A Few Words About A few words about... Titanic (1 Viewer)

[Thomas T]

Complaining that Cameron doesn't spend enough time on the "real" Titanic story and passengers is like complaining that Gone With The Wind spends too much time on Scarlett and Rhett and not enough time on the actual circumstances of the Civil War.

The Civil War is merely a backdrop to the Scarlett and Rhett story as the Titanic is a backdrop to the Jack and Rose romance. Why complain about what Titanic isn't and was never intended to be?

 

[Tino]

DeeF

Why did you buy the DVD if you dislike the film so much?

 

[Nick Martin]

That's why I'm reading it, but not saying anything. The bashing is so old, so pointless.

 

[MichaelScott]

Yikes!! please don't compare "Gone with the Wind" to "Titanic"...no need for insults...lol.

I didn't hear anything that said he disliked the film..gheez you Titanic lovers are a sensitive bunch

 

[Tino]

Also

Robert Harris started this thread praising the film, DVD and it's presentation.

Can we leave the Titanic bashing in another thread?

 

[DeeF]

That's a really good question, Tino. I've always disliked the movie, which I saw 3 times in the movie theater!

I'm a lover of movies, period, and I love the experience of analyzing the good with the bad. Now, with my home theater, I can analyze and re-analyze to my heart's content.

I particularly like the process of analyzing these big feature films, "big" equating to hugely popular and successful. What are the elements of Titanic (or Lord of the Rings, or The Matrix, or Batman Begins) that make it so popular and successful, even if it isn't to my own taste?

I own 2,200 DVDs, and there are many of these that I don't really care for as films, but I still like to have them.

My taste runs to smaller films, small slices of life, personal dramas involving a few people, and older styles of storytelling. I do agree with Mr. Harris that perhaps the most successful thing in Titanic (to me) was that James Cameron was able to tell a small story, amid this huge spectacle of a story. I don't really care for the aspects of the small story at all, but I do recognize its appeal.

My favorite movies are dramas and comedies from the 40s and 50s, The Heiress, The Best Years of Our Lives, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, Casablanca, etc., as well as splashy and old-fashioned musicals like Meet Me In St. Louis.

Just to give you a sense of my taste, overall, which obviously colors my thinking about some of these modern epics.

The year of Titanic, 1997, there was another movie which I thought was exceptional, and far more complex and artistic than Titanic, L.A. Confidential, which was one of my first DVDs and a movie I admire and praise to this day.

But L.A. Confidential and Titanic are really very different animals, and I can understand why many might prefer the one over the other, or vice versa. Some people do like both.

 

[Tino]

Thanks Dee

You certainly answered my question!

 

[MichaelScott]

Ok, never mind , now he said it..lol

 

[Haggai]

Without getting into opinions about the relative merits of the two films, I don't think that's a valid analogy. GWTW was based on a novel that told the main character's story against a largely romanticized backdrop from a certain place and time in history. It certainly wasn't intended as a documentary-style look at the Civil War, in either the novel or in the film adapation. But with Titanic, Cameron was clearly intending to do a combination of those things, a true-to-life re-creation of the sinking of the boat, together with a fictionalized romantic story. There's all the emphasis on how the boat actually went down, the modern-day part of the story where the search crew discovers the remnants of the ship, etc. Nobody who accepted any Oscars for GWTW asked for a moment of silence for the Civil War dead, or anything like that, but Cameron did when he got his Oscar. So, again, without using any of these particular points as the basis for a judgment, I think the two movies were pretty clearly going for different things.

To bring my own opinion into it, I agree with DeeF in that I think the real-life re-creation elements of Cameron's Titanic are very successful, but that the love story doesn't work. Just IMO, of course--I'm not indicting what Cameron tried to do, just that I think he succeeded in one aspect of it but not in the other.

 

[Zack Gibbs]

^exactly. I doubt anyone would feel the same way about GWTW if it were called "The Civil War".

