Apparantly Titanic's the worst film ever... (1 Viewer)

[Edwin-S]

He was in an iron mask most of the time?

Seriously though, I do not think TITANIC's box office success was due to a bunch of Dicapprio (sp?) besotted teeny-boppers. The film was successful, because it was based on a subject that fascinates people. Information about the TITANIC is one of the most requested subjects at the Library of Congress (or is it at the Smithsonian). I can't remember.

The TITANIC disaster wasn't like some plane crash where you're killed instantly. It took a long time for a lot of people on that ship to die. It is morbid, but a person watches the movie with part of the mind dwelling on how a person would react if they had been in those people's shoes. It is fascinating to see how people handled the situation. That is why TITANIC was such a flop, in my mind. Instead of focussing on the real stories of the people involved, Cameron chose to focus on a cliched love story and couldn't resist putting phony gun play into a story that had plenty of real tragedy happening.

With all that being said, the movie is certainly not the worst film ever made. It is just that it could have been so much more than it turned out to be.

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

A.I.'s ending is more melancholy than it is uplifting. Stanley Kubrick had written a beautifully conceptualized and provocative ending only to be realized on film by Steven Spielberg himself.

~Edwin

 

[Tino]

Cameron has said many times that he didn't want to tell the same documentary like Titanic stories that other films, such as the excellent A Night To Remember and the below average soap operish Titanic (1953) did.

His goal was to tell a simple intimate fictional love story a'la Romeo and Juliet set on the Titanic and stay with that story all the way to the end. I think he succeeded magnificently.

 

[george kaplan]

While it's ridiculous to say that Titanic's success was solely due to teenage and pre-teen girls, they were, based on my experience, a major factor in the degree of that success. I went to see this film and was in a theater that was easily 90% teen or preteen girls (this was many, many weeks into the release). I got an emergency call (on vibrate, taken in the lobby), and had to leave at the beginning. A couple of weeks later I went again, and this time it was easily 97% teen or preteen girls, and this time I watched the movie, and listened to their pre-film talk about Leo, Leo, Leo, how cute he is, and isn't this such a sad film, etc., etc., and throughout the film I had to listen to their swooning etc.

Did lots of adults see and like this movie? Without a doubt. Is a significant portion of that big box office from 12 year old girls who saw the movie over and over? Also, without a doubt.

 

[Clay-F]

I would call Titanic the #1 movie that earned way more money that it should have....

Followed by Episode 1 and 2 I think

 

[Tino]

What percentage would you consider significant?

Anecdotal evidence is rarely reliable or relevant. For instance I saw Titanic many times in the theater and mostly noticed senior citizens and married couples.

I actually believe young girls added no more or less than any other demographic. Perhaps they were more noticeable, but to think that Titanic's huge boxoffice accomplishment ($1.8 billon worldwide) is mainly due to a "significant" amount of prepubescent girls swooning over Leo just doesn't hold water!

 

[david stark]

All the films on that bottom ten are pretty bad. Although batman and robin, the avengers and blair witch should all be above titanic and ai (of the films I've seen).

People generally vote more for biggest dissapointment rather than worst film and in that case titanic may be deservedly top.

As for AI, I though the most of the film sucked, not just the ending. It started well and I thought more themes were going to be explored, but it turned into a predictable boring wishy washy pile of steaming s**t and the ending only made it even worse.

 

[Tony-B]

The votes have changed, and Pearl Harbor is now on top, with Titanic as second, Blair Witch as third, AI as fourth, and Vanilla Sky as fifth.

The funny thing was that on the same website, Titanic was voted as the best movie ending of all-time.

That being said, I don't trust any "worst movies list" that contains AI.

 

[larry mac]

Titanic is one of the greatest movies ever made; and that is a proven fact backed up by millions of fans worldwide.

Of course there will always be the snobs who don't want to be part of anything "the masses" like; wannabe movie critics (who rarely like the popular movies).

The idea put forth about the audiences being largely teen girls is not only false but pure rubbish. Almost everyone I know saw it and loved it.

ps, I'm no teenager.

 

[DavidAC]

I think Titanic could be considered the greatest movie ever made, it made a killing at the boxoffice (doubt anything will unseat Titanic for a very long time), cleaned up at the Oscars, I think critics were pretty receptive to it when it came out, it's hard to say a movie is the worst ever with that kind of background. I liked Titanic and thought it was a well done movie by James Cameron, I wouldnt expect anything less by him though, he needs to do another movie soon.

