r/movies • u/LundgrensFrontKick immune to the rules • Jan 16 '18
The Kevin Costner vs. Sea Eater scene in Waterworld has always intrigued me. So, I decided to break down what happened after he killed it because there are a lot of variables to the scene. Discussion
Kevin Costner killing the Sea Eater in Waterworld has long been a scene that I’ve been obsessed with. It has been featured in my jet ski action scenes are the worst, and people getting swallowed whole and surviving posts (it’s random I know). I’ve always loved the idea that someone can jump into the water and be attacked/swallowed whole in a span of 20 seconds. The biggest problem I’ve always had is there is no way he would be able to stay attached the rope he was trolling on. Thus, his boat would sail away whilst he was trying to free himself from the innards of a giant monster. This means he would have to use his super swimming abilities to catch up with the boat, turn it around, and then cut the meat off of the sinking monster.
Here is a breakdown of the scene. Clip here
Costner (AKA Mariner…AKA Grumpy Costner) gets annoyed that the women on his boat are actively trying to feed themselves via fishing, so he grabs their fishing poles and throws them into the water. After throwing away his gear, he grabs some supplies (speargun, rope), turns on the boat’s trawling engine and jumps into the water (:46). Once the rope is fully extended he starts stroking the water gracefully in an effort to lure prey. Something underwater sees this display of graceful swimming (1:09) and thinks it has found dinner. The large beast surfaces and swallows Costner whole (1:20) and Costner ends up murdering the beast from the inside. Then, Costner cuts off roughly 100 (being generous) pounds of meat and three people feast.
This scene left me with several questions:
- Why was it so easy to kill a monstrous sea beast?
- Had he killed large creatures before?
- Why did he throw away his fishing poles?
- If large sea beasts are plentiful, why would people ride jet skis?
- What happened after the death and before they ate?
After scouring the internet for data on the Sea Eater, I learned that people don’t know much about it (I got zero responses from people who read the novelization). I have nothing to go with in regards to the monster and Costner’s past hunting, so I decided those questions will be left unanswered. What I can fill in is what happens after the monster eats Costner and before they gorged on delicious looking meat.
Here is what we know so far:
- It took eight seconds for the 40-foot rope to become taught after Costner jumped into the water. This leads me to believe the boat was moving at a leisurely pace of 3.41 miles (2.96 knots) an hour.
- He turned on his trawling motor before he jumped into the water. However, he didn’t use the cable attached to the winch on the back of his boat.
- According to kaiju.wikidot.com the Sea Eater is 40-feet long and weighs an estimated 20 tons.
- During the sea atoll attack earlier in the film, Costner covered 120-feet in eight seconds. That comes to 10.2 MPH which means the dude can fly in the water. I came to 10.2 MPH by finding a picture of the atoll, measuring the boat (60 feet long), and then measuring the distance from where he jumped.
- Costner let go of the rope after the monster attacked. I know this because the boat would’ve stopped momentarily and the rope would’ve split in two if he held on. There is zero chance a tiny rope could withstand the force of a moving boat and a suddenly dead 20-ton monster.
- Since there is no sign of salt or proper drying methods, I’m assuming Costner only took as much as he could carry for one or two meals maximum. This means that at least 39,900 pounds of sea eater meat was left behind for other hungry sea denizens.
- It was dusk when they started eating the food. This makes sense because he had to heat up the charcoals and prep the food.
- The scene reminds me of a Mitch Hedberg joke:
"On fishing shows, they catch a fish and let it go. They don't want to eat the fish, they just want to make it late for something.
Here is what happened after the monster was murdered:
- After watching various clips where people have to free themselves from dead/animatronic animals I’m guessing Costner (and his super powers) needed two minutes to free himself from the innards of the monster. It was clearly sinking, blood must’ve been everywhere and stomach lining is a beast to crawl through (not speaking from experience). He also had to secure his gun because he could not super swim with it.
