Titanic (1997)

I loved it when it came out, but then again I was 19. Now, I like parts of it but it's pretty cheesy in other parts.

It's way better in 3-D now.

I saw it in the theater when it was still a big even. I thought it was pretty stupid. The only part I thought were really done well were the scenes of the people locked in steerage as the ship went down.

I hated the song from the first time I heard it.

I have never changed my opinion of the movie LOVE it NOW LOVE it THEN even better now on big screen in 3d. True movie magic...

Maybe a few flaws like if Jack and Rose were truly in love how they didn't rotate time on the raft?

Had no desire to see it when it first screened and didn't see it til around 2005. Overrated tripe.

I was bored until those two guys in the bird's nest see the iceberg, then I liked it.

I can never think of this movie without also thinking of Rex Reed's review of the love scene "Like a chihuahua mounting a golden retriever."

I saw the first half of it when it came out. It must have been more than half, actually -- seemed to go on forever. Very early on, Billy Zane's character had a line like, "It's by some fellow named Picasso. He'll never amount to anything." I realized that if that was meant to pass for humor, I was not going to have a good time.

Later, as the ship was filling up with water, Leonardo diCaprio's character said to Rose, "Rose, this is bad." And that was the last line of the movie I heard before walking out of the theater.

Nice that Gloria Stuart got work, though.

I've never understood one scene, the scene where Rose and Jack come up on deck after fucking in the car. They're playing grabass, the one lookout nudges the other to take a look. They both spend several seconds watching Jack and Rose, then the one lookout looks up, spots the iceberg (too late), and says "Blimey!"

So did Jack and Rose distract the lookouts by being in an unauthorized portion of the deck, and thereby cause the disaster?

R9: historically, I doubt it; just James Cameron being a complete asshole (what else is new.) I don't care how many Oscars film won for him; Hollywood thinks he's an asshole, as evidenced by them giving one of ex-wives an Oscar for a film about 12 people saw, rather than give him another Oscar.

Re the film when it came out: I saw it, once, and only because I used to (when I lived in big cities) always see all the Oscar-nominated films, as a matter of principle. I didn't like it too much 'cause I despise diCaprio (hugely overrated IMHO.)

Certainly had a ton of impressive special effects, and the elderly lady was great, but IMHO the 2 Titanic moview of the - 50's? one with Barbara Stanywyck - both of which I saw on TV (at a very young age), were much better.

This movie was never respected. It was getting trashed from the first weekend it opened.

Everyone saw it and everyone made fun of it.

A Tired Old Queen (not R10 I'm sure) reviews the Babs Stanwyck/Clifton Webb edition of the sinking of the Titanic.

I was really young when I saw it in 1997 and loved it. I saw it again in 3D last night and enjoyed it. Yes it is cheesy and soppy as hell and some of the dialogue is cringe-worthy but it's still entertaining if you don't take it too seriously.

Hated it then ... can't imagine what it would take to get me to see it now.

It made me root for the iceberg.

This movie came out not that long after my brother died. He committed suicide July 3. So it was an okay distraction for that 3 hours, but I still thought it was a dumb movie. And I couldn't stand the song even though sentiment wise I probably should have identified with it.

I didn't get Leo's appeal. He seemed androgynous and kinda gay.

Billy Zane. THERE'S a man!

Oh listen to all the I'm too good to watch Titanic" queens.

I love Titanic and I used to be ashamed to say it but as of a couple of years ago I don't care... I don't care!

Oh DiCaprio my heart will go on

I like Billy Zane, too (R16), but I took two 10 year old girls to the film yesterday, and to quote one of them "that mean guy was really queeney". Billy in Dead Calm is hot- but in Titanic he looks like he's wearing eyeliner and auditioning for The Ten Commandments.

I kept wishing Cameron had made the film silent except for the music score. He really knows how to tell both sentimental and action stories visually, but OY that dialogue.

And IMHO Gloria Stuart is just as cheesy as the dialogue she has. Kate, Kathy Bates, Victor Garber and (in his modern way) Leo often rise above the bad dialogue, but Gloria plays "it was the most erotic moment of my life" for the cheese fest that it is. Glad Kim Basinger got that Oscar.

They all get Oscars compared to Danny Nucci and his sitcom Italian accent as Fabrizio.

[quote]Oh listen to all the I'm too good to watch Titanic" queens.

I don't think I'm too good for it, I just have a strange aversion to James Cameron. The only movies of his I've ever seen are Aliens and the Abyss.

At some point, there will only be five people on the planet who haven't seen Titanic and Avatar, and I want to be one of them.

It is crap.Want to see a great movie about the Titanic it would have to be" A Night To Remember" . Now that is great. Even the movie with Barbara Stanwyk and Clifton Webb had a better story line in it "Titanic"

In James Cameron's version you are never sure if the ship hit an iceberg or a large leg of ham for all the bad acting that was displayed.Still the scenery and visuals were spectacular.So I enjoyed the sinking.

I actually didn't go to the cinema when it was the "IT" film. I watched it a few years later and enjoyed it very much.

Saw it once on TV.

Very good movie, but Leo and Kate don't work as a hot couple.

The movie is a technical marval. Visually, it's gorgeous. Thrilling special effects for their time.

That's about it.

