The Mariner

History

Waterworld

"He’s not a freak and he can take you any time. He’s killed dozens of people. He doesn’t have any mercy or anything. He even kills little girls. He doesn't have a name… so death can’t find him. He doesn’t have a home or people to care for. He’s not afraid of anything, men least of all. He's fast and strong as a big wind. He can hear a hundred miles and see a hundred miles under water. He can hide in the shadow of the noon sun. He can be right behind you and you won’t even know it, ’til you’re *dead*!"

--Enola, trying to intimidate The Nord with the Mariner's reputation

500 years after the apocalypse, a drifter, known only as "the Mariner", arrives at an atoll seeking to trade dirt, which is a precious thing because of its usefulness as a medium for growing plants. When the Mariner is revealed to be a mutant with webbed feet and gills who is able to breathe underwater, the scared atollers vote to drown him in a brine pool they maintain for composting. As they begin lowering the Mariner into the sludge, evil, barbarian pirates known as Smokers raid the atoll. The Smokers are searching for an orphan girl named Enola, who has a map to Dryland tattooed on her back. The leader of the Smokers is the Deacon, who wants the map so he can be the first to claim and get to Dryland and build a city upon it with his crew.

Enola and her guardian, Helen, had planned to leave the atoll with Gregor, an inventor and scientist. However, during the attack Gregor accidentally launches the gas balloon they planned to escape in with only himself on board, leaving the pair stuck. As the Smokers enter the atoll, Helen rescues the Mariner from drowning in the sludge, and he agrees to help them escape on his trimaran.

Once out on the open sea, the trio encounter the Smokers again, but Helen's naïve actions result in damage to the Mariner's boat, and he angrily cuts her hair. Helen, convinced that Dryland exists and that people had not always lived on water, demands to know where the Mariner finds his dirt. The Mariner puts her in a diving bell and swims her down to the ruins of a city known as Denver where he collects dirt and scrap from the bottom of the sea. Helen realizes that former human civilization had indeed existed on land that is now under the sea.

When they surface, the Mariner and Helen are captured by the Smokers and used to flush Enola from hiding. They dive overboard, barely escaping. Since Helen cannot breathe underwater, the Mariner uses his gills to breathe for both of them. They resurface to find everyone gone and the trimaran destroyed. They are rescued by Gregor in his balloon and taken to a new atoll, where the survivors of the first atoll attack have regrouped.

Using a captured Smoker jet ski, the Mariner chases down the Deacon and his minions, finding them on the remaining hulk of the Exxon Valdez. The Deacon is celebrating with the large Smoker followers, proclaiming they have found the map to Dryland. After the crew have all gone below decks to row the ship, the Mariner walks out onto the deck, where the Deacon and his top men are examining Enola's tattoo. He threatens to drop a flare into the oil reserve tank unless the Deacon lets Enola go. Knowing the act would destroy the ship, the Deacon calls the Mariner's bluff, and is surprised when the Mariner makes good on his promise. The ship explodes below-decks and begins sinking while the Mariner escapes with Enola by climbing a rope up to Gregor's balloon.

In the final moments before the ship sinks, the Deacon manages to reach the rope himself and begins to climb it, ultimately making a grab for Enola, but Helen throws a bottle at him, causing him to fall. He pulls out his gun and shoots one of the balloon's lines, causing Enola to fall into the sea. The Deacon mounts a jet ski and signals two other jet skiing Smokers to converge on Enola. The Mariner, seeing this, ties a rope around his ankle and jumps down to grab Enola in an impromptu bungee jump. The recoil of the cord pulls them to safety just as the jet skis collide and explode, killing the Deacon and his remaining henchmen.

Gregor deciphers the Asian symbols on the map using an old China Airlines magazine. He realizes that they are coordinates and steers his balloon in that direction. They find Dryland, which is revealed to be Mount Everest. It is huge and welcoming with fresh water, forests, and wildlife. Gregor, Enola, Helen and other atoll survivors land and find the remains of Enola's parents in a hut. They prepare to settle, but the Mariner decides he must leave as the ocean, his only home, calls to him. He builds a new sailboat and departs.

Personality

A loner, distrustful of humanity and talking very little. As a mutant, he's a hated pariah, likely to be lynched. He appears quite ruthless in his priorities: survival first, over morals if need be. However, this is more an attitude than his true nature. If given enough reasons to act heroically (say, love) he will suddenly start to selflessly risk his life despite all previous talk to the contrary.

Having lived all of his life alone, his behavior can be quite surprising and almost irrational at times. Thus, people tend to instantly dislike him as an anomaly. But he mostly ends up doing the heroic thing.

Powers and Abilities

Mariner’s most notable characteristics is that he’s a mutant. As one of the so-called Homo Ichtyus Sapiens he’s able to breathe on both land and in water, swim at incredible speeds and moving completely unhindered in water. These adaptations make him very perceptive, strong (enough to wrestle two men at once), fast and agile. Mariner is also quite competent with physical prowess (acrobatics, stealth), navigation, and boat handling.

Other Media

Film

Waterworld

Waterworld is a 1995 post-apocalyptic action where the polar ice caps have completely melted, and the sea level has risen over 7,600 m (25,000 feet), covering nearly all of the land. The film was directed by Kevin Reynolds and staring Kevin Costner.

Comic

Waterworld: Children of Leviathan

A limited series published by Acclaim Comics in 1997. The series is a sequel to the film Waterworld, taking months after the events of the film, while also explaining what happen to the Earth before it was covered with water and where the Mariner comes from. It was written by Chris Golden and Tom Sniegoski with art by Kevin Kobasic.

Note: Costner did not permit his likeness to be used in the 1997 movie tie-in, so his character, the Mariner, was drawn differently.

Video Game

Waterworld

A video game was developed and published by Ocean Software and released for Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Virtual Boy, MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows and Game Boy, along with unpublished versions for the Mega Drive/Genesis, Sega Saturn, Atari Jaguar, 3DO and PlayStation. The SNES and Game Boy games were released only in Europe in 1995 and the Virtual Boy game was released exclusively in North America in November 1995. It was released for PC in 1997.

Loosely based on the movie, the game opens up with a series of stills from the movie with the movie's lore written on top. The SNES version of the game was played from an overhead/isometric perspective with the player controlling the Mariner's boat on the ocean. The point of the game was to destroy the Smokers' boats and dive for sunken artifacts, at which point the game switches to a side on perspective so that the player can directly control the Mariner underwater.