I remember that after the movie came out, a reporter went to the Halifax? NS cemetery where the TITANIC victims were buried, and found a stone marked “Jack Dawson”-did Cameron get the character’s name from it? Or was it just coincidence?
My $ would be on “prank”.
It is real. The gravestone doesn’t actually say ‘Jack Dawson’. It says ‘J Dawson’ but that still leads some rather uniformed people to believe it is the Jack Dawson (from the movie) grave. The grave is, in fact, a real Titanic victim by the name of John Dawson who was a stoker on the Titanic.
There’s a whole list of movies that remain as or more popular. Star Wars is a perfect example. Regardless, the popularity of the movie doesn’t say anything one way or the other about the quality of the movie.
I couldn’t agree more. Even if it was compelling when it was released, and I imagine it was at least a little more interesting then, it just doesn’t hold up today. But the fact remains that it was met with highly polarized views even when it was released. Yes, it had amazing cinematic effects for the time, but I feel like Kubrick’s focus was too much on that aspect and the storytelling, character development, and dialogue all suffered immensely because of it. And that’s why the film just doesn’t hold up anymore, because it relies too much on those cinematic effects and they look ridiculously dated now. A lot of people say it’s Kubrick’s best film but, frankly, I think it’s his worst by a large margin.
As for the OP, I’ve never seen Titanic, but I think the point that if you’ve seen a movie that many times and love it as much as you do, you can’t be objective about it. I have a few films that I really love and have seen plenty of times, and it’s difficult to see the flaws in them, but I don’t hold illusions that my favorites are the best. If you ask enough film fans, you may get several films that show up a lot, but you’re not going to approach anything close to a concensus on a single greatest film. And, frankly, you shouldn’t. There is just too much subjectivity in the medium to ever reach a concensus.
I did not know that!
Thanks, Ralph124c - ignorance fought.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show?
Personally, I think the iceberg deserved Best Actor. It was so cold and slow moving, and yet had such a dramatic impact, especially because so much of its character was under the surface. The rest of the movie was pretty much a series of clichéd characters and situations that was done better and earlier by Irwin Allen.
Stranger
I think you forgot a zero. I can literally list 500 movies that are better, though if the OP thinks Kane is “experimental movie covering period tripe” and that the saga of Jack and Rose represents the paragon of “character depth”, then I accept we are simply live in different realities and absolutely nothing I say, compelling or not, will make an iota of difference.
I’m still waiting for the punch line from the OP.
Start with the first twenty then. Pick them in order and I am honestly interested. Go!
I was always open to that. There is no punchline to this thread. The only other contenders I know of are Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, and the Wizard of Oz and those are quite old and two of them were made by the same director in the same year but they are epic dramas that have to be scrutinized the exact way that Titanic does for it to be fair. I would be willing to hear arguments for some dark horses like Airplane! or the original Star Wars. Always remember though, nothing has to be perfect in every category to be #1. There are always examples of something that does something better in isolation than the #1 choice, It is all about the totality of the work.
I agree with both of you. For some reason, I can’t believe this isn’t all sarcastic. I sat through most of the horrible dialogue (“You could just call me a tumbleweed, blowin’ in the wind”) and corny-as-shit sentimental “romantic” claptrap (“I’m the king of the world!” - puke) and still turned it off after about 20 minutes of the spectacle that was the sinking scene because I didn’t care at all about the characters. Since I don’t want to write a wall of text defending a single choice for my favorite movie, instead I’ll just go through my DVD/Blu-Ray collection and list 50 movies I think are better than Titanic:
- About A Boy
- Airplane!
- Amelie
- Before Sunrise
- Before Sunset
- Bicycle Thieves
- The Big Lebowski
- Bob Le Flambeur
- Branded To Kill
- Brazil
- Broadcast News
- Casablanca
- Dazed and Confused
- Five Easy Pieces
- Ghost World
- The Godfather
- The Godfather Part II
- Goodfellas
- The Grifters
- Groundhog Day
- Ikiru
- In The Mood For Love
- The Killing Fields
- Make Way For Tomorrow
- The Manchurian Candidate
- Miller’s Crossing
- Mulholland Drive
- My Dinner With Andre
- Mystery Train
- Night On Earth
- No Country For Old Men
- Out Of The Past
- Pulp Fiction
- Repo Man
- Rififi
- The Rules of the Game
- Le Samourai
- Seven
- Seven Samurai
- The Seventh Seal
- Spirited Away
- Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
- Sullivan’s Travels
- Sweet Smell Of Success
- Talk To Her
- Taxi Driver
- This Is Spinal Tap
- Tokyo Story
- Umberto D.
- Withnail and I
I haven’t read all of the replies, but a quick skim has indicated that people are taking you somewhat seriously. Ok, I’ll do the same.
I don’t remember, who it was that says that “Showgirls” is a great movie, but I hope he/she replied. That would be some great reading.
My first response was " you must be joking. No one could watch that movie 1000 times without being hooked up to life support in a hospital, in a coma, with the CD player