Things were fine for director Kevin Reynolds before "Waterworld", the notorious big budget flop which nearly sank its star/producer Kevin Costner. Reynolds had scored with "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" and had even made a passable stab at war with "The Beast". Then "Waterworld" went belly up. He surfaced two years later with the nervy urban thriller "187", then, last year, a remake of "The Count of Monte Cristo".

Are you pleased with the film?

Yeah. For a studio product I think it works pretty well. The trick was to go back to a traditional form of storytelling, and contemporise it for a modern audience. There were all sorts of debates about how to approach the story because there have been so many versions. Some people suggested doing a postmodern thing, like where you put on a rock ‘n' roll soundtrack. But when you do that, I think it just feels desperate.

Were you tempted to add some "Crouching Tiger"-style, gravity-defying swordfights?

Wouldn't you have just rolled about in the aisle if we'd done that? We tried to remain based in reality. The model, for me, was Ridley Scott's "The Duellists". It's so couched in reality, but without a lot of flash. There are moments, like the final swordfight at the end, where we engaged a few camera tricks. But that's because we were having production problems. We didn't have any rehearsal time. I think we got away with it.

So what about "Waterworld"?

I don't think it's any worse or any better than any other picture in its genre. It's not awful. There was just this feeding frenzy at the time. The press just suddenly decided it was more enjoyable to hate it than it was to like it. It was condemned before it was even finished. I guess it was the point in Costner's career when they decided to take him off his pedestal. It was something that was out of control, it didn't matter how good you made the picture.

Didn't that annoy you?

Yeah it did. I'd never experienced anything like that before. And for the first time I understood how this sort of collective wave of negativity can really condemn something. But I guess it can work the other way too. You can have something that's really not worthy, with people deciding that it's really great.