Water is a theme that runs through all forms of popular culture, from books to myths to documentaries
to Hollywood and international films, with a growing number of shorter video pieces posted online at YouTube and similar sites. A surprising number of popular movies and TV episodes, going back almost to the first days of movie-making, have incorporated the issue of water disputes, contamination, conflicts
over water rights and allocation, scarcity, and lots of sci-fi apocalyptic futures as central themes. Below is a list of some of these classic (good and bad) films, some major water documentaries, and an occasional TV episode. Feel free to add other suggestions and I’ll update my list! This 2025 edition is an update of my earlier post.
Movies/Films/Documentaries/TV Series
Three Word Brand (1921): Paul and Brand (twins separated at birth, played by William S. Hart) become, respectively, governor of Utah and a partner in a ranch where neighboring ranchers are trying to get control of local water rights.
Riders of Destiny (1933): Government agent Saunders (John Wayne) fights a local rancher who controls the local water supply and is trying to force other ranchers into contracts for water at exorbitant rates.
King of the Pecos (1936): John Wayne stars in a classic battle over western water rights and land in the Pecos River country.
Law of the Ranger (1937): Another western with a monopolistic rancher claiming local water rights. Bill Nash (John Merton), owner of the local water company and town boss, tries to control the valley’s water rights by building a reservoir, but he must get control of the key property and murders the rightful owner to do so.
Oklahoma Frontier (1939): A land rush leads to an attempt to control the water rights in the Cherokee Strip (with Johnny Mack Brown).
Adventures of Red Ryder (1940): An evil banker plans to profit from the Santa Fe Railroad's acquisition of right-of-way by gaining control of the land and intimidating local ranchers. During the fight to drive gunmen and outlaws out of the territory, Red Ryder learns of a plan to dynamite a dam providing water supply.
Back in the Saddle (1941): Gene Autry heads west to reclaim his ranch only to discover a new copper mine is poisoning the water supply and killing all the cattle.
Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948): Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston seek their fortune in gold in Mexico. Around the 28-minute mark, Huston says, “Water is more precious than gold.” Winner of three Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor (Walter Huston), Best Directing (John Huston), Best Screenplay.
Stampede (1949): Brothers Mike and Tim McCall (Rod Cameron and Don Castle) own a large ranch in Arizona. Stanley Cox (John Eldredge) and LeRoy Stanton (Donald Curtis) sell land to settlers, who arrive to find that the McCalls control all of the water. Fights ensue.
Cowboy G-Men (TV): Beware! No Trespassing (1952): In this TV series, Russell Hayden, Jackie Coogan are two G-men ordered to bring law and order to the lawless west. In this episode, they discover a tungsten mine closed, the wells all poisoned, and the town overwhelmed by a malaria outbreak, while four evil gunslingers are looking for trouble.
Have Gun, Will Travel (1958-1959): In this TV series, Paladin, played by Richard Boone, is a “gentleman” gun fighter, traveling around the American West. Several episodes revolve around water.
• The O’Hare Story (March 1958): While protecting a town's water supply, Paladin takes a liking to the leader of "the enemy" -- a feisty, middle-aged engineer.
• Young Gun (November 1958): A bitter ex-gunfighter, now a rancher, denies town access to its only source of water, trains his son as gunman, and forces a showdown with Paladin.
• The Gold Toad (November 1959): Paladin gets involved with a male farmer and female cattle rancher, both desperate for water and feuding over possible Indian buried treasure.
MacKenzie’s Raiders (TV): The Poisoners (1959): A cattle baron on the Texas range tries to run off his neighbor by persuasion, running off his stock, poisoning the waterholes, and murdering his men.
The Big Country (1958): Retired, wealthy sea captain James McKay, played by Gregory Peck, arrives in the west to marry fiancée Pat Terrill. Pat’s father, Major Henry Terrill (Charles Bickford), is involved in a ruthless civil war over watering rights for cattle.
Wild River (1960): The drama about TVA dams and progress and the destruction of societies, communities and traditional ways of living. With Montgomery Cliff, Lee Remick. Directed by Eli Kazan.
