"Costner’s urine-drinking escapade primes audiences for abundant distasteful behavior down the road."

Film The AV Club's My Year of Flops reaches Waterworld:

"Waterworld immediately throws down the gauntlet by introducing Costner’s mysterious water-drifter urinating, then gulping down his own sweet elixir. It’s possible that there are more off-putting ways to introduce the hero of a giant would-be blockbuster (at the time Waterworld was the most expensive movie ever made), but until some Costner-level auteur of the future develops the testicular fortitude to introduce a hero raping a nun, defecating on an American flag, or attending to painful hemorrhoids, Waterworld’s record for queasiest introduction of a stoic hero appears secure."

I was quite forgiving of the film on release simply because it wasn't as awful as we'd been led to believe by the press and the poster, despite the presence of Costner as 'pee-drinking man fish'. It was just so wierd that you couldn't help but enjoy, at least for the first hour or so. But then it drops in a stupid cliche of a finale in which the fishman has to battle crazy Dennis Hopper to save the damson and everything falls apart.