By Drew Dietsch
| Published
Remember in the ‘90s when the Horizon: An American Saga guy threw himself into an epic post-apocalyptic blockbuster that became an infamous failure at the box office?
And then he did the exact same thing again?
Waterworld might get all the attention, but it’s Kevin Costner’s other stab at dystopian science-fiction that we’re gonna look at.
This is why The Postman failed.
Kevin Costner Loves Dystopias
Just two years after the release of Waterworld, Kevin Costner would star in, produce, and direct an adaptation of The Postman, a celebrated novel by David Brin about a post-apocalyptic America. A funny facet of this is Brin’s stated reasons for making the novel were a response to the post-Mad Max boom of science-fiction that made the madness of a wasteland future seem fun and exciting.
And Kevin Costner had just finished up a Mad Max rip… we’ll call it an homage with Waterworld. It seems like The Postman was a deliberate attempt by Costner to shift into a slower gear with a similar genre story. Both movies even start with scenes about the purity of drinking water!
The basic idea from both the novel and the movie is that a nomadic man traversing a wiped-out America comes across a deceased postal worker and their mail. He takes the uniform and mail from the corpse and begins letting people believe he is a real postman, leading to hope in a Restored United States of America.
As far as comparisons to the novel, it seems like The Postman is more or less just taking the concept and some specific elements of David Brin’s story and turning everything into something much, much more Hollywood.
First Impressions On First Viewing
So this was my first time ever seeing The Postman but I had always wanted to see it because I liked Waterworld as a kid. The things keeping me from taking the plunge were The Postman’s near-three-hour runtime and the overall negative critical response it got.
Now I always want to give credit where I feel it’s due, so here are some highlights from The Postman after a first viewing.
Kevin Costner is a much funnier actor than most people would realize from his most popular roles, and The Postman allows him a character that’s allowed to be goofy. It helps endear the character to the audience, like when he gets to have a hot bath and shave and can’t help but sing a stupid little song.
Unfortunately, that trait does wear thin and actually contributes to some of the movie’s big problems we’ll eventually get into.
But I’m staying positive for now! Costner as a director does have a sense of style and grandeur, probably best illustrated in the movie’s opening sequence. It doesn’t hold up throughout the movie as we’ll get into but it’s something.
F@#% Fascists
Probably the thing I found most successful in The Postman had to do with the film’s villainous fascists led by Will Patton. Patton’s character is purposefully stagey but I appreciated the movie illustrating the actual evils and philosophies of fascist belief.
It reminds me of an issue with The First Order in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Those villains wear all the trappings of fascism without ever defining any solid moral beliefs or displaying any actual adherence to concrete fascist ideology. It’s a “have your cake and eat it too” approach that gives the veneer of criticizing fascism while actually saying nothing about it, giving Disney a safety net from any political blowback.
But in The Postman, the bad guys don’t just wear armbands with a minimalist logo and that’s all the work the movie does to show why they are evil. The members of this movement openly speak about pure blood and eugenics when taking prisoners as new potential soldiers. They confidently use racial slurs against a Black character. Their entire system of laws is displayed early on to enlighten you to their fascist ideology. The Postman doesn’t just want to tell you, “These guys are fascists and that means they’re bad.” It illustrates why fascists are bad through their behavior and beliefs.
It sounds like unneeded praise, but considering I can’t even say certain words on here without our overlords getting pissy, it’s refreshing to be reminded of an era where Hollywood and pop culture wasn’t afraid to call out evil as bluntly and directly as this. If I can recommend one thing about The Postman, it’s that I applaud its morality when it comes to recognizing and making an example out of the evils of fascism.
And that’s pretty much the end of any praise I can give The Postman because this movie suuuuuuuuuuuucks.
Return To Sender
Costner’s vision for The Postman falls face first into overwrought ridiculousness way too quickly for an almost three-hour movie. The plot and pacing get laborious very quickly, and they only sink further into the sludge after an awful romantic subplot takes hold with a woman named Abby played by Olivia Williams. I don’t blame Williams at all but these elements of the movie are an outright failure.
Plus, this movie is not fun to watch if you grasp anything about editing moving images together. Geography, time, and movement get muddled up in multiple sequences.
Here’s just one very small example: The Postman looks up at a character riding on horseback, establishing a point-of-view reference for height. Then, we cut to a close-up of Abby who has apparently entered the scene off-camera. We know she’s at a higher level since The Postman also seems to look up to acknowledge her, but cutting to this close-up doesn’t properly establish her geography in the scene.
Then, the next cut shows Abby on a horse. Here’s the problem: the previous shot had Abby in close-up, her figure large in the right of the frame with lots of trees behind her. The very next image shows her small and in the left of the frame with open sky behind her. It’s an incongruous juxtaposition of images that you probably won’t actively notice in the moment, but this kind of poor editing and composition does affect your brain’s processing of visual information. You feel it, right?
By the time the actual climax to The Postman kicks off, you’re over two hours in and there’s still 45 minutes left. Any possible emotional investment has burned up, which is a bummer since this is a game cast. Shoutouts to Daniel von Bargen and Tom Petty showing up since they helped wake me up during this movie.
And Costner himself deserves to shoulder a lot of the blame here. The Postman feels like a director’s cut not just in length but in indulgence. Costner’s goofier side clashes so hard with the sense of self-importance the movie gives off. Again, it leads to a lot of juxtapositions that are more dissonant than harmonious. The infamous heroic rideout of the postal legion is probably the best example of this movie’s bombast working against its worthwhile and heartfelt messaging. This is so stupid that it just plays like a silly commercial for the postal service.
There’s a lot about The Postman to pick apart because there’s too much movie going on. I didn’t even have time to make fun of Giovanni Ribisi’s character or highlight this guy who I can’t believe hasn’t become a memeface.
I have to imagine Kevin Costner made that face when he saw the audience response to The Postman in 1997. It opened at the #6 spot behind one of the worst sequels ever, An American Werewolf in Paris. The Postman utterly tanked with a profit of $17.6 million against a reported $80 million budget.
Why The Postman Failed
So, why exactly did The Postman fail other than I agree with most critics that it’s not a good movie? There’s no doubt that Costner making another post-apocalyptic movie so quickly after the notorious debacle of Waterworld made audiences extra wary. And in comparison, Waterworld at least sold itself as a gigantic action extravaganza. The Postman was not nearly as successful with its marketing and audiences just didn’t feel like it was worth three hours of their time.
As negative as I’ve been in this video, The Postman does prove that movies can be almost wholly unsuccessful at their overall goals while still touching on moments, ideas, performances, and emotions that work. And even though I roundly disliked the movie, it did get me interested in reading the novel. And the premise alone seems ripe for a remake movie or TV series. The Postman has already inspired other great modern science-fiction stories and worlds like Death Stranding and The Last of Us.
I’ll never watch The Postman again even if I support a lot of what it’s trying to say from its heart. Sorry, Kev, but I’d rather watch Waterworld.