I remember Cameron and his goons crowing about how intensely accurate the film is, how true to history it is, all the thousands of man-hours just doing research, how they had to get absolutely every detail correct and true to history.

And then the historians saw it and shredded Cameron a new one about his "don't let the truth get in the way of a good story" version of historical accuracy. That was awesome.

Cameron's no fool though. Full of shit, yes. He knew his movie had to be an adolescent love story if he wanted to get anyone to see it. Shame he had to lie about historical accuracy, but I guess that, too, was about selling tickets.

Cameron actually had to pay off the descendants of a real-life character whom Cameron made into a villain when there was no evidence that the man acted in the way Cameron portrayed him.

There was enough real drama in the story without having to insert that ridiculous love story. Leo lacked ten years and 100 pounds to realistically romance Winslet. And the dialogue. Oy. All Zane lacked was a moustache to twirl

I agree with #26.

I can remember only liking the last 1/3 because of the spectacle of the ship going down. The characters were all 2D, LC looked far too young for Kate W, the script was pathetic, and as you say, why do we need a dopey love story. Isn't the Titanic sinking enough to focus on?

Like a couple of other posters here, I much preferred "A night to remember", despite being in B&W, with minimal special effects. It had much better characterisation, and the story was very faithful to what actually happened (based on good book of the same name).

The film only picked up steam when it hit the berg. The love story was so cliched and trite. I adore Kate Winslet - she did what she could with a poorly written part and made it better than it was.

I saw it in the theaters after being quite excited that a "serious" big budget movie was bring made about one of the favorite subjects of my childhood.

My friend and I actually laughed at how bad the dialogue was. Very, very disappointing film. I didn't even thinnk that they spent much time letting the viewers drink in the details of the ship or the period which is one of the things Cameron bragged they were spending tons of research and money on.

A short while later I saw L.A. Confidential, one of the best films of the decade and THE movie of the year and still one of my favorite movies ever. Come Oscar time it wuz robbed.

I thought the sinking scenes were the weakest link. The water looked like the swimming pool on B Deck had sprung a leak, the hallways looked they had jacuzzi lights installed at floor level, and everyone is splashing up and down those hallways without a care in the world instead of turning blue and freezing to death.

They never managed to make me think anyone was cold, or even suffering much, until the big scene with them floating in the ocean. Rose and Jack should have been half dead from hypothermia long before they even went into the ocean.

Saw it on Christmas day and I loved it. I think I was 18.

I'm over people who think they're the arbiters of good taste and fancy themselves vogue for shitting all over it. It's a fun enough diversion. Get over yourselves.

Any movie that gets popular really quick will have its "too cool for school" detractors, as evidenced in this thread. The Blair Witch Project was heavily mocked too, but I worked in a movie theater (now demolished, haha) when that film came out and I remember a lot of audiences in full panic mode as the film got more and more intense, yet they ALL say they weren't scared and that it was a stupid movie.

Meh

I hate the script so much. It tries to build Rose up as this headstrong, liberal woman who doesn't take any guff. As soon as the ship hits the iceberg, she turns into Trixie from Speed Racer, the most annoying backseat-driver, master-of-the-obvious. The whole time the ship is going down, it's just her flailing about madly, exclaiming things like, "The ship is sinking quickly!" "We have to RUN!" No, REALLY?

People that don't think the movie needs the Kate/Leo love story just don't get it. Sheesh.

Hi frau at R34!

As someone who has always been enthralled by the story of the (real) Titanic, I feel put-off by the very idea of this movie...the fact that 1500 real people died very dramatic deaths—but somehow that wasn't enough for Hollywood. They had to go "make up" these stupid characters so people would "care" about them. And then the fact that this movie was SO huge. And that horrible song by Celine Dion (gag)! And all the people who've made a pilgrimage to the grave site of Jack Dawson in Nova Scotia, thinking Leonardo DiCaprio must be buried there. It's enough to make me barf.

Has anyone else ever seen the Nazi "Titanic"? I have it and wow, very interesting. Total propaganda.

Took my mum to see it. After about 2 hours she turned to me and said, "fucking hell, can't they just die now!"

[quote]drink in the details of the ship or the period which is one of the things Cameron bragged they were spending tons of research and money on.

I recall him going on about the fact that the plates were exact replicas of the original. And for what? To break them.

"I thought the sinking scenes were the weakest link."

No, the hackneyed love story was the weakest link. I didn't find Jack and Rose the least bit sympathetic or likeable. Especially Rose; she was a bitch!

Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio were ridiculous as the romantic leads. He looks like a fourteen year old boy; she appears to outweigh him by a good 10 or 15 pounds. And yet he's the "man" who shows her the light and sweeps her off her feet. It's stupid!

Only saw it once. At the time i was seeing the love of my life. Just about the best time of my life that year we were dating. I always associate that movie with him. Not the leo and kate love story. Also other movies and music that were out in late 97.

I've never seen it.

I watched the first showing when it came out and loved it... There in front of me were about 6 girls from the 7th and 8th grade.

They starting to sob when Leo was dying and just would not let up and it eventrually starting to affect me too.

Winslet really threw all 200 lbs of herself into the role. She was excellent.