 

[Lewis Besze]

So why isn't called then "Gone Down with the ship"?
I agree with Zack,and Haggai above.

 

[TravisR]

I'll say it again, Titanic is about the Jack and Rose characters and uses the disaster as a backdrop for their story. A Night To Remember is about the Titanic disaster.

Titanic's main characters are fictional with historical figures used as supporting characters. A Night To Remember's main characters are based in historical fact.

Whether it worked or not is obviously up to each viewer but it seems pretty clear who (and what) the movie is primarily about.

 

[Zack Gibbs]

I don't think anyone is saying the film isn't about Jack and Rose, I saw the movie I'm well aware of that. But the disaster is also a focus of the film, not merely a backdrop.

 

[DeeF]

I've always known that the film is about Jack and Rose, and it is their love story, set during the Titanic disaster. It is this very aspect of the movie that I think warrants criticism. Their story isn't written or told very well, and it doesn't seem to match the quality of detail that went into the historical story, nor does it hold the same interest as the disaster itself.

Similarly, the old Hollywood movie Titanic told a fictional story as its central one, and that movie doesn't really hold up, either. The disaster itself is too compelling, and too recent, to be portrayed as a "backdrop." It demands to be centerstage, so to speak.

This is why, A Night To Remember, continues to be the standard for these kinds of movies, even though I think the newest Titanic surpasses "Night," in the technical department.

 

[Scott Kimball]

Then again, the film is called "Titanic" - not "The Love Boat."

The ship is, in effect, a character in this film - and the film would have been nothing without it. It's also very apparent that Cameron has a tremendous love for the subject of the Titanic - and set out to make a film about her.

Jack and Rose are used as an amalgam, such that we have the poor Jack and the rich Rose and have a reason to see the ship from the perspective of all those who saw it, from steerage to first class. They are integral to the story, yes - and it would have been a completely different film without them. Just as the "MacGuffin" is so important in many of Hitchcock's films, Jack and Rose are important to "Titanic." They are perhaps more than a "MacGuffin", but they are there as a tool to bring the ship to the viewer, and to give weight to its fate.

The fact is, a film about Jack and Rose would not have cost $200,000,000 to make, would not have been so noticed at awards time, and would have sunk at the box office almost as fast as did the Titanic.

-Scott

 

[Dave Mack]

Nice review RAH. I too lived near Straus Park and remember seeing the deleted scene with them. It is on the new SE, yes?
If Cameron had included all the historical stuff in the film it would've been closer to 4 hours. And most people would then say that the more historical stuff was better handled in "Night". And if you read Cameron's take on the story he felt that he needed a story anchor, (pun intended) so that the audience would be emotionally engaged in what happened. I agree with his decision. While I love "Night" and think it's a great film, it does not for me hold the same emotional wallop. It's like watching a REALLY well made documentary. Who are we suppossed to feel empathy for, Lightoller, (who was interestingly made into way more of a hero then history reveals)
It's funny. Alot of people rank on the love story and the strong reaction that Rose's mom had to Jack but I actually once had a similar experience. I met a Rockefeller granddaughter, (I work backstage at a B'way theatre and meet many people during opening nite parties etc...) at Tavern on The Green during the "State Fair" O.N. party. She was truly lovely, charming and elegant. I was smitten. I didn't even believe her at first when she told me her name. (last name was indeed, Rockefeller) We traded numbers and after she was put into a cab by her escort for the evening, (a lawyer friend of the family) I was told by him that she really liked me, hadn't met anyone like me before but that the grandmother would NOT like me. He just wanted to give me a heads up. I went to pick her up for our date later in the week at the mansion off 5th avenue in manhattan and after being taken up in the elevator by the butler, I met (was interviewed by..) the grandmother who was chain-smoking and slugging scotch. She sized me up in 1 minute, (Although I wore a sweater and a blazer, the doc Martens were a HUGE mistake) and after our one and only date, the granddaughter was forbidden to see me again. If I called on the phone, I was told she wasn't home and eventually to just "give it up!!" She would wait til' the grandmother fell asleep, (passed out..) to call me but it became way too complex to try to keep seeing each other. Since she was staying in NYC at the grandmother's, she had to follow her rules. Was a shame because she was truly lovely and we had had a GREAT time. So when I saw "Titanic" I said to myself, "Yep, been there, done that." Her family DEFINITELY didn't want her dating an aspiring musician who worked as a backstage doorman. So to me, the story isn't farfetched in the slightest and actually has quite a bit of resonance. I think a classic old-fashioned romantic take works much better than the irony dripping cynical stories that pass today as "romantic." But that's just me.