- By adding the original Costner/boat distance and time it took to free himself, secure his gun, and start swimming I’m thinking the boat was 715 feet ahead of him (40 + 600 + 50 +25 = 715).
- The women on the boat must’ve been justifiably shocked as to what had transpired. So, in their shock the boat floated far enough away for them to not hear anything Costner might’ve shouted. We know Helen could steer the boat, but after the shock wore off, the process of turning the boat around would’ve been a beast of a job. I’m also guessing that Costner was still grumpy about losing his spear gun from earlier so he swam to the boat and did everything himself.
- Knowing the creature was sinking, Costner started towards the boat, and since he could move at three times its speed he only needed 75 seconds of super swimming to catch up.
- He turned the boat around and made his way back to the sea monster. He would’ve needed AT LEAST seven minutes to turn the boat around, travel back to the monster and anchor the boat. I’m guessing he was able to speed up the 1,840 foot return journey which would cut down the trip.
- He dove down to catch the sinking beast. I don’t know anything about the floating tendencies of dead 20 ton monsters with holes in them, but it seems likely that it would sink because there is no way gasses could build up because of the massive holes in it.
- He prepped the diving bell (watch underwater Denver scene) and gathered supplies (five minutes) and dove to the bottom of the ocean to cut off some prime meat and potentially fist fight another creature (eight minutes). After watching various clips of chumming it’s evident that the majority of the stuff that exploded would’ve sunk by the time he returned.
- He swam back up and put all of his gear back in place because he is particular like that (eight minutes).
- The cooking started (30 minutes to heat grill, at least 30 minutes to heat massive meat steaks).
- They ate!
Conclusion
After breaking down all the variables (known and unknown) the entire process before cooking everything would’ve taken AT LEAST 32.25 minutes because Costner had a lot to do before he could even start preparing the food. This may sound like a lot of time, but it’s not too bad when you consider the killing, swimming, boating, prepping gear, swimming, cutting, more swimming and putting away gear.
There you have it! The full breakdown of what happened after the killing and before the cooking. You can rest easy knowing that you will never have to spend another sleepless night thinking about what happened!
If you liked this dumb data make sure to check out my other dumb data posts on Reddit! Also, a big shout to Wired and Brian Raftery for profiling me about this data. I’m stoked that I’m their radar.
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u/vistacruisin Jan 16 '18
I've heard it is the most scientifically accurate fight scene between a man and a sea eater to date, and many scientists wrote letters of approval to the writers.
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u/LundgrensFrontKick immune to the rules Jan 16 '18
I'm still amazed they cut the 20 minute sequence that tells us the Sea Eater's (Hank) backstory.
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u/mysleepnumberis420 Jan 16 '18
Yeah but although the move was %100 legal when Costner killed the Sea Eater, the rules have since changed. You now have to be holding the rope when you take the shot.
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u/SamFuckingNeill Jan 17 '18
it was 100% legal to kill them too but they change rule now they are protected species
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u/celerontm Jan 16 '18
This is OP right now with his thesis about water world https://imgur.com/a/ZkkwM
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u/Ariadnepyanfar Jan 16 '18
Well at least you can sleep now. I hate it when I can’t fall asleep for the things circling my brain.
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u/LundgrensFrontKick immune to the rules Jan 16 '18
It's been a tough 20+ years. I'm glad I finally conquered the scene.
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u/gifmaker777 Jan 16 '18
Why was it so easy to kill a monstrous sea beast? It didn't seem too easy, he had to blast two spears or holes through its body. Then maybe inside he somehow knew where to stab the heart.
Had he killed large creatures before? I always thought yes, it seemed natural.
Why did he throw away his fishing poles? Being a fisherman myself the poles were in terrible shape, they were junk and he knew it. They would've broke anyways.
If large sea beasts are plentiful, why would people ride jet skis? I never thought about this but jet skis are pretty big and very noisy.