Rose struck me as the standard sulky, self-absorbed, borderline personality disordered young adult heroine. Bella Swan in a velvet gown. Jack is the standard romantic fantasy boyfriend who exists only to fulfill her wildest dreams of fulfillment and escape. It sells. That's fine. I just don't find it interesting or entertaining.

The true weak link in the film is Gloria Stuart. Just imagine if Rose was played by a legendary actress of gravitas like Olivia deHavilland. She would have elevated the sappy romance just by the audience knowing she was the older Rose. Stuart was wooden, obvious and amateurish. And for James Cameron to trumpet her return to the silver screen like she was some long lost movie icon, ala a Norma Desmond, was simply ludicrous and insulting. No one knew who the hell Gloria Stuart even was when she was making films in the thirties! Her casting was Cameron's only real misstep. Oh, what could have been...

I think Gloria Stuart is absolutely wonderful. She's touching and funny. Kate is pleasant, Leo is okay, Kathy Bates has a few fun moments. It's a badly written but entertaining piece of cheese.

What I don't understand is why Leo didn't get an Oscar nomination for Best Actor? Ignoring him was just plain STUPID!

[quote]I recall him going on about the fact that the plates were exact replicas of the original. And for what? To break them.

I know, that tired old stunt was played out by the time David O Selznick did the press release about Scarlett wearing whalebone corsets.

Besides, stunts like that were .0001 percent of the budget, and Titanic is probably the most documented ship in history, so getting details right was no big deal, in fact it was mandatory considering how many "experts" would have torn him to shreds if he winged it.

Maybe this is an unpopular opinion on datalounge but I thought Leo was a much better actor in this movie than Kate. She mostly just annoyed me.

The only reason I would want to see it in 3D is to see Kate's boob. Does it look like it's right in front of your mouth?

I've always thought it was a real shame that Bette Davis wasn't alive because she would have been PERFECT as the old Rose, and definitely would have won an Oscar. Kate Winslet slightly resembles a young Davis, so it would have made sense.

"He looks like a fourteen year old boy; she appears to outweigh him by a good 10 or 15 pounds"

What the fuck? Is there something in the bible that says "A leading lady in a major motion picture shalt not outweigh her leading man"?

It's in the DL Bible, r53.

I have never understood Kate Winslet's appeal. I've seen her in a few films and find her humorless and entirely without presence. It's hilarious that the momentarily entertaining shit show "Titanic" gave her a career!

[quote] I have never changed my opinion of the movie LOVE it NOW LOVE it THEN even better now on big screen in 3d. True movie magic...

Me either, loved it then, love it now. Saw it twice when it first came out. Own the DVD. I saw the rerelease Thursday. The 3D is amazing!! Do yourself a favor and see it again.

In her NY Times review, Janet Maslin compared Titanic to Gone with the Wind, a masterpiece that opened on the same date in December, 1939.

excellent movie.

i remember when it came out the typical naysayers were predicting "big budget disaster". seriously not good press.

but then it came out. and everyone loved it.

the acting was good, too.

Yes, well, Maslin's film criticism is only notable because she did it for such a long time. Bitch isn't Pauline Kael. And I don't even like Pauline Kael.

Next up: "Lusitania", starring Zac Efron and Lily Collins.

I have an aversion to water, so the scenes where the water is pouring into the horrible claustrophobic corridors nearly sends me into a panic attack. The only part I enjoy is when that person falls and bounces off one of the giant propellors.

[quote]It popular to trash this movie now, but back in the day, it was a different story.

No it wasn't. People trashed it back in the day, too. You've just forgotten, or weren't paying attention back then.

R55 - Go see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Kate is wonderful and funny in it.

Best review ever.

"I don't remember a lot of specifics about watching TITANIC in theaters in 1997, but I was 15 years old, which means my two biggest concerns were 1) locating romance, and 2) not dying in a nautical catastrophe. So I think we can safely assume that I fucking loved that movie. I watched TITANIC again on TV with my sister a few years later, making sure to switch it off right before that whole stressful iceberg thingy—a strategy that turns the movie into a pleasant romp about two teenagers who take a perfectly safe boat ride and then bang in a jalopy. The end. Charming! Watching TITANIC for a third time this weekend—in advance of Wednesday's big 3D reopening—I cannot imagine what I was thinking that second time around. I could not wait to get to the second half and watch all these motherfuckers drown...."

(more at link)

I agree with you r36. I have never understood why they had to make up this ridiculous story when there were so many real stories about real people available on titanic. That ship was filled with some if the richest people in the world at the time

I went with a friend who sobbed throughout most of the movie. I sat there trying to imagine why such a cheesy story would get to anybody.

I don't enjoy movies where I can tell you in the first few minutes who is going to die and who will survive.

To this day,I haven't seen it and don't care to !

I saw it today. Back when it came out, I think I saw it twice.

It's a bit schmaltzy but I really enjoyed it again. Surprisingly most of the special effects hold up. Except... the iceberg! Looked like it was made of styrofoam.

The 3D was good. Not overdone and cartoony- enough to add some depth and make the movie look great.

I was a Titanic buff from the age of 7 in the mid-70s, when I found a children's book about it the school library. Shortly after, my dad got me the 1976 illustrated edition of A Night to Remember. I don't know how many times I read that book, and I still have it.

