steps are taken to preserve it, and if rainfall and melting snowpack in the nearby mountains are still below normal levels (heavy mountain snowfall in the winters of 2022-23 and 2023-24 helped water levels inch back up a bit).
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The whole movie nowadays plays like something of a mix between Dances with Wolves and Fallout.
    • A courier gets caught up in a conflict between a bandit army and a new government rising up from the remains of post-apocalyptic California after World War III. The Postman, or Fallout: New Vegas? Or, for a new government rising up from the remains of post-apocalyptic America, Death Stranding?
  • The film is also basically Waterworld, except the situation regarding water is the polar opposite between the two. In Waterworld, the world got flooded, while in The Postman, it's stated that all bodies of water dried up, up to Utah's Great Salt Lake becoming the "Great Salt Flats."
• Memetic Mutation: "William Shakespeare, the famous American nationalist"^ExplanationThe final Rousing Speech, which is implied to be an open letter the protagonist send to the communities of Oregon, is taken directly from Henry V and besides that, there is a great deal of Shakespeare reused for in-universe political context. The original line comes from an Usenet group calling the movie out for obnoxious, heavy-handed and in the same time sappy Patriotic Fervor, managing to misuse even something as classic as Shakespeare's plays
• Mis-blamed: For all its faults and clearly being Costner's Vanity Project (including the oft-ridiculed final scene with the statue), it wasn't his fault the script itself was such a mess and a Broad Strokes adaptation. The original script for the film was written in 1986, a year after the book was published. And it was an In Name Only adaptation. Then the script went through so many rewrites, writers and script doctors trying to fix it, it gained notoriety in Hollywood as "unfilmable". So, when Kevin Costner and Brian Helgeland (an esteemed scriptwriter, with films such as L.A. Confidential, Conspiracy Theory, and Payback already behind his belt and many more made after The Postman) decided to make it work, they salvaged a far worse script and brought it closer to the book, rather than further away. And myriad legal issues kept them from adapting the novel from scratch.
• Narm: Along with Glurge, in quite a few places throughout the movie, but particularly:
  • The statue at the end.
  • When Ford Lincoln Mercury meets the soldier from the Republic of California.
  • The Shakespeare contest with General Bethlehem, which ... honestly, is so Narmalicious that even Kevin Costner seems weirded out he's doing it.
  • Roger Ebert said the crowning moment of sap was when the Postman rides out to pick a letter from a boy's hands, in choppy slow-motion. Gene Siskel also referred to the statue at the end as "Dances with Myself". That letter-snapping scene is somewhat a Memetic Mutation for fans of anything that is post-apocalyptic.
    • To make that scene somehow even worse (and more self-indulgent), the little kid is being played by no-one else, but Joe Costner, son of Kevin Costner, as his entire contribution to the film.
  • The overemphasized closeup reveal of Tom Petty complete with dramatic music. Especially when your teenage daughter says "Who's that guy supposed to be?"
  • During the finale, if you listen to the background sounds in the scene where the Postman parleys with general Bethlehem, you can not only hear a gaggle of geese making a lot of noise, but also nearby highway traffic. Once you notice it, it breaks one of the better scenes in the whole movie into unintentional comedy.
  • Kevin Costner ripping the sleeve of his uniform in the climax, while dramatic, upbeat music starts to play. What was intended as a dramatic reveal turns into pure comedy gold, because the costume he's wearing (a heavy-duty jacket and a turtleneck, woolen sweater) was blatantly unstitched and then put back together to look whole, making it all like something straight from Chippendales, preparing to strip bare.
  • The film uses slow-motion in a very liberal way, often just for a second or two. This bears usually counter-productive results and deflates any sort of drama or tension in given scene, instead leaving everyone with exaggerated face expressions and gestures, then awkwardly returning to normal frame-rate.
  • Some narmy elements are lampshaded in-story. The bad acting scene is meant to be humorous and after riding back to snatch the letter from the boy the Postman mutters "What the hell am I doing...?"
• Narm Charm:
  • During his first visit to Pine View, Postman is trying to discourage Ford from the whole postal thing (since it's a lie he made up just to get food and shelter here and now), but ultimately swears him in as a new postal carrier. It's the sincerity of the performances that makes the otherwise saccharine scene work.
  Postman: The organization's kind of shaky right now, you know. It might not last.
  Ford: What does?
  • The "I invoke Law Seven! Of the Laws of Eight!" bit. The whole parley sequence is an over-dramatic mess and the resulting duel is just incredibly corny and simply poorly performed... but for all the pathos, Postman finally stands up to something, facing Bethlehem and turning his own rules against him, while parading his branded arm in front of his own troops, all to the swelling military orchestra piece by James Newton Howard? Hell yeah!
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • The Mayor of Benning makes his one scene an interesting one. Partly because of his idealistic excitement about the Postman's return, partly because of his pragmatic and well-reasoned concerns about picking a fight with the Holnists (given the town's limited arsenal), and partly because he's played by George Wyner (who is better known for his comedic roles).
  • The Holnist projectionist who gets yelled at by a bunch of Mooks for not letting them watch The Sound of Music earns a lot of recognition for his one, short scene.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: Cutting out the relationship between the Postman and Abby could save about an hour from the whole film, changing almost nothing for the plot and eliminating lots of weird dialogue. Not to mention it was one of the main targets for complaints, both from critics and viewers.
• Special Effect Failure: Some of the green screen effects are surprisingly poor.
• Values Dissonance: David Brin thinks the movie's failure and subsequent toxic reputation owed much to this, with loud supporters of the militia movement, opponents of the American government, and base cynics being ready to kick it with abandon in 1997.
• Values Resonance: In 2020, amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic, economic downturn, and a right-wing government accused of active racism in Washington, D.C., The Late Show with Stephen Colbert recut a trailer for it, arguing that people could stand to learn from it. (Narration includes "Looks like somebody owes Kevin Costner an apology.")
• Vanity Project: For Kevin Costner.

---