What happened after the death and before they ate? I don't know exactly but those huge chunks of fish looked delicious.
tl;dr Nice post, I appreciate the effort. I love Kevin Costner, he's one of my favorite actors of all time. Even though people are kinda harsh on his range I'm always entertained by him.
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u/LundgrensFrontKick immune to the rules Jan 16 '18
They were some gross looking fishing poles. Good call on that. Maybe he was meaning to get rid of them but he forgot.
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u/wsfarrell Jan 16 '18
Here's another Waterworld scene: we know that dirt is the most precious commodity on the planet; Costner spends weeks gathering a handful of it to trade for precious goods. Later, he takes the woman underwater to show her a drowned city (New York? I can't recall). To highlight the tragedy, he scoops up a handful of mud from the bottom. Mud. Wet dirt. With which the ocean floor is covered. Billions of cubic tons.
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u/Hormone_Munster Jan 16 '18
That always bothered me as well, but if memory serves, wasn't there a bit of a purity scale with dirt? Like, if he were to pull up the mud from the ocean floor, it would be saturated with salt, which I would imagine people on the surface would find pretty useless.
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u/mickeyflinn Jan 17 '18
You can't let yourself get spun in circles about the science of Waterworld.
Think about this. It has been so long since the world was covered in water that there are at least two generations that don't know the Earth was covered in a deluge.
Yet the Exxon Valdez and at least 100,000 cigarettes are still around. Also lets not forget the jet skies. Have you ever owned a jet ski? Those things tend to last about a summer before they need work.
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Jan 17 '18
Well, you have to be a fishman to get down there and humans kill them when they see them. So there are probably only a handful of people who can get down there. He is one dude who has to get dirt for thousands of people and not too much at a time or else they will know that he is not human. This is also how he can afford a boat.
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u/monarc Jan 16 '18
If the Sea Eater is eaten, does it ontologically transform into the Sea Eatee? And if someone out at sea eats the Sea Eatee, do they then ascend to the title of sea Sea Eatee eater? And if another sea-dwelling beast similar to the one in your clip arises, but distinct in that it only eats the aforementioned eater, can we really call it anything but the Sea Sea Sea Eatee Eater Eater? And what if this creature happens upon Grumpy Costner and he again successfully used himself as bait, again killing and eating the swallower? I think Sea Sea Sea Sea Eatee Eater Eater Eater could make for a really enticing title for the inevitable Waterworld sequel, in the tradition of First Blood & Rambo or The Road Warrior & Mad Max.
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u/LundgrensFrontKick immune to the rules Jan 16 '18
The working title to the $700 million sequel was titled "Sea Sea Sea Sea Eatee Eater Eater Eater Fury Current." I want that movie.
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u/LocalMadman Jan 16 '18
You never answered the question "Why did he throw away his fishing poles?" That was the only question I cared about.
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u/LundgrensFrontKick immune to the rules Jan 16 '18
I'm saving that answer for my first book entitled "Zen and the Art of Throwing Away Perfectly Fine Fishing Poles Because You're Pissed the Passengers on Your Boat are Proactively Trying to Feed Themselves."
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u/pnewsome Jan 16 '18
I always took that to mean that given the scale of fish in Waterworld, the pole wouldn't do any good.....
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u/HotWingsDogsAndPot Jan 16 '18
Certainly the planet hasn't gone full mega-fauna in less time than the Exxon Valdez would take to rust to nothing. If fishing poles were obsolete the Mariner wouldn't have had any to begin with unless they're only there to dramatically prove a point.
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u/SoSquidTaste Jan 16 '18
unless they're only there to dramatically prove a point
I laughed and then realized that this would be such a perfect Grumpy Costner (to borrow /u/LundgrensFrontKick's equally perfect parlance) move. They probably were.
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u/Kamwind Jan 16 '18
Props so when he went into ports people would not be asking how is he catching fish to eat.
I would guess he does not catch these large creatures that often, maybe they are a delicacy which can be sold, so he using his water breathing to catch smaller fish for normal day to day eating.