 

[Steve Christou]

I loved some of these replies...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertain...lm/3126650.stm

btw Titanic is far from being the worst anything, they could have had the same poll next week with a completely different result.

Ignoring the two young leads for a moment, just for the fact it depicts a historic disaster with so much eyepopping realism and spectacle makes it a must-see in my books.

"The worst film of all time BAR NONE has to be Star Wars: The Phantom Menace!
As far as I'm concerned it never happened! This film makes Howard the Duck seem like a masterpiece!!! George.... retire!! "
John May, England

 

[Steve Christou]

After watching Pearl Harbor I felt that three hours of my life had been stolen. I'd also like to nominate A.I. as I actually sat through that film, mouth agape, unable to understand how the film ever got made. The only plausible theory I've come up with is that Kubrick was playing a joke on Spielberg. He fed him this ludicrously sentimental script (knowing that Spielberg can't resist a sob story), went through the motions of actually filming it, and then died before he could halt the proceedings and reveal it all as a massive prank.
Jem Fry, UK

Oh sheet! Was it that bad?

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

TITANIC'S success at the box office was not due solely to teenage girls. We ran it at several of our theatres for 12-13 weeks first-run, and the audience was always wide-ranging. The reason the film was a commercial success was that it appealed to people who rarely go to the movies - senior citizens and older couples, especially. It was *the* event movie of the year, the movie that you *had* to go to see. That's how a movie becomes a huge financial hit, not narrowly appealing to teenage girls.

 

[Seth--L]

So by this logic, Britney Spears must be ten times the artist W. A. Mozart is since she has more fans and sells more records.

The best test of a film's quality is how well it holds up overtime. I doubt 40 years from now people are going to be talking about "Titanic", writing endless critical studies of it like "Vertigo" and "Citizen Kane", both losers at the box office.

 

[george kaplan]

Good points Seth.

I'll just say this. If you subtracted the young girls who saw this movie more than once from the box office reciepts you'd be left with a big box office film, but not the #1 of all time.

This is a meaningless debate, but I know what the theaters I went to looked like.

 

[Seth--L]

Yeah. I was in high school when it came out and I know many many girls that saw it as much as 4 and 5 times.

 

[Paul_Sjordal]

Look, using a popular vote to determine a "worst movie" list will always produce flawed results. In order to make such a list, a movie will have to have been seen by large numbers of people. That means popular movies and recent movies will always be over-represented.

I think it is safe to say that the worst movies of all time have never been distributed, have never been seen by the average movie goer and have never been seen even by critics. Bad movie aficionados like to point at Manos: Hands of Fate, but somewhere out there is a movie even worse. Maybe it was made by some guy in his back yard with a consumer-grade movie camera. Maybe it was promptly burned by the guilty studio on completion. Whatever the case, it's out there and it's probably not alone.

I mean, how seriously can you take any "worst movie" list that doesn't include Manos: Hands of Fate?

 

[Tino]

By your logic George, you are saying that these girls contributed close to a BILLION dollars to Titanic's gross!

A BILLION dollars???? Riiiiight.

 

[Mike Broadman]

It astonishes me that most people think the ending of AI is happy or sappy or sentimental. That ending is the creepiest thing I have ever seen in a movie- because that's not really his mother, yet he acts like it is. The two "characters" are acting love but are they feeling it? What are they loving, when one is a machine and the other is a recreation? Creepy stuff. Osment's performance enhances this feeling- he acts like a machine acting like he loves but awkwardly. That is some hard shit to pull off.

AI, like Eyes Wide Shut, are deeply flawed and strikingly brave and original films. They should at least be given credit for the latter and I think it's a shame that many of the same people who slam them also complain that there is nothing new in film.

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

We again have another thread that has come close to denigrating girls (and women in general) as second-class citizens. Even *if* Titanic’s main audience composed mainly of teenage girls and women, that went and saw it more than once, so what? Why is this such a big deal?

You don’t hear anyone else say, “The success of The Phantom Menace or The Fast and The Furious were because of pimply faced teenage boys who went to see it over and over again”. Furthermore, unlike TPM, at least we didn’t see girls camping out for days to be the first ones to see Titanic and even dressing up in costumes of their favorite characters. Now, tell me which one is more ridiculous?

To me, it is silly to single out girls and women on a success of a film as if there is some kind of stigma attached to it when they are much a part of the movie-going public like any other group.

And yes, at my screenings there were quite a few senior citizens that saw the film.

~Edwin