'Titanic' is a Terrible Movie

I will die on this hill.

We have all seen this movie, it’s like a rite of passage film in America, you sit through it on TBS when you can’t sleep in a hotel room and the next thing you know you’re passed out.

It’s a love story about a guy and a girl, social status separates them but love brings them together. Blah blah blah. It’s a standard story about love lost and lives fulfilled by hearts desire and not society’s expectations.

It’s also set on the Titanic, one of the most famous tragedies in history. The perfect storm of ego, expense, vanity, pride, sacrifice, honor, and glory.

From JJ Astor pushing his pregnant wife through a window to get her safely in a lifeboat, while accepting his fate to the owners of Macy’s staying onboard to die together. “I’ve lived with my husband by my side, I will die by his.”

There are so many stories that survived the sinking, of women begging their husbands to join them to children being put in lifeboats alone to the souls of third class locked below decks. There are many true stories to give life, to showcase to the world that in the midst of danger and death, there are those who sacrifice themselves to save another.

But no, James Cameron chooses to create a fake love story that glosses over pretty much everything that is actually interesting about the Titanic. Because apparently he doesn’t think that anyone else has heard of Captain EJ Smith, Molly Brown, JJ Astor, Thomas Andrews, Officer Lightoller, or literally anyone else on board with a more compelling story.

Did you know Molly wasn’t supposed to be onboard? She was traveling through Egypt and got word that her grandson was sick so she raced back to America as quickly as she could.

The Astors weren’t supposed to be onboard either. They first met Molly in Egypt while on their extended honeymoon and when she became distraught they accompanied her home so she didn’t have to make the trip alone.

That right there is far more interesting, don’t you think?

But if a love story and the Titanic is the combination you want, go ahead and read about the Astors. JJ had divorced his first wife two years earlier, she had been cheating on him with another man and JJ paid to not have that story in the papers and paid her the alimony she wanted. He never lashed out, never abused her, never cheated on her, never did anything against her will.

But after the divorce was final, he started dating a girl who yes had just turned 18 and he had chaperoned her through New York High Society but a man in his late 30s courting an 18 year old woman? Hardly scandalous then and hardly scandalous now. It’s surprising, but she was described as a worldly vivacious woman with an old soul, some called her perfect for him. And they were genuinely and unabashedly in love with each other.

His ex wife did not like that though, so she started going to every paper and magazine in sight and telling them lies about how he robbed the cradle and brainwashed her into marrying him and how horrible JJ was and how naive and stupid this girl must be. It got so bad that as soon as they were married they ran to the other side of the globe just to get some peace.

For a time, they were happy. With a baby on the way, no cares in the world, and touring countries as they please, what could go wrong?

After the ship sank, his wife refused any official payment from the Astors as compensation. She got some alimony for her son, but she stopped accepting when she got remarried a couple years later. By some letters of hers after the disaster, I’m not sure she ever got over losing JJ. To love someone so much and to lose them in one night, how does someone get over that kind of loss?

But Jack and Rose, that’s the love story to last the ages, right?

Honestly, I find this movie entertaining in a minor aspect, I do enjoy pointing out flaws in it. It just keeps falling flat on its ass.

Only Billy Zane adds some angst and depth to the story, ironically. His rage outbursts are quite triggering to those who have experienced abusive relationships.

Kate Winslet does what she can with the script, her character is one that I think a lot of women can identify with. She’s a passionate woman who wants to experience life and see the world differently than her mother and fiancée. She also sees it differently than Jack, who relishes in what she represents more than maybe who she really is. I can personally relate to her because I grew up with everyone expecting me to do certain things; I spent five years in a relationship because everyone pushed us together and made it vocal that they expected us to get married. Who hasn’t felt so trapped in a relationship, job, place; so much so that they know if they started screaming, no one would even bat an eye?

Jack, I’m not really sure how to feel about him. Leonardo DiCaprio gives a fine performance but it feels like he recycles a lot of aspects from his time as Romeo. The longing stares, the boyish charm, the awkward way he acts at dinner, it’s all very standard. But much like Billy Zane, he doesn’t listen when Rose says no.