Unlike r36, I don't mind at all that Cameron grafted a fictional love story onto the story. I'm also a huge fan of cinema, so I know he was going for a Doctor Zhivago/Gone with the Wind type epic -- a romance set against the backdrop of a major historical event. So, for me, it worked. Went to see it 11 times back in '97/'98. Sure, some of the dialogue is creaky, but Kate and Leo's chemistry makes the romance work and the spectacle of it was unmatched at the time.

Just got back from seeing the 3D version. It holds up beautifully, and the 3D really adds depth of focus that enhances several scenes, especially during crowd scenes and the sinking. The scene where Jack and Rose are trapped in the flooding corridor behind the locked gate, it's even more heart-pounding and dazzling in 3D.

I don't mind the fictional love story, but why didn't they do an ensemble-type story and focus on several actual people (first class, second class, steerage, stewards, officers) a la "Upstairs, Downstairs" thing? It seems whenever they make a "Titanic" movie, they include certain key historical people as minor characters and then devote the entire movie to fictional characters (i.e. Stanwyck's "Titanic," Catherine Zeta Jones's "Titanic" miniseries, this movie).

I've seen documentaries where they talk about some of the actual people aboard the Titanic and some of them had interesting lives and reasons for being there. Like the father who kidnapped his two young sons and wanted to start a new life with them in America only die (the sons survived and were sent back to their mother).

I can't believe it's been 15 years since Titanic came out. I can remember this movie - and all the hype surrounding it - like it was yesterday.

Ah, the late 90s...what a nice pleasant time that was.

I did and still do like the action sequences when the boat is sinking.

The part that is awful now is the romance. Jack being so attentive and complimentary towards Rose just doesn't hold up. It is like one of those romance novels with Fabio on the cover where the guy just fawns over the kind of average woman. There is nothing about Rose (except her money) that merits all his attention.

r72, she doesn't have any money. That's why she's being forced to marry Cal.

How fast did Leonardo Dicaprio hit the wall? At the time of Titanic, he was the epitome of 'beautiful twink' and just five or so years later he porked out and has never looked the same.

[quote]Did you love Titanic when it first came out?

Yes, I did. I thought it was a very brave thing to do, and the fact that it made all that money should have proved to other gay movies that they didn't have to remain closeted in order to be commercially successful.

I saw it twice. I wanted to see the costumes [especially Rose's hat when she boards] again.

I spent both times [and every time since] re-casting the role of Jack.

At the time this Titanic came out, a lot of Americans were unaware of the big class issue in the disastrous number of deaths from the sinking of the Titanic.

I give Cameron credit for a lot of things (great special effects, interesting love story, picking a blockbuster song) but mostly for educating people about how selfish many of those in 1st class were and how they contributed to the deaths of hundreds of people. How MANY half empty lifeboats sailed away with 1st class passengers while others were left to die.

I remember watching the one with Barb S and thinking all the women survived..

When I watched the 3d version I thought Rose should have been concerned for her maid...

Tried once to watch it but fell asleep. The ship sinks, right?

I did love it when it came out. I felt like, for the first time, I was seeing what this legendary event must have actually looked and felt like.

But the third time I saw it, the spectacle faded, and I was left with that dreadful script. Cameron really is a bad writer.

When she tosses the necklace back in, I thought "You STUPID bitch!"

I love the movie but agree WHY does she toss the necklace?

It was a symbol of her love for Jack. She was saying goodbye. I think she died that night, hence the reunion on the ship.

If she didn't sell the necklace, then how the hell did she afford her life of horseback riding and flying planes?

Sleeping with the right men?

[quote]The scene where Jack and Rose are trapped in the flooding corridor behind the locked gate, it's even more heart-pounding and dazzling in 3D.

You do realize that the water temperature would have literally taken their breath away, and they'd probably be dead in a matter of minutes?

The idea of them wading endlessly through ice water is ridiculous. The scene where she chops the handcuffs was laughable.

As someone above mentioned, the fact that nobody was even cold until the end was a big gaffe.

You really had me there R60! Must be one of my Stupid Days.

Rose went on to be an aviator and was also an actress in Hollywood; why was her identity never dicovered? Her mother and other people who knew her never realized who she was when they saw her in the newspaper or in the movies? For somebody who was living under an alias she chose a pretty high-profile life and her real identity never being found out didn't make any sense.

You beat me to it, R88. Was a totally ridiculous plot point.

And what the fuck kind of name is Bukater? Why in the world would someone name a supposedly upper-class character that?

And being reunited after death with Jack, to the applause of all the other dead people, was beyond the pale.

Di Caprio is a wildly overrated potato-face; smarmy Billy Zane is a bad actor; I never got the appeal of Kate Winslet, who's adequate at best; Celine Dion...need anything be said?; and James Cameron produces simplistic message-heavy mush -- a poor man's Spielberg.

"A poor man's Spielberg?"

As if Spielberg is an artiste? There is nothing so mind-numblingly mushily message heavy as Spielberg doing drama.

That was rather my point, R91.

Jack! Rose! Jack! Rose!!! This is bad!

Hold On.. here we go!!!

I never thought about her dying that night. I thought she was dreaming about reuniting with all the dead people. And did think Bill Pullman looked sexy as hell with his dirty blonde hair and that pierced ear.