Lawence of Arabia (1962). The epic story of T.E. Lawrence (Peter O’Toole), an English officer who united, and led, warring Arab tribes during World War I in order to fight the Turks. Near the end of the movie, the British cut off water utilities in Damascus as a weapon of war. With Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, and Omar Sharif.
Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964): U.S. Air Force general Jack Ripper (Sterling Hayden) goes off the deep end and sends bombers to destroy the U.S.S.R because he suspects that the Communists are conspiring to pollute the water supply and the “precious bodily fluids” of the American people. Also starring, of course, George C. Scott and Peter Sellers, Peter Sellers, and Peter Sellers. Nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Peter Sellers), and Best Director (Stanley Kubrick).
El Dorado (1966): John Wayne plays Cole Thornton, a gunfighter for hire who joins forces with an old friend, Sheriff J.P. Hara, played by Robert Mitchum, to help a rancher and his family fight a rival rancher trying to steal their water.
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). A Sergio Leone masterpiece with Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, and Charles Bronson, in a fight over corruption, the lawless West, and a piece of land coveted for its supply of water needed for the expanding railroads.
Deliverance (1972): John Voight, Burt Reynolds. A last river trip on a river to be destroyed by a dam goes very bad.
The Crazies (1973): George A. Romero’s low-budget film of a town affected by the accidental dumping of bio-weapons in their water supply, leading to murder, crazy psychoses, and a military crackdown.
Chinatown (1974): This is perhaps the classic water movie: a murder mystery centered on the political manipulations of water and land in turn-of-the-20th-century Los Angeles, with Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and John Huston, directed by Roman Polanski. Nominated for ten Oscars. Won for Best Original Screenplay.
The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976): David Bowie and Rip Torn in a brilliant sci-fi story of a humanoid alien who comes to Earth to get water for his dying planet. The alien’s story is complicated by love and the ruthlessness of the business world.
Force 10 from Navarone (1978): In this World War II story, British special forces are sent on a secret mission, in a sequel to the 1961 movie The Guns of Navarone. Water is used as a weapon when Mallory (Robert Shaw) destroys a dam to release floodwaters that destroy the bridge, blocking a German assault.
V: The Miniseries (1983): A seemingly peaceful alien race arrives on earth and asks for help. This
multipart miniseries reveals that the key secret of the aliens is that water is a precious commodity and the aliens have come to steal all of Earth’s water, leaving it completely uninhabitable. This two-part show spawned a sequel, V: The Final Battle, a second television series, V: The Series (1984 to 1985), and then a third series remake (2009 to 2011).
The Ice Pirates (1984): A totally goofy, tongue-in-cheek, low-budget sci-fi movie. In the far future
water is the most valuable substance. Two space pirates are captured stealing ice, sold to a princess, and recruited to help her find her father, who may have found a planet with water. Yet this movie has Ron Pearlman, Angelica Houston, and even a cameo by John Carradine. With sword fights, space battles,
fighting robots, bar brawls, and every other sci-fi meme.
Dune (1984): Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi story of the desert planet Arrakis and the fight for control of the drug melange. The story a strong underlying ecological theme about the control of water and other resources.
Pale Rider (1985): Directed by and starring Clint Eastwood as a mysterious preacher who comes to a gold-mining camp near a small town in the mountains. The miners are facing a ruthless landowner who cuts off the water to drive them from their land and their gold claims. Eastwood kicks their butts, of course.
Water (1985): A tiny poor Caribbean island (the island’s governor is played by Michael Caine) is completely forgotten by its British colonial masters, until an oil well strikes mineral water. Suddenly, the British, French, Americans, Cubans, and an incompetent band of local rebels are struggling for control in this 1985 comedy.
Solarbabies (1986): Another in a series of apocalyptic sci-fi stories with a water theme. In the future, a nuclear war has left the Earth a desert wasteland where the oceans have dried up. Most of the water supplies are controlled by the elite corporation E-Protectorate, which takes children away from their families.
Jean de Florette and its sequel, Manon of the Spring (1986): Movies from Marcel Pagnol’s famous novel L'eau des Collines (or, The Water from the Hills, 1963). In a rural French village, an old man and his only remaining relative try to steal the waters of a spring from a neighbor. They block up the spring and watch as their neighbor struggles to water his crops. Starring Gerard Depardieu.