I love seeing Old Rose view the footage of the wreck and telling her story and watching her toss the diamond into the sea (bitch why?). I feel like centering the story more around Old Rose would have been more interesting.

Let’s talk about the CGI special effects and other filming errors. There is a surprising amount.

It’s not perfect. Let’s just admit that right off the bat, the mid to late 90s were a bad time for CGI. It borders on comical nowadays. I’ll give some bullet points:

You can tell when there’s a stunt person replacing an actor, there’s even a couple scenes where if you pause Jack and Rose running from the water near the end, you can clearly see their faces poorly edited on top of the stunt doubles.

The Parisian Cafe where Rose and Cal have a luncheon with the Captain and Molly and pretty much the rest of First Class did not serve full meals. Think of it as a modern brunch cafe with alcohol and snack plates, things like that.

In the original theatrical version, the sky that Rose looks up at while floating on the door (that could have fit two people, the science has been done to show this) the sky in the shot is completely wrong. In April, some of those constellations that are shown are completely wrong for the area they’re in, if you could call that CGI sky with dots constellations.

When Rose gets the axe, she smashes the glass to open the case but then in the next shot the glass is completely intact.

Rose has a moving beauty mark, it starts off on her left but then is on her right side for the rest of the film. Kind of reminds me of Robin Hood Men in Tights.

There is one scene where you can glimpse Rose wearing white sneakers.

The floor ranges from tilting to level several times while the ship is sinking.

While the ship is sinking, some of the shots of the deck rising out of the water there are no people present.

When you see the aerial shots of the ship, the shadows sometimes don’t match the passengers “walking” on it.

The way the ship is CG’d is that they built one side of the ship and then with computer generation “mirrored” it to create the other side. However, the port side and starboard sides of the ship were not identical, only a total Titanic nerd would notice but the rooms and crews quarters had completely different setups and the portholes were different on each side of the ship. The gymnasium and forward Grand Stairs were on one side and the crews quarters were on the other, so they had completely different windows.

Rose’s shoes change several times during the sinking portion of the film.

There are moments while the ship is sinking that you can see passengers and items being pulled by wires to move them in the direction of the tilt.

When the ship breaks in half, the few shots showing it have the water at different levels. Today, we know that the ship would have only been raised a quarter of that height, it would not have had to get the high to break apart. However, the water either reaches the third funnel or it’s still a good distance from it on those few shots.

The sketch of Rose differs from shot to shot, from dark charcoal lines to softer ones and back and forth from them. Also the charcoal is modern charcoal, back then Jack would have been using thinner circular pieces of willow charcoal.

There are so many more but I’m getting hand cramps from typing.

Let’s get to the side characters, shall we?

I’m just going to begin with my biggest problem about this part, Captain EJ Smith going into shock and locking himself with the helm.

I’m sorry, a man that has survived 50 years at sea, through countless other disasters, around the world, with ships bigger than the Titanic carrying more people, and you think this is the moment where he shuts down? Really?

Cameron completely disregards accounts of people saying the Captain was searching for people to put into lifeboats. Alerting as many people, passengers and crew as possible; leading the crew that refused to leave their posts so that everyone had as much time as possible. Yeah, there's an illustration showing him swimming up to a lifeboat with a baby, but there’s little evidence to support that. The sentiment though, is that he was not idle; he was a captain for god's sake.

He’s faced death, with even greater odds than this, and you think that he would just check out and leave everyone else to deal with this on their own?

Yeah, no. But Cameron got lazy.

Let’s go on with Officer Murdoch, the one that shoots himself rather than deal with the mass hysteria that’s rising on deck.

How DARE you. Murdoch may have been harsh and forceful with only allowing women and children into the boats and letting them go with too few people; but he did not shoot himself. There are accounts that he fired the gun to regain some control, but he stayed at his post that much is clear.

With all the death going on already, let’s just add suicide to the film. Why not? So what if it triggers some people?

If it’ll get you another Oscar on your mantle.

Molly Brown commandeered a lifeboat, as if some half frozen pip squeaked man was going to stand a chance against her. Please. She coordinated with Officer Lightoller so he could go back and check for survivors.