[quote]You beat me to it, [R88]. Was a totally ridiculous plot point.

Seriously, I thought of that the first time I saw Titanic in the theatre in '97 and the montage of photos at the end had me thinking that absolutely NOBODY, in all the many years afterwards, never saw Rose in a movie, a newspaper, magazine or newsreel and said "Hey, wait a minute! I know that bitch! She didn't die on the Titanic! She's alive!" It was just completely implausible.

I saw Titanic 3 times. In fact, it was the LAST movie I ever actually paid to watch more than once on the big screen. That's saying alot these days.

I think it is distasteful that the "Re-release in 3-D!" is within weeks of the centennial of the real sinking.

The Titanic has always fascinated me. Always loved the Greek tragedy part.The hubris of the whole thing.A whole world a way of life went down with that ship.

My grandmother saw the Titanic before it left. I love that story. The only time I remember being not allowed to go to a movie was SOS Titanic because I did something naughty. Lol

That said I wanted James Cameron's Titanic to succeed.Remember how many people hoped it was going to bomb.How it could never make its money back etc.I loved the effects the ship the sinking but the plot was bullshit just bullshit.Rose and Jack just utter crap.They should have sank before the ship did.

'You do realize that the water temperature would have literally taken their breath away, and they'd probably be dead in a matter of minutes?'

Actually Jack said yhe temp was above freezing not exactly ice water plus being inside the ship might have warmed it up some..

Rose wasn't that famous and there was no internet so Rose's mean mother may never have seen her photo..

Besides I don't care I still love the movie...

Something the movie left out -- that there was a Black passenger on-board... and he wasn't the help, he was an engineer!

"Go see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Kate is wonderful and funny in it."

I saw that movie. I thought it was overrated. She was the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" in it; she's incredibly immature and annoying but the Jim Carrey character is smitten with her anyway. Typical romantic comedy nonsense.

As for "Titanic"...yes, they were endlessly wading though water even before the ship sank that was cold enough to have incapacitated them in a matter of minutes. Yes, Rose led a fantasy life of aviation and show business success without anyone who knew her ever noticing. Yes, Rose throws the incredible necklace into the sea for no plausible reason. Yes, the movie strongly implies that Rose dies and goes to heaven, going back to the Titanic and her one true love. This movie was so fucking STUPID!

and if you you forget all those flaws it is STILL an awesome movir...

Just watched A NIGHT TO REMEMBER the British film from 1958 based on Walter Lord;s book. A nice companion piece to the Leo 'n Kate movie. Now out in a stunning Criterion blu ray.

Rose wasn't that famous and there was no internet so Rose's mean mother may never have seen her photo..

You're kidding -- there was no internet then!?!

I never thought Rose made it as some kind of super famous actress. The point was that she led a varied and interesting life like Jack wanted her to. She was probably some bit player that nobody heard of. Very easy for her mother to have never found her, especially if she thought she had died.

R101's friend count on Facebook = 7.

Yeah, I never thought Rose Dawson became some big movie star, but a bit player. It seems like she just dabbled in acting. And the things depicted in the photos like flying a plane ("Come, Josephine, in my flying machine"), horseback riding astride ("None of that side saddle stuff"), and "riding the rollercoaster 'til we throw up" were things she and Jack spoke of doing together. I found it touching that she went ahead and did them, anyway.

Here's an interesting video about shoes found from a child on the Titantic and how they finally discovered who they belonged to.

A glossed-up turd of a film, a chancre on the ass of this or any other cinematic season.

BUMP for bad movies we hate!

Surely Rose's mother would have investigated to see if her daughter had survived or perished in the sinking. Surely she would have looked at a list of survivors and seen the name "Rose Dawson" on it and put two and two together.

And what happened to Rose afterward? All she had was the clothes on her back and the ridiculously expensive necklace her erstwhile fiance had given her. She doesn't sell the necklace; I guess she figures if she did it would become public who she was. So how does she support herself? How does she live? WHERE does she live? My guess is that she became a prostitute. What else could she do?

Rose married a successful businessman; that's how she could afford to do all that cool shit.

Which then makes it even more offensive that when old Rose dies, she reconnects with Jack. Uh, hello, what about her husband of 30+ years? Doesn't he get to hook up with her in heaven? They even had kids, ffs!

[quote]she appears to outweigh him by a good [bold]40 or 50 pounds[/bold]

Fixed it for you.

Titanic was the only time something -- a movie, a book, or a TV show -- I was passionate about also crossed over to incredible mainstream success. It had never happened before and hasn't happened since. For that, alone, Titanic will always have a special memory for me.

R114, crossed over from WHAT to the mainstream? It was a big budget Hollywood movie from a director who did nothing but blockbuster movies.

