Whatever this mysterious pee-saver is up to, it’s obvious he’s got a keen mind for Rube Goldberg-type contraptions, and really strong lung power.

If you can’t adapt to a start like that, then you’re likely going to keep missing out on all the streaming fun. The film starts out with the bold narrative claim that the polar ice caps have melted, leaving the world covered in water, and dramatically noting that “those who survived have adapted to a new world.” And then, boom, it cuts to a wide shot of a gyroscopically redolent seafaring rig, and then closes in on Costner peeing in a container, and then dumping said pee into a steampunk contraption that turns it into drinking water. It imagines a scenario that is incredibly intriguing, particularly to us 2022-dwelling folks watching the polar ice caps with an eye ever more watchful than the ball bearing Deacon tries to jerryrig into his own cranium. But the film works on an even grander scale, too, as far as actual importance goes. That’s just part of the ride if you dive into the film with an open mind and no expectation of actual sense-making, you might just have a good time. But that’s half the fun, particularly when mad-as-a-hatter Dennis Hopper finally sails onto the scene as the patch-wearing pirate captain of the future, Deacon, and completely throws the movie in a zany new direction. Egos and budgets hurt the film’s legacy as much as its press, and there are some definite tonal issues that you just have to go with while watching. But I’m certainly not making the case for it being a perfect movie. Costner’s supposed folly puts a glistening shine on Mad Max’s end-of-times inanity, while delivering something truly unique, which is evermore watchable now than you may remember.

Upon my recent rewatch, I found Waterworld was fun as a water park on a hot sunny day (remember those?), and more prescient than ever. With Waterworld currently streaming on Peacock, we figured it might be a good time to go back and watch, without any lingering expectations. While the film’s sinking bottomline is the stuff of Hollywood lore, in retrospect, the super-soaked movie now delivers everything one should hope for in a wild, dystopian epic - from premise to execution to payoff. Alas, it didn’t quite make the splash that Universal might have hoped.

On July 28, 1995, Kevin Costner’s post-apocalyptic deep-dive Waterworld plunged into theaters near and far.

Waterworld the movie download