The world’s longest-running play, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, has been staged over 29,000 occasions so far. Every week, 9 extra performances get added to that complete. The longest-running present at the moment on Broadway, Chicago, has been carried out greater than 10,800 occasions since 1996.
Although it’s not often talked about in these phrases, a dwell present that debuted one yr sooner than Chicago continues to be carried out in Los Angeles a number of occasions a day, one year a yr. I can’t discover a concrete variety of performances, however a tough estimate of two showings a day — a conservative guess — for 29 years works out to 21,170 performances. (Three showings a day for 29 years could be 31,755 performances.)
Even on the low finish of that vary, it needs to be one of many most-performed dwell exhibits of the twentieth and twenty first centuries. And it’s primarily based on probably the most notorious flops in Hollywood historical past.
It’s Waterworld: A Stay Sea Spectacular.
READ MORE: The First Quick & Livid Curler Coaster Is Coming to Common Studios
In some way, even though the Waterworld film was a infamous box-office flop (and the most costly Hollywood manufacturing ever as much as that time), the Waterworld stunt present continues to be thriving. It debuted at on October 21, 1995 at Common Studios Hollywood, the place it is now the oldest attraction in addition to the studio backlot tour, and the one attraction within the park primarily based on a twentieth century property that by no means received new movies or TV episodes within the twenty first century.
To place the attraction’s age in context: The Waterworld stunt present has been taking part in for therefore lengthy that its narrator has been lifeless for 10 years. (That will be trailer voice man Hal Douglas, who served the identical function within the Waterworld film, and handed away in 2014.)
In addition to the narrator talking from past the grave, Waterworld: A Stay Sea Spectacular exhibits remarkably few indicators of its age. On a current journey to Common Studios Hollywood, I witnessed a packed amphitheater cheer, boo, and spontaneously applaud the 20-minute stunt showcase’s quite a few highlights. Waterworld nonetheless performs like gangbusters — even in, or maybe particularly due to, our fashionable period of digital results and computer systems.
“The visitor response has at all times been sturdy, however there’s undoubtedly a recent, new wave of appreciation for dwell motion stunts,” says Waterworld: A Stay Sea Spectacular solid member Greg Dolph. “The audiences of right this moment appear extra impressed than ever earlier than, particularly with the variety of screens in on a regular basis life.” (Dolph would know; he’s been showing in the Waterworld stunt present for nearly 30 years.)
The truth is, Waterworld: A Stay Sea Spectacular stays so widespread that copies of it frequently get added to new Common Studios theme parks every time they open across the globe: Common Japan in 2001, Common Singapore in 2010, and Common Beijing in 2021. In different phrases: there are at the moment 4 stunt exhibits all around the world, primarily based on the film the place Kevin Costner performed a fish man who drank his personal urine.
That scene is not replicated within the stunt present. However the Waterworld stunt present does dutifully recreate the feel and appear of Kevin Reynolds’ post-apocalyptic blockbuster, which adopted the adventures of a anonymous Mariner (Costner) in a darkish future ruined by international warming. A handful of survivors just like the Mariner dwell on floating islands of recycled junk often called atolls, subsisting on no matter could be salvaged from the ocean.
Nobody alive has seen precise land in centuries; most individuals suppose such an idea is a fable, not less than till the arrival of a younger lady (Tina Majorino) with an elaborate tattoo on her again {that a} group of villainous “People who smoke” — led by the extra-evil Deacon (Dennis Hopper) — imagine can result in “Dryland.” The Mariner, who possesses gills that allow him to breathe underwater, reluctantly agrees to guard the lady and her guardian Helen (Jeanne Tripplehorn) and assist them discover Dryland earlier than the Deacon. The movie ends (spoiler alert) with the loss of life of the Deacon and the heroes’ profitable arrival at Dryland, earlier than the Mariner ventures again out to the open sea alone. (A dude with gills isn’t tremendous helpful on a mountain.)
The Waterworld stunt present is a sequel, of types, though it solely vaguely strains up with the occasions of the film. Within the dwell model, Helen returns to her atoll to convey extra survivors to Dryland. However then an inexplicably not-dead Deacon and his People who smoke present as much as threaten her as soon as once more, earlier than the Mariner zooms in to kill the unhealthy guys and save the day.
Thirty years after The New York Instances referred to as Waterworld “an emblem of Hollywood-style extra and ineptness,” the truth that its stunt present requires little or no information concerning the intricacies of its supply materials could qualify as a function, reasonably than a bug. Once I revisited Waterworld for its twenty fifth anniversary just a few years in the past, I discovered it to be a combined bag: An imaginatively designed future that was barely explored in favor of continuous chases and stunts.