By the way, I also don’t think Lightoller gets enough credit in this film, here’s a man who continuously saves people. In little or big ways, he keeps his lifeboat calm and collected to the best of his ability, he is the ONLY one to go back and search, he manages to save people who would have died otherwise.

I also have to point out that if you saw Dunkirk, he’s one of the civilians who packs his boat with soldiers to save them. Long after his retirement from White Star Line, he still was pulling people from the water.

I just want to take a minute to appreciate that kind of conviction. There are different types of reactions when people survive traumatic experiences; those who try to shut it out, those who thrive in spite of it. But then I think there's another group to consider, those who show their true colors in it and it does not alter them after the fact; the brave. We all like to think that we can be heroes, if faced with a dangerous situation you want to believe that you would shield someone with your own body. You want to believe that you’d defend the innocent. You want to believe that you’d be the savior. However, thinking and acting are two entirely different things. As humans, we freeze and we panic, and those are perfectly natural reactions; self-preservation is an evolutionary response. But there are those few who run back into the fire, without thinking. Lightoller is one of those, and he does not get enough credit in that aspect.

There are so many flaws, so many errors in this movie, it blows my mind that it’s still revered today as a classic. It’s a long winded romance centered around a traumatic experience that earned oscars and at this point hundreds of millions of dollars. Especially since every time he “remasters the footage” he releases it to theaters so it can earn more money for him. He milks it like an old cow and eventually the milk will stop coming.

It honestly sickens me how much money he’s made from it and how little he actually cares about the Titanic site. The actual wreck site, he keeps leaving plaques and moving things and taking things from it. Just so he can have five more minutes of footage to sell to the highest bidder.

If he was filming the wreck site for historical research, to help preserve the site, hell to donate to a museum of historical society; I would respect him. But he doesn’t, he goes down there to make money for himself and nothing else.

His ego is bigger than the actual Titanic.

If only his film was just as big. It’s certainly a success in monetary value, it’s part of a lot of people's references when they’re asked about love stories in films.

Romeo and Juliet.

Kate and Leopoldo.

Jack and Rose.

When people think of great love stories, those are typical of the couples they’ll talk about.

I wonder if anyone thinks about what life might’ve been like for them after the disaster? They are obviously two very different people, he loved traveling around the world and yes she did travel and do a lot of incredible things but she also seemed to liked to have a place to call home. She was an actress, part of a studio not a traveling company. He was an artist, who was always moving. Maybe they could have worked out, but she seemed to assimilate to people she knew. If she had stayed with him, he might have unknowingly pushed her to be like him and later on she would have resented him for it. She needed to do those things because she wanted to, not because someone dragged her onto a dance floor.

Jack also seemed like one of those people who could be a permanent vagabond, traveling whenever he liked. I know he says in the beginning that he’s excited to go home but eventually, home would probably seem too monotone for him.

Rose would have outgrown him, she would always care for him but eventually that passion they shared onboard would’ve boiled down. Maybe she’d get tired of not having a place to call home, maybe she’d want to move on before he was ready, maybe she’d just want different things than him.

The thing that keeps Rose loving him in this movie is the “what might’ve been” factor. He died before she could find out that the way he chews his food drives her insane. It’s that flash fire of passion that drives this story, and it’s always so fleeting in real life that most people find comfort in watching films like this that idolize love like that. The ultimate fantasy; throwing everything away for someone who makes you feel alive in every millisecond of the day.

I’ve never experienced anything like that, with anyone. As much of a realist as I am, I don’t believe in true love or a fairy tale for real life; I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want that at some point in my life. I’ve had my heart broken, I’ve broken hearts along my way, and I’ve loved with more of my heart and soul than I thought possible. But I’ve never had a romance that was fleeting and fiery and filled me in ways that I didn’t know existed. I may not want a fairy tale life, but I’d like a chapter of it at some point to just say that I’ve loved someone with everything I am and had a rewarding experience in return.

What could have been if the Titanic hadn’t sunk? ‘What if’ opens so many avenues of inquiries, it might as well be equivalent to the multiverse of madness. But that’s the mystery that continues to draw people back to not just the Titanic as a real life tragedy, but to the film of a love story that might have been more. The star crossed lovers, and what might have been.

Also WHY did she throw the diamond away???