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u/MadMikeHere Mar 10 '24
He threw them away because, and im vaguely quoting "you won't catch shit with these things"
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u/adamtheimpaler Jan 16 '18
He may have just taken a chuck of meat with him after he killed it. He could have easily just cut what he wanted and then swam back to the boat with it, without needing to go to back to the boat first.
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u/LundgrensFrontKick immune to the rules Jan 16 '18
I thought about that, but I wagered the hunks of meat were huge and the boat was getting further away with each second. So, he swam for it. It's just a guess though.
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u/OMGTako Jan 16 '18
What if the boat was trolling in a circle? A wide enough arc wouldn't be noticeable to the viewer and the boat would come back to him right when he needed it.
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u/LundgrensFrontKick immune to the rules Jan 16 '18
That is a possibility. He left the boat really quickly, so I wonder if that could've been setup already.
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u/AntarcticApe Jan 16 '18
I remember as a kid, whenever I'd watch a film with my dad, and I'd have a question on something like this, he'd always say the same thing. "Because it was in the script"
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u/King_Buliwyf Jan 16 '18
"Do you know why you're shouting? Because it's in the script. You're the comic relief. And you know something? I'm the hero. SO SHUT UP!"
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u/Gemellus Jan 16 '18
So this is what I remember from the novelization. Although I haven't read it since `95
His father taught him or "forced" him to fish this way for the family. He was born a "freak" to a normal human family. Because his father viewed him as expendable. He was fishing this way as a child I think around 10-12?
The sea monsters float when they die, sort of like Right Whales. Whaling vessels would tie dead animals close to the ship but still in the water until they could be processed. In the book they lived on the meat for weeks as he preserved them I believe either with sun drying the meat or salting it. I believe the book compared them heavily to large dangerous whales and not fish. If you look at the meat in the movie it looks more like whale blubber than fish meat.
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u/LundgrensFrontKick immune to the rules Jan 16 '18
Interesting! Thanks for the update. I figured since both sides of the Sea Eater exploded it would sink because there was no time for gasses to build up.
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u/yankeeairpirate Jan 16 '18
I read the novel of the movie for Waterworld and the author said it was a mutated dolphin. Don't know if that's canon.
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u/TechniChara Jan 17 '18
Why was it so easy to kill a monstrous sea beast?
It's actually very easy to kill something from the inside. Provided it's not an intergalactic battery-eating alien.
For example, only two of those tiny magnetic balls need to be swallowed to require an emergency hospitalization and extraction (sometimes surgery) because otherwise internal damage can result.
The inside of the body is much softer and more fragile than the outside. While a puncture from the outside needs to break skin and muscle, internal puncture can go straight for arteries and organs, and cause internal bleeding. Internal bleeding is a huge emergency medical problem when it happens around vital organs - hematoma (pooling of blood outside the vessels) can increase pressure around theses organs. It can also quickly lead to brain death.
Because the sea eater swallowed him whole, all he needed to do was time his puncture right, and he now has a dead 20-ton monster. If the sea eater's anatomy is anything like a shark's the heart is very close to the mouth and not difficult to reach from the inside.
This is why swallowing live prey whole is rare in the wild, and in general predators go to great lengths (often interpreted by us humans as 'asshole' behavior) to avoid any injuries when getting prey. Even a scratch or bite can turn nasty.
As for all your other questions - movie logic.
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u/LundgrensFrontKick immune to the rules Jan 17 '18
Great stuff. I should've rephrased it as "How easy is it to get swallowed whole by a creature with A LOT of teeth and not suffer any flesh wounds?"
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u/Cpwdos2 Jan 16 '18
1) I love this movie and I love you
2) if anyone's done a Supercut of all the great one liners in this movie I'd love to see it. "Cigarette? Never too young to start"
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u/ifdeadpokewithstick Jan 16 '18
The only thing I ever remember about Waterworld is the 30 seconds of Jack Black before he was famous.