Steel Dawn (1987): A post-apocalyptic world where a group of settlers are threatened by a murderous gang that wants the water they control. Featuring Patrick Swayze as the warrior who helps them. Swayze kicks their butts, of course.
Milagro Beanfield War (1988): Milagro, a small town in the American Southwest, experiences conflict between developers and local Hispanic farmers over land and water. When one farmer diverts water to irrigate his beanfield, trouble arises. Directed by Robert Redford, with Rubén Blades, Richard Bradford and Sonia Braga. Won an Oscar for Best Music, Original Score.
Xian dai hao xia zhuan (1993): Another post-apocalyptic story, set after a city has been devastated by nuclear attack. An evil villain controls the city’s scarce water supply, and three heroes fight to prevent a military takeover and to find clean water for the people of the city.
Tank Girl (1995): Based on a British cult comic, a tank-riding anti-heroine (Lori Petty) fights a mega-corporation called Water and Power, which controls the world’s water supply. With early performances by Ice-T and Naomi Watts.
Waterworld (1995): Kevin Costner in, uh, another post-apocalyptic world, where the land has disappeared and control of freshwater is a key plot element. Check out the opening scene where Costner (on a boat in an endless ocean) pees into a little distiller, filters the water, and drinks the output. You’ll get the idea. From a geophysical perspective (and many others), however, this film is classically bad.
Cadillac Desert (1997): Major four-part documentary by Jon Else, based on the classic book by Marc Reisner, about water in California.
A Civil Action (1998): John Travolta plays a lawyer who agrees to represent the families of children who died from leukemia after two large corporations dumped toxic chemicals into the water supply of Woburn, Massachusetts. Based on a true story involving the 1981 case of the People of Mass. vs. W. R. Grace and Beatrice Foods
Hard Rain (1998): With Morgan Freeman and Christian Slater, thieves trying to rob an armored car and bank in a small town face a devasting flood caused by massive rainfall and a dam failure.
Erin Brockovich (2000): Julia Roberts stars as Erin Brockovich, a mother who becomes concerned about water pollution and challenges powerful corporations to stop the contamination of hexavalent chromium. This story is from real events and led to one of the largest class-action lawsuits in history.
The Road to El Dorado (2000): The animated movie about two con men (voiced by Kevin Klein and Kenneth Branaugh) searching for the legendary city of gold. In the end, in order to save the city from Cortés, they destroy the waterfall entrance to El Dorado and use a flood to hide the city.
Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry (2000): Johnson and Bent’s film about a disaffected man who starts to revenge himself against society for perceived slights, escalating to environmental terrorism and poisoning London’s water supplies.
Oh Brother Where Art Thou (2000): George Clooney et al. and the flooding of a Tennessee valley as a metaphor for progress and the Age of Reason from Homer’s the Odyssey.
Sabaku no kaizoku! Captain Kuppa (2001): Japanese anime. Sometime in the future, the world is completely dried up and water has become the most valuable commodity. Whoever controls water will control the world.
The Tuxedo (2002): Jackie Chan costars with an animated tuxedo. People who watch this movie forget that the bad guy is a power-hungry bottled-water mogul trying to destroy the world’s natural water supply to force everyone to drink his bottled water.
H2O (2002): Indian film about a love story between a Kannadiga and a Tamilian vying for the love of a girl called "Kaveri.” The film is a metaphorical reference for the Cauvery River dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
Signs (2002): In a movie from M. Night Shyamalan, aliens invade and a family led by Graham Hess (Mel Gibson), a widowed former reverend who has lost his faith, fight back, discovering that water is poisonous to the invaders.
Cabin Fever (2002): Pulp horror movie about a group of college friends vacationing in a cabin in the woods who become infected with a flesh-eating disease spread through a contaminated water supply. (See also Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (2009) – pretty much the same movie, but now bottled water is the culprit).
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002): Part Two of the epic trilogy directed by Peter Jackson. In this film, water is used as a weapon by the Ents, who destroy a dam in order to destroy and symbolically cleanse the stronghold of Isengard. Nominated for four Academy Awards (including Best Picture); winner of Best Sound Editing and Best Visual Effects.