From a current (and excellent) analysis of why the ship and its sinking still fascinate 100 years later:

With its focus on feminine suffering and self-sacrifice, and, especially, in its presentation of an ill-fated romance between the unpretentious young man and the class-bound society girl, the 1953 “Titanic,” which won an Oscar for Best Story and Screenplay, anticipated Cameron’s 1997 movie, which won Oscars for just about everything. A lot of the dialogue that Cameron put in the mouth of his frustrated débutante, Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet), reminds you of Barbara Stanwyck’s lines: “I saw my whole life as if I’d already lived it,” Rose recalls, explaining her attraction to a carefree young artist named Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio). “An endless parade of parties, cotillions . . . the same mindless chatter.” But Cameron gave his film a feminist rather than a patriotic spin. Rose, of a “good” but impoverished Main Line family, is being married off to the loathsome Cal Hockley, who seals their engagement with the gift of a blue diamond that had belonged to Louis XVI. (“We are royalty,” he smugly tells her as he drapes the giant rock around her neck.) “It’s so unfair,” she sighs during a conversation with her odiously snobbish mother, who, in the same scene, is lacing Rose tightly into a corset. “Of course it’s unfair,” the mother retorts. “We’re women.” Small wonder that nearly half the female viewers under twenty-five who saw the movie went to see it a second time within two months of its release, and that three-quarters of those said that they’d see it again.

Rose isn’t the only troubled girl who’s being manhandled. Like all ships, the Titanic was a “she,” and Cameron went to some lengths to push the identification between the ship and the young woman. Both are, to all appearances, “maidens” who are en route to losing their virginity; both are presented as the beautiful objects of men’s possessive adoration, intended for the gratification of male egos. “She’s the largest moving object ever made by the hand of man in all of history,” a smug Ismay boasts to some appreciative tablemates at lunch. Later, as Rose goes in to dinner, one of Cal’s fat-cat friends commends him on his fiancée as if she, too, were a prized object: “Congratulations, Hockley—she’s splendid!”

Cameron underscored the parallels between the young woman and the liner in other ways. The scene in which Jack holds Rose by the waist as she stands at the prow, arms outstretched, heading into what will be the Titanic’s last sunset, has become an iconic moment in American cinema. (And indeed in life: a couple was married in a submersible parked near that very spot.) But far more haunting is the way the image of the speeding prow in this scene morphs, seconds afterward, into a by now equally famous image from real life—the same prow as it looks today, half buried in Atlantic mud under two and a half miles of seawater, drained of color, purpose, and life. In this movie, there’s only one other beautiful “she” that is transformed in this way: we see the flushed face of Kate Winslet, as the young Rose on the night she poses nude for Jack, suddenly wither into the wrinkled visage of Gloria Stuart, the actress whom Cameron cannily chose to play Rose in the modern-day sequences of the narrative. Stuart, a star of the nineteen-thirties, was less than a generation younger than Dorothy Gibson, the lead in the 1912 film.

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When you compare Cameron’s movie to its 1953 predecessor, the evolution in attitudes is striking. The emotional climax of the earlier film is marked by Julia Sturges’s agonized realization that she belongs with her husband after all; the disaster brings this shattered family back together again. Cameron’s picture is about breaking the bonds of family, a point made by means of a clever contrast between its two leading ladies—Rose and the Titanic. At the start of the movie, the ship speeds confidently forward while Rose is described as being “trapped” and unable to “break free” (that corset, that mother); by the end, the ship is immobilized, while the girl strikes off on her own, literally and figuratively. She has to abandon the piece of panelling she’s climbed onto—and tearfully let go of Jack (now a frozen corpse), which she’d promised never to do—in order to swim for help.

Rose, in other words, saves herself; in the end the Titanic is the sacrifice, the price that must be paid for Rose’s rebirth as a girl who acts by and for herself. Or, rather, a woman: she memorably makes love to Jack during her journey, and gets to New York, while the ship remains a maiden forever. This is another reason we can’t get the story out of our heads. If the Titanic had sunk on her twenty-seventh voyage, it wouldn’t haunt us in the same way. It’s the incompleteness that never stops tantalizing us, tempting us to fill in the blanks with more narrative.

r115, you misunderstand. There was no guarantee that Titanic was going to be big hit, let alone the box-office behemoth it became. It wasn't based on a book or a TV series or a comic or even a children's game; the film's leads were still just rising actors, not yet A-list; it was widely expected, in fact, to fizzle in the manner of Cleopatra or Waterworld.

That a female-driven historical romance -- as stated above, the movie is about Rose's growth from sheltered girl to independent woman -- became such a massive, and I mean MASSIVE, success was something that hadn't really happened since The Sound of Music in 1965. Naturally, it's cool and hip to dismiss the film now, and straight fanboys have had it in their sites almost from the moment it was released. Their loss.

Oh, bullshit. It's the fact that you can hear blood-curdling screams in pitch blackness, grinding metal, and endless black water. The survivors saw all those thousands of people die and saw that massive ship upright and sink and everyone was left in the middle of the fucking ocean. That is horrifying.

Oh, and the hot piece of ass dies at the end. Nobody kills off the leading man in movies any more. That is why it struck a chord. No test marketing there.

R118 is right. The budget was written about in the National Enquirer every month. They were speculating that the studio was going to go broke. It was Ishtar times 10. Cameron reshot and trashed props that weren't up to snuff. Early press was that it was going to be a disaster.

Surprise.

If I recall, "Titanic" was originally slated for a summer 1997 release (it was one of the summer popcorn flicks I was anticipating early in the year), but it kept getting pushed back and usually when that happens a movie is doomed. Movie pundits were speculating its pending bomb for months.

Correct, R121.

I feel that the very last scene beginning with the descent to Titanic today, through the promenade deck that became the Titanic of old and ending with Rose reuniting with all of the dead passengers is actually very underrated. It is easily on par with the "Nearer My God to Thee" montage as the most moving moment in the film.

