Cinema Atlas Connection

Kevin Reynolds and Kevin Costner conceived Waterworld as Mad Max on water. George Miller's The Road Warrior—the post-apocalyptic scavenger society, the makeshift vehicles, the tribal hierarchy of survival, the lone wanderer who won't commit—became the exact architectural template. Reynolds cited this in production notes. The difference: Miller's desert becomes Reynolds's ocean, but the savage economics, the barbarism with its own honor code, the reluctant hero trapped in a world he didn't choose—these are Miller wholesale.