DVD Talk review of 'Waterworld - 2-Disc Extended Edition'
 

I read Brian Orndorf's DVD review of Waterworld - 2-Disc Extended Edition at http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=35217 and...

I found this remark curious: "Profanity has been dubbed over and a few special effect shots remain in their unfinished state, popping the bubble of fantasy to an unfortunate degree."

I don't get these studios. They're aware that a market is there, but refuse to meet it with any respect for it. Instead, they throw these things together. I don't get it. They're establishing themselves as having no integrity when it comes to the product, making it clear that their primary objective is to sell things to us, the rubes.

At first, your review had me intrigued. I was thinking, yeah, I might have to get this. In the theatrical run, I found the movie odd, disjointed, with peculiar pacing, all which could have been fixed with an extended cut. Take, for instance, the character of Mariner himself, bearing the mutation of gills. This was referred to only once or twice, which had all sorts of very serious implications. But as the story went on, it bore no bearing on the rest of the plot. It was just some odd thing about him, something that set him apart. I can't tell from your review if a longer cut fixed this, if in fact it was more pertinent to the rest of the story, but the idea that they kept a TV edit for the DVD suggests to me that the longer cut is just an excuse to repackage it, to sell it to us again. It's not something a purist would enjoy, and certainly not something someone having to pay for it would feel good about.

I'm sorry to hear this, because I think Cosner has gotten the shaft a couple of times from critics. Several of the movies he took interest in have become, in my opinion, modern masterpieces. I remember the sardonic reviews he received for The Postman. I had read that book, and liked it, and was surprised that someone had thought to make it a movie. But I looked forward to it. That is, until the critics started the big pile-on. They convinced me to avoid it. When I finally saw it on video, I was angered by the fact that it was a very good movie, big and sprawling, and the best way to see it would have been in the theater, with its epochal cinemascopic vision.

Anyway, it's disappointing to read that Waterworld didn't get a better treatment.