![]() Perhaps the right way to say it is that The Postman isn’t good, but it also isn’t as bad as you’ve heard.Ĭostner’s reputation for making bloated films is fully realized here. Does that make it a bad move that’s secretly good? While the movie does have a small army of supporters who would say so, that’s still a tough claim to make. It’s not bad in the sense that it’s poorly made either, as it has an admirable scope and design that defers on CGI to present a well-worn, authentic idea of what “the world of 2013” might someday look like. It’s not “so bad it’s good” in a way that an well-intentioned film production ends up being profoundly goofy and lovable for its faults. Is The Postman as bad as everyone says it is? It depends on what definition you’re going by. From the jump, The Postman joined a small pantheon films such as Ishtar and Heaven’s Gate as shorthand for box office bomb. After opening to just $5.3 million on 2,207 screens, the film’s total domestic box office delivered just $17.1 million. ![]() Clocking in at 177 minutes, the $80 million film was a critical fiasco and even bigger financial disaster when it opened on December 25, 1997. ![]() The Postman, it was thought, would be Costner’s way of recapturing what worked in Dances With Wolves.Īs you’re probably well aware, that’s not what happened. In 1995, he starred, produced, and took over directing duties on Waterworld, which is remembered as a critical and commercial failure, though it did eventually make back its budget over time. 1994’s Wyatt Earp, which he starred in and produced, was seen as the lesser of two films at the time on the subject (compared to Tombstone). While that film was set in the past and this would be set in the future, their general aesthetic of an untamed countryside would be similar, as would many of the moral and story beats driving the narrative.īy this time, however, Costner had also developed a bit of a reputation for creating overwrought epics heavy on runtime that failed to deliver on the promise of his first feature. The last time he’d pulled double duty was with Dances With Wolves and he walked away with seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Not only would Costner star, but he would also direct. They threw out some of the more outlandish sci-fi aspects of the story (sentient AI and generic engineering) and grounded it in the reality of a fallen United States and how people might live without all of the basic essentials we’ve come to rely on. Confidential) to bring back the hopeful message from the book. Not only that, Costner threw out the most recent draft and worked with writer Brian Helgeland (who later won an Academy Award for writing the screenplay to L.A. Then, eventually, Kevin Costner did come aboard. Over the years, a script was written and reworked and rewritten, eventually failing to resemble Brin’s original vision and take on a post-apocalyptic viewpoint more in line with what Hollywood was used to. Taken by the hopeful messages and soulful center of the film, they both thought star Kevin Costner would be a great pick to play the role of the lead character in the film adaptation. Brin wrote on his site that around the same time he was shopping the book to studios, he and his wife attended a screening of Field of Dreams. ![]() Still, the book was a hit and Hollywood came calling. That kind of mindset didn’t exactly jibe with Hollywood’s vision of the future, which often resembles something more akin to Mad Max or The Walking Dead. But Costner stands by both flicks years later.For Brin, the story is about how humanity will ultimately come together in a time of great need, instead of falling apart the way it’s often depicted in post-apocalyptic scenarios. Years later, The Postman is still only running at 8% on Rotten Tomatoes and the reviews are rather dreadful. The former was nominated for a bunch of Golden Raspberry Awards and the latter won a slew of Razzies in its day. Look, in the history of Kevin Costner bombs there are two that stand out: Waterworld, which was allegedly wildly expensive to film, and The Postman. The only thing that people could count on.' I didn’t say that and I probably should’ve, because it is like a fairy tale that you’d read to your children at night. I thought I probably made a mistake not starting the movie off saying, 'Once upon a time…' Because it’s kind of like a fairy tale: 'Once upon a time, when things got really rotten, the only thing that could stand the test of time was the Post Office. You know, listen, a movie is what it is when it comes out, and it has a chance to be revisited. Costner admitted to The Daily Beast that he’s “proud” of the work he did on the film, also explaining how he approached the role. Speaking in a recent interview that touched on a lot of the projects Kevin Costner has made over the years, he was asked about the “prescient nature” of what The Postman did in the nineties, particularly given the challenges facing the U.S.
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