And it would be nice to for ONCE have a Titanic-thread not turn into a bash-fest. If this were the movie review thread for the film, go nuts. If people don't like the film, cool, but why do they over and over read threads re: them and then feel compelled to post why they don't like it or why it didn't work. Isn't that thread farting and a violation of one of the forum's main rules?


but what do I know....

d

 

[Chuck Mayer]

The other Titanic threads stayed OK. No one here is bashing it, just giving their opinions. Speaking of...

DeeF wrote:

I am not one to tout BO, but the Titanic BO clearly indicated a strong level of interest in multiple facets of the story, including Jack and Rose. Not everyone feels that way, of course, but we should be careful to speak in generalities. Their story had it's purpose...show the entire ship, across the social strata, and connect the audience to the disaster. I think the screenplay was marvelous. We can get snide about the dialogue, but Joe Public loved it, at each of my five (packed) showings across three months. Cameron reached the broadest audience in 15 years, in a new age of home video and spectacle.

Titanic is on the short list of greatest motion picture accomplishments, our personal opinions be damned

Thanks for the mini-review, Robert. Good to hear the PQ hold up.

Take care,
Chuck

 

[Kain_C]

It's the same problem I had with Pearl Harbor, a movie I detest with every fiber of my being. The actual attack was the backdrop for some hackneyed love triangle. The actual representation of the incident was Bay being Bay; vehicles performing impossibly ridiculous manuevers and a total lack of any kind of realism or respect for the real event. Pearl Harbor the tragedy became Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor the dumb action/romance movie.

It seems like these filmmakers do not think these historical events are enough to 'sell' on their own and they have to inject young, modern film stars and dopey cliched love stories to fill seats (and therefore their pockets).

Even though I feel this way, I still think Titanic is an ok if very overrated movie. Successful disaster spectacles, like Titanic, are not huge achievements because they so easily appeal to all walks of moviegoers. It doesn't take much to sell them to audiences at all because we are drawn to disasters. Add in romance, intrigue, action, and popular actors/actresses, you have a nice box office draw.

I'm still deciding whether or not to buy Titanic.

 

[Chuck Mayer]

Kain wrote:
Which is why Pearl Harbor, The Day After Tomorrow, and Deep Impact all made close to $1.8 B worldwide of course. Neither Kate nor Leo had shown the ability to open a film, before or after Titanic. Titanic, like it or not, does not fit into an easy box. It was successful because more than ANY OTHER FILM IN DECADES, it broke across all four quadrants (Male, Female, Young, Old). Why do people, like the film or not, try to diminish it's success? It's ability to WORK for so many people.

And the PH comparison? I agree with Bay failing to give the event he filmed it's due respect, but how does that complaint play with Cameron? Where does he cheat the actual story? Where does he show a complete lack of realism or respect for the real event?

That's a highly dubious claim to hurl at Titanic. One that cannot be supported in my opinion.

Take care,
Chuck

 

[Jeff Whitford]

I never hated Pearl Harbor in fact i've liked everytime I watch it. Then I come on here and everyone has to bash it making me think that my judgement is wrong. You know the old adage "if you hear it enough it must be true" I guess im a sucker for romance. I think both of these movies are throw backs to the pictures made in the 40's & 50's. Titanic is IMO a much better movie than Pearl Harbor.