Waterworld Wasn’t a Disaster—You Just Didn’t Get It

Waterworld Wasn’t the Flop You Think It Was

If you still think Waterworld was just another case of movie star vanity—a bloated, misguided mess and one of the “biggest flops” in Hollywood history—get ready for some hard truths to leap out of the water like a Kevin Costner-shaped dolphin.

Whenever Waterworld comes up, most people immediately think of the word “flop.” Few films in Hollywood carry the stink of failure quite like the one where they gave Wyatt Earp gills. According to popular lore, it was a legendary disaster: a wildly over-budget vanity project helmed by its egotistical star, trying and failing to build a realistic dystopia at sea. It was dubbed “Kevin’s Gate” and “Fishtar,” winking references to other cinematic implosions. Even today, it’s cited as a cautionary tale—a warning about letting star power run unchecked. But the legend doesn’t quite match the facts.

By the early 1990s, Kevin Costner was at the height of his fame. He had won Oscars for Dances With Wolves, proven his box office pull in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and earned critical acclaim in JFK. He could do just about anything he wanted in Hollywood—and what he chose was Waterworld, a post-apocalyptic action film set entirely at sea. Costner reteamed with his Robin Hood director Kevin Reynolds, co-wrote the script, and signed on as both producer and star.

From there, things got choppy. Production was plagued by chaos: delays, weather disruptions, health hazards, and spiraling costs. Costner was on set for 157 days and nearly drowned after getting caught on a sinking boat’s mast. The massive floating sets were often unstable—one even sank. The currents would shift the camera crew off course. Joss Whedon was flown in for emergency script rewrites, which he later described as just implementing whatever Costner demanded. Eventually, Reynolds quit the project altogether.

Waterworld began with a budget of $100 million, but ballooned to $175 million—making it the most expensive film ever made at the time. Unsurprisingly, the press had a field day. And yet, when the movie finally hit theaters, reviews weren’t as savage as you’d expect. Roger Ebert gave it a thumbs-up. Entertainment Weekly was surprisingly positive. Still, the behind-the-scenes debacle overshadowed any critical goodwill.

Here’s the kicker: Waterworld wasn’t actually a box office bomb. It grossed $264.2 million globally and finished as the ninth-highest-grossing film of 1995. Sure, it didn’t turn a profit theatrically, but its home video and LaserDisc sales eventually pushed it into the black. Universal made its money back—and then some.

More surprisingly, Waterworld has had real staying power. Universal Studios has kept its Waterworld stunt show running for decades. There are currently four live shows operating around the globe, drawing big crowds every day. That’s not the fate of a movie “nobody liked.”

So what about the film itself? Is it any good?

Actually, yes—though not without its flaws. Waterworld is a watchable, if flawed, action film filled with elaborate practical effects and stunts that feel refreshingly tactile in today’s CGI-saturated landscape. Its post-apocalyptic ocean world is genuinely imaginative, and the craftsmanship of building a floating civilization from scratch is impressive even now.

You wouldn’t see a movie like this in 2025—not with this much physical presence, not with actors actually battling waves instead of blue screens. Even Furiosa, George Miller’s latest Wasteland epic, is heavier on CGI than Costner’s passion project. There’s something old-school and earnest about Waterworld, with its sincere environmental message and its classic good-vs-evil narrative, capped by a gloriously unhinged performance from Dennis Hopper as the villainous Deacon.

That said, the film does struggle tonally. It aims for epic and lands somewhere between operatic and absurd. Costner’s stoic sea-drifter is part-man, part-fish, leaping through the air like a dolphin one moment, brooding silently the next. Unlike Mad Max, which leans into its pulpiness and strips its story down to mythic basics, Waterworld piles on exposition and plot points nobody asked for. Its steampunk-adjacent bad guys on jetskis never quite manage to be scary, and the script wavers between serious and silly without fully committing to either.

But despite all that, Waterworld is far from the cinematic disaster it’s so often painted to be. It’s not the “Worst Movie Ever Made,” nor the catastrophic failure that permanently scarred the industry. In fact, there’s a lot to admire about it—especially if you miss the era when blockbusters weren’t part of sprawling franchises and weren’t rendered almost entirely with visual effects.

Kevin Costner has had his fair share of missteps, but Waterworld wasn’t one of them. Maybe it’s time history caught up with the film—and gave the Mariner his due.