The movie, I wrote, spends “little or no time investigating how a world constructed totally on the watery ruins of our society may function,” presumably as a result of there’s no believable approach such a society might function. (The movie does clarify the place the oil for all of Smoker’s jet skis and motorboats comes from, however not how all these automobiles proceed to perform so nicely lots of of years after the collapse of civilization.) What you finally received from the movie, I believed, was “like a two-hour boat race in dystopia cosplay.”
Mockingly, Waterworld’s weaknesses as a movie, turned its strengths as a stunt present. At its finest, the film was like a stunt present with kooky manufacturing design. The precise stunt present is relentless; 20 continuous minutes crammed with each conceivable kind of gag: Fights, falls, shootouts, boat chases, jet ski jumps, ziplines, rope descents, explosions, a full physique burn, and even a seaplane crash, which stays a legitimately jaw-dropping second 30 years after it debuted.
A lot is continually taking place at Waterworld’s ampitheater — typically there are a number of fights and chases occurring in several components of the area concurrently — that the viewer doesn’t have time to ponder such trivial issues as how a man who received blown up in an oil tanker is again to menace the heroes a second time. If the present was any longer or any slower, company may cease to contemplate the place these Waterworldians maintain discovering dry, usable bullets and flares within the yr 2500. As an alternative, Waterworld attendees get to sit down again and admire the muscular efforts of the present’s solid, which by the many years has included lots of of members of Hollywood’s stunt neighborhood.
Notable Waterworld stunt present alumni embody Larry Rippenkroeger, who’s carried out stunts in dozens of Hollywood productions comparable to Titanic, The Avengers, The Suicide Squad and the Waterworld film; and Helena Barrett, who’s doubled Kirsten Stewart, Amy Adams and Drew Barrymore. One former Mariner, Mark Vanselow, has not solely labored as Liam Neeson’s stunt double, he’s set to direct Neeson’s subsequent thriller, Mongoose.
The model of Waterworld taking part in in Hollywood right this moment is “comparatively unchanged” from the one which premiered in 1995, says solid member Greg Dolph, though there have been “periodic updates” through the years, together with a number of new dives and struggle sequences.
If it had been modified, you’d by no means comprehend it. As a result of it’s set in a distant future, in a world constructed out of previous junk, Waterworld: A Stay Sea Spectacular exists outdoors of time. Footage taken in 2001 — just like the one beneath of essentially the most romantic couple in historical past making out after they took half in a mass wedding ceremony held at Waterworld on Valentine’s Day 2001 — present the very same amphitheater, with the rusted tankers and oh-so-precarious catwalks ready for a courageous stuntman to spill over certainly one of their railings.
Many of the guests to Waterworld’s soggy environs today weren’t even born but when that couple was making out within the shadow of the Deacon’s sea aircraft, a lot much less when Kevin Costner first slurped some post-apocalyptic pee. But, the Waterworld stunt present has endured innumerable solid modifications, together with the always shifting tides within the film and theme park companies. Dolph attributes the present’s longevity to 2 issues.
“First, the storyline is straightforward and straightforward for anybody to know even when there are language limitations,” he explains. “This makes the present universally interesting. Second, the present delivers nonstop motion. It’s crammed with breathtaking dwell stunts carried out inside toes of the viewers. One of these present is just not like something most audiences have ever seen earlier than. It’s distinctive, particular, dwell, and unforgettable.”
He’s proper about that final half. You will discover recordings of Waterworld on YouTube, however they don’t do its scale justice. The present is extra widescreen than the Waterworld movie, with an entire array of devices, props, and set items filling your total sight view. Once you’re there dwell, the Waterworld stunt present is actually is a spectacle of the kind all Hollywood blockbusters aspire to however few really obtain — particularly today, when so many clearly synthetic digital results are deployed within the service of the presentation.
Not Waterworld. A couple of occasions each single day, Greg Dolph and his colleagues actually set one another on fireplace, dodge seaplanes, and dangle from ledges dozens of toes above Common Studios. By the present’s bombastic finale, you’re feeling such as you’ve visited a residing museum of Hollywood stunt craft, and witnessed a first-hand demonstration of the continued energy of sensible results. Perhaps Waterworld’s supreme type was a stunt present all alongside. On the charge its going, it’s going to proceed to play far into the longer term — not less than till the seas cowl Dryland.