Battlestar Galactica (S1:E2) (2004). In the episode “Water” of this award-winning TV serie, the water tanks on Battlestar Galactica are sabotaged by Sharon “Boomer” Valerii, a human-form Cylon. The act threatens the survival of the entire fleet of remaining humans, until a new source of water can be found.
Batman Begins (2005): Christian Bale, Michael Caine, and Ken Watanabe in one of the many Batman movies. Terrorists try to destroy Gotham by introducing a vapor-borne hallucinogen into the water system.
Waterborne (2005): Ben Rekhi’s remarkable independent film, which follows the fictional aftermath of a bio-terrorist attack on the water supply of Los Angeles.
V for Vendetta (2006): Hugo Weaving, Natalie Portman, and Rupert Graves in a dark story about corrupt government leaders contaminating London’s water supply in order to kill people, spread fear, and consolidate power.
The Simpsons Movie (2007): An American comedy film based on the Fox animated sitcom The Simpsons created by Matt Groening. Environmental disasters in Springfield’s lake, worsened by Homer and an adopted pig, wreak havoc. President Schwarzenegger and the EPA order the town’s destruction and Homer and Bart must, accidently, save the day.
Night of the Living Cat Girl (2007): The evil Parasol Corporation 'accidentally' releases a virus into Ferret City's water supply, killing most of the Cat Girls... except a Zombie Cat Girl who takes over the city with an army of evil bunnies. The last three Cat Girls must make it alive through the night in a combination anime, horror movie, video game.
Blue Gold: World Water Wars (2008): Documentary by director Samuel Vartek, warning of wars over water as corporate giants, private investors, and corrupt governments vie for control of a dwindling supply. Based on the book by Maude Barlow.
Absurdistan (2008): A German-French comedy set in a desert town in the former Soviet Union. The local women decide to withhold sex until the men in the town fix the broken pipeline that provides the village's water supply.
Quantum of Solace (2008): James Bond fights terrorists working to gain control over Bolivia’s water resources. With Daniel Craig as James Bond; directed by Marc Forster.
Trouble the Water (2008): A movie documenting the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina on the 9th Ward in New Orleans, and the impact of the hurricane on friends, neighbors, and the local community, and the repeated failures of government to respond to the disaster.
Flow: For the Love of Water (2008): Documentary by Irena Salena. Water is critical for life but increasingly scarce and controlled by private interests. Interviews with many water experts.
Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (2009): A high school prom faces a deadly threat: a flesh-eating virus that spreads via a popular brand of bottled water. Classic high school prom horror movie and set up to sequel.
Well Done Abba (2009): A satirical look out of India at corruption rampant in Indian government departments, with a focus on water. The film tells the story of Armaan Ali, who takes a leave from work to build a well in his backyard to make life easier for his daughter and relatives, only to get trapped in a world of government corruption, bribes, and scandal.
Water and A City (2010): A documentary from director Swati Dandekar and writer Sushma Veerappa about Bandalore, India and the challenges of water supplies in rapidly urbanizing cities. The film looks at water poverty, the politics of water pricing, and India’s challenges in providing sustainable water futures.
The Crazies (2010): A remake of the 1973 version: The inhabitants of a small Iowa town are plagued by insanity and death after a mysterious toxin contaminates their water supply.
The Book of Eli (2010): Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman star in another post-apocalyptic world where the control of water is a plot element.
Last Call at the Oasis (2011): Perhaps the best water documentary addressing global and local water problems. Directed by Jessica Yu, with many water experts, including Erin Brockovich, Peter Gleick, Jay Famiglietti, and a funny cameo with Jack Black.
Rango (2011): Johnny Depp voices Rango, the out-of-place chameleon in the West who takes on the evildoers in the town of Dirt who have manipulated water shortages for their own ends.
Battle for Los Angeles (2011): Aliens invade earth to take its water. A squad of heroic Marines including Aaron Eckhart save the day.
Promised Land (2012): Matt Damon, Frances McDormand, John Krasinski in a story about a small town fighting a large corporation over fracking and the town’s water supply.
Night Moves (2013): American drama starring Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning, and Peter Sarsgaard about radical environmentalists who blow up a dam and the subsequent personal consequences.