[all posts by tedious, racist idiot removed.]

Loved it the first time I saw it opening night at the Chinese in Hollywood.

I remember there being a audible gasp in the audience the first time you saw Leo's eyes peering above his sketchpad.

I loved it so much that I saw it again a few weeks later, and was less impressed. It's flaws are more glaring when you're not watching it for the first time.

I still love Kathy Bates as Molly Brown.

R9 they would have had to spot the iceberg long before that time to be able to avoid it. It wasn't Jack and Rose caused the Titanic to sink, no.

Hated it then, couldn't understand the hype, and in my heart of hearts believed that in time people would come to agree with me as they have done on many other things from the Viet Nam war to gay marriage.

And they did.

It was overhyped and I find James Cameron insufferable.

Was Kate gaining weight during the filming?

Resurrecting this because fuck it, Titanic was movie magic to me as child, like Jurassic Park. I will always love this grand movie. Cameron knocked the disaster section out of the park. I know some like to act like it's a terrible movie but the Oscars, butts in the seats, and continuous play on TV say otherwise. I guess it's like Friends, something popular that everyone can crap on.

It’s way too long, but what it accomplished was astonishing. A movie of that kind of scale couldn’t have been easy to make. Even today, the size and scope of it all is kind of impressive. The love story is bland, but when people look back on this movie I’m pretty sure the writing isn’t the thing they marvel at.

I saw it when I was a preteen and LOVED it. I think you have to be a straight, sexually budding girl to get something out of it. As an adult I find it silly they feel in love in less than 2 days.

Plus, I thought James Cameron was a visionary when I first saw it but if you look an old film A Night to Remember, he literally rips lines out of that film. That film was his blueprint so his genius in originality really was ass juice. Another thing, JC wrote the relationship in the script so pedestrian perfectly that Kate and Leo ad libbed the fight scene to make it more realistic.

And then at the end of the day, JC gives a lecture and says the reason he made the film was just so he could have a reason to go down and deep sea dive and explore the wreckage.

He is still a good storyteller. Probably the best one around. Terminator 2 is probably the best action film ever made, even better than and Marvel or Avengers. He has to be an asshole to get things done his way.

R119 they did screen it with audiences first. There were several cut scenes.

In the special commentary if the DVD you can see cheesy wish upon a star type of things with Rose and Jack. And extra chase scene, James Camerons wife whipping Nana away in the wheelchair, thins like that that take away the 'emotional throughline' of the story.

Never seen it and it's unlikely I ever shall. Not unless they make Leo-free edit. Seriously dislike that man's face.

[quote] You do realize that the water temperature would have literally taken their breath away, and they'd probably be dead in a matter of minutes?

One of the actual survivors described how he could never listen to a baseball game because the disembodied sound of the crowd was like the noise of the people in the water. It just lasted several minutes.

Absolutely loved the movie when it first came out and still do. One of the keys to it's success was the wonderful music from James Horner. During it's run, the movie benefited from great word of mouth. As a result, the box office remained stable for a very long time. The film had legs.

Meant to write its not it's. Spell checker issue!

R123 yes the ending scene in Titanic was very good and touching, but I think they might have gotten some "inspiration" from another movie ending - "somewhere in time"

I became enamoured of the Titanic story in 1967 because it was the first episode of "Time Tunnel." Since then my knowledge of the whole story just grew and grew. I've seen it twice straight and once stoned [lots of fun]. Anyway, the first time I saw it I counted three minor mistakes. I know there were lots more, but the attention to detail, esp. seeing the insides of the staterooms with real people to give one a perspective, was fascinating. And passengers and crew snuffing it in horrific ways towards the end I appreciated. It seems a whole sick culture has emerged, people fucking dressing up as passengers &c. I think James C. must've alienated Leo D. somehow, because the latter didn't do any promo work for the movie. Is that true?

I thought it was a great epic. I thought the leads miscast and the script more corny than not. But visually it was terrific.

I caught it on the small screen years later. Fell asleep. I was on an intercontinental flight. There were some blue people in it. Oh wait I think that was Avatar. No. Haven't seen Titanic I guess.

I remember when I first visited Titanic's IMDb page about a decade ago its rating there was 6.9 or something like that and now it's 7.8. Based on that I'd say the film's reputation is actually improving, not getting worse like OP says.

I enjoyed it but Leo and Kate were definitely mismatched, physically. She's lovely and voluptuous while (then, at least) he was more Timmy Chalamet childlike. It looked as if she was watching after, and then molesting, someone she was baby-sitting. So, for me, that distracted almost as badly as JC's crap dialogue.

Visual effects were awesome, though. And Victor Garber looked beautiful.

Yes, the word-of-mouth was crazy. People would swoon as they recommended it. "You MUST see this!" etc. The only other time I can recall experiencing that kind of excitement for a movie since then was when people recommended The Matrix.

It's funny to me that people get hung up on the floating door scene. Such small minds. I'm sure that those people are the Super Hero Comic Book Movie Sequel fans.