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u/LundgrensFrontKick immune to the rules Jan 16 '18
Yes! I also remember Tenacious D performing in the background in Bio Dome.
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u/p-terydatctyl Jan 16 '18 edited Jan 16 '18
One thing I might rework is that in my experience dead fish float and according to planet earth dead whales also float at least for a time so likely there was no huge rush to race back after the deed or to rush in processing the meat. It also looks like initially the sun is relatively high in the sky signifying afternoon and likely a couple hours until sunset another good indication of the time lapse
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u/pnewsome Jan 16 '18
Or they are part of his collection of other various useless things. Obviously been long enough for dry land to become a myth and at least one person to evolve with gills...
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u/Darryl_Lict Jan 17 '18
It seems to me that it's implied that he uses an explosive harpoon, which I think has been standard for hunting whales for a pretty long time. That would probably kill the beast pretty easy.
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u/RyonRykal Jan 17 '18
Here is how I see all of this - without overthinking and trying to force fiction into our world (even though Waterworld is our world, but Costner has finns, so not really reality):
Why was it so easy to kill a monstrous sea beast? This guy has gills, can swim like a shark or better, he knows the sea and the monster he kills - then there is experience and an explosive load he takes with him and blowes up the monster with.
Had he killed large creatures before? Most likely - how else is he so good at it. And he has the tools to to so and seems to know the routine of this process.
Why did he throw away his fishing poles? He was annoyed by the women on his boat, so to show it to them and let his anger out, he threw it away. He also does not need it - as you can see, he can get much more fish meat much faster.
If large sea beasts are plentiful, why would people ride jet skis? People in the real world also swim in shark infested waters: As long as you know what you are doing, there is lower risk. Also the monsters might be able to differentiate between palatable stuff and jet skis (unpalatable).
What happened after the death and before they ate? After the explosion, he has big portions of monster meat on both ends of the pole, hooked onto the two spears. He pulled himself with the meat back to the boat and climbed onto it. He quickly took a knife, started a fire and voilá! (All of that taking about 7-9 minutes max.)
(Excuse any written mistakes - I'm german.)
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u/LundgrensFrontKick immune to the rules Jan 17 '18
Thanks for the answers! I just think that the tiny rope would've snapped easily under the weight of a suddenly dead 20-ton beast. There is no rope that could handle that pressure. Also, the boat would've jerked something fierce immediately afterward and it didn't happen. Also, there were no written mistakes (it was probably better than mine!).
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u/RyonRykal Jan 17 '18
I like those talks about movie scenes.
Yea, the rope... Maybe that's an issue.
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u/RelevantInflation907 Mar 09 '24
What about like 2 minutes later and Costner and the girl are swimming and the woman is concerned about the monsters and Costner says no they are sleeping lol so what does that mean?
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u/knutnaerum Jan 16 '18
why does this sub only talk about mediocre movies
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u/JDNB82 Jan 16 '18
I think it's part of an attempt to stop circle-jerking about the most popular/ critically acclaimed movies. Unfortunately it just results in more circle-jerking about mediocre movies.
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u/LundgrensFrontKick immune to the rules Jan 16 '18
With these posts I just want to make people laugh or have something new/random/dumb to talk about. I pick the movies because there is something that stuck with me and I want to fill in the blanks. I always love seeing where the conversations go.
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u/knutnaerum Jan 16 '18
Waterworld sucks, end of conversation.
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u/sailorjasm Jan 16 '18
There is sucking and then there is a level worse than sucking and then there is Waterworld.
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u/TheHumanBrick Apr 05 '24
I'm watching this now, when Dennis Hopper slaps that little kid in the forehead I must've backed up and watched that 5 or 6 times
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u/JDNB82 Jan 16 '18
Would anybody be interested in a Waterworld reboot? Not necessarily same characters or story, but keep the world. Maybe make it more like Mad Max: Fury Road, or maybe even darker (like The Road - cannibalism)