Automata (2014): It’s the year 2044. Climate change and solar storms have turned the world into a desert and killed 99.7% of Earth's population. Everyone left lives in a single city covered by artificial clouds to make rain. With Antonio Banderas.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay (2014). With Jennifer Lawrence, Woody Harrelson, and a star-studded cast. Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) becomes the symbol of the growing rebellion, the Mockingjay. As part of the fight, the residents of District 5 destroy a large dam that provides power to the repressive Capitol city.
Interstellar (2014): Climate change has destroyed Earth’s food supply causing permanent drought. Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, and Jessica Chastain must find a planet that can sustain life.
Water Wars (2014): (Warning: this movie is a low-budget, sexist disaster.) This movie features catastrophic war, destroyed ecosystems, and humans on the brink of extinction. War is waged for the most valuable treasure of the time: water.
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015): Continuation of the Mad Max saga, where control of water in a post-apocalyptic world means control of people.
The Last Survivors (2015): A teenage girl fights to protect the last working well in a drought-stricken Oregon valley from a greedy water baron, claiming the last groundwater in a post-apocalyptic world.
Mission Impossible: Fallout (2018): Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and the Mission Impossible team must find three plutonium cores that can be used to make nuclear bombs. They discover a plot by the bad guys to detonate them in the Himalaya mountains to contaminate the water supply for China, Pakistan, and India to starve a third of the world’s population, cause global chaos, and take control of a new world order.
Frozen II (2019): Anna and Else of the kingdom of Arendelle must journey with their friends to the kingdom of Northuldra where their grandfather built a big dam to steal the area’s resources and magic. They discover their family’s role in this evil act, destroy the dam, restore the river, and establish peace between the kingdoms.
Bacurau (2019): In this horror, mystery movie from Brazil, strange happenings strike a small town in
Brazil's remote backcountry. The village matriarch dies, the water supply is cut off, empty coffins appear, and the village disappears from online maps.
Dark Waters (2019): An American legal thriller film with an all-star cast including Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins, Victor Garber, and Bill Pullman about the true story of DuPont and its contamination of a town’s land and water with poisonous chemicals.
Paani (2020) (In Hindi): Set years in the future, when the earth's water supply has run out, events unfold including wars.
Dune (2021 and 2024): The remake of Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi story of the desert planet Arrakis and the fight for control of the drug melange. The story has a strong underlying ecological theme about the control of water and other resources. See also Dune (1984).
Sand Land (2023): An anime film based on the hugely popular Sando Rando manga series by Akira Toriyaman. In the far future, catastrophic disasters and war have left Earth a barren wasteland with water controlled by an evil, greedy king who sells bottled water to the people. A trio of heroes searches for an elusive lake, destroys the dam that controls the water, and returns water to the people, ending the oppressive rule of the king.
Scorched Earth (2023): Remake of a 2018 Canadian-American post-apocalyptic science fiction/action story where an apocalypse has rendered all water radioactive and deadly to drink.
Boil Alert (2023): Documentary by James Burns with activist Layla Staats showing the people and personal stories behind the struggle of First Nations communities to receive drinkable water as a basic human right.
Las Nogas (2023): A stop-action short film by Catya Plate set 500 years into the future when the earth is a dry wasteland destroyed by humans. The hero, a fluffy, brilliant Vulkeet (a cross between a parakeet and vulture) must cure the only creatures left who can save the world by bringing back the rain.
Dune Part 2 (2024): The continuation of the Dune saga by Frank Herbert. See Dune (2021) and (1984).
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024): The fifth installment of the Mad Max series again highlighting the critical role that fresh water plays in the devastated wastelands of Australia after a global apocalypse. Control of fresh water and the mythical “Green Place” are the backdrop for this continuation of the “dieselpunk” franchise.
Mario Drinks Water (2025): Glitch, an independent animation studio that produces a SuperMario SMG4 machinima, released an episode (S15:E1) where Mario is thirsty and needs to hydrate, but somehow the world is completely out of water.
Note: Thanks to my many fans who have contributed suggestions… There are a lot of movie fans out there. Thanks especially to Eric Meliton for his recent contributions. New suggestions always welcome: pgleick @ gmail.com