Cameron knew that the largest demographic of movie goers (teen age boys) would not go for an historical epic and would certainly never see it twice. So he opted for a story that would appeal to the next demographic (young women) and insured repeat viewings. The most prevalent regret dying women have is about a lost love. Terminator also has a love story about a dead hero lover. Very popular with female fans. No mistake on his part. Look at the responses on this thread. "Stupid love story!" You guys were not the targeted market.

Okay, so now the framing device. He wanted to use his footage from the expeditions and he wanted to fund more expeditions. Give him credit for the most inhospitable yet amazing location shooting in the history of film. And credit is also due for the use of CGI as an editing tool for those smooth eerie yet romantic transitions. In order to show both eras he had to have a story line involving a character who existed in both, so a teenager was the right choice. So it had to be a teenage girl, (most likely to be alive past 100) and a love story works with historical dramas. No use just doing a retelling of dead or survivor stories, that had been done before. And making the other love interest a second class/steerage passenger makes telling the tales of both classes a bit more seamless. And you get the happy go lucky chase scene to show the various locations throughout the ship. No having to create and focus on Joe the coal shoveler. Teenage lovers was actually a good device.

And having it in two periods allowed for the historical exposition. So the framing device worked.

Cameron loves feisty strong women.characters. True Lies is his only film which doesn't center on one. He cleverly gets the male audience with the spectacle but he pulls in the women with the female lead. It's key to his box office success. Titanic was no different.

The ship and the effects were great- and I enjoyed the characters moderately (mostly cheesy fun) especially Molly (Kathy Bates). But what drove me crazy was the Hollywood big film lighting- Titanic was never lit like that in it's hallways and salons. And damnit, there were no flashlights in 1912. The film would have been much more terrifying, i.e. real! I remember my Mom saying that an upper class American girl in 1912 would never have worn as much makeup as Rose. Things like that kind of disturb me to no end.

It's a moderately entertaining movie in 2019- and vastly overrated from it's premier and the awards it won.

The only things I remember clearly about this awful film were a couple of bitchy girls sitting behind me and my friends. They were shocked by how fat they thought Katie Winslet was. At one point, one girl said to the other, "Fucking hell, Kathy Bates looks svelte next to her" and the other one replied, "Maybe Kathy Bates is what Kate will look like in five years".

I assumed the girls would be Di Caprio fan girls, but I was wrong. They went on about how he looked like a tranny and how the movie was basically a lesbian love story between a fat butch English rose and a femme tranny Yank. I enjoyed their random bitching more than the film and the awful Enya yowling on the soundtrack. I remember being worried that Celine would show up in a cameo at some point.

Where do you like R146? Must be not America to have thinking girls like that.

I was on a transpacific flight when this movie came out and it came on my screen. It was so stupid I turned it off and slept. I've never seen it and I never will.

Ooh all the Titanic haters showing how high brow they are by being unimpressed. Oooh I'm so enchanted with your intellect!

It got me interested in the story and I ended up reading tons of factual accounts online. So yeah, it was educational for me in a way.

This movie was released when MSNBC had just begun broadcasting and was still a barebones operation. I recall Titanic was nearly all they covered for a solid damn week. Features about the film and rebroadcast documentaries.

I was living out of the country when the movie came out, and when I was returned I was absolutely puzzled at the sheer hysteria surrounding the film. I couldn't go to the grocery store without being inundated by Titanic merchandise, rather ironically, I might add, placed in the frozen section. It was a bizarre thing to come back to.

R142 I found Victor Garbers performance the most poignant and moving in the film.

When he looks at the clock and changes the time.

Agree, R153. His conveyed tremendous emotional pain and regret in a few seconds of film. Beautifully done.

That moment was real. Two survivors reported that was the last time they saw him. It was also staged in the film of A Night to Remember.

I wasn't aware of that, R156. Thank you.

Here's another interesting bit: The character that Mark Rylance played in Dunkirk was based on Second Officer Lightoller who survived the Titanic and then went on to participate at Dunkirk using his own pleasure craft. Some people just can't help but live extraordinary lives.

R154 I have forgotten that scene. What is the significance of him looking at the clock and changing the time?

He's keeping the time because he's going down with that ship. He designed the ship and can't live knowing the thing he worked so hard on is going to kill alot of people on it's first voyage.

Men were deciding to go down with it rather than take a seat from a poor woman or child.

I thought he just stopped it.

The time on the ship's clock was off. His attention to detail prevailed and he felt compelled to correct the time.

Wiki has a whole paragraph on Victor Garber/Thomas Andrews' last moments between 1:40 a.m. (when the last lifeboat left the ship) and 2:10 a.m. (ten minutes before the ship sank).

Why didn't fake Jack climb on that piece of wood with Rose? It still bothers me. He didn't even try.

That old lady was a liar! And kind of a slut!

Fake Jack?

WTF does that mean?

^Fictional character who did not exit and it actually did not really matter if he died at the end or not. Still a bad ending after all this drama.

So for you it's fake Scarlett O'Hara, fake Oliver Twist, fake Indiana Jones, fake Oedipus.

Interesting.

^No, but the Titanic really existed and fiction and real life was mixed here. So Jack was a fake character in a real life event.

Jack was there, he banged every pussy he could and even took a few loads up his bum to pay for drinks and such. He had to die in the movie because he was going to die anyway from syphilis. Poor Rose died a few years afterwards, alone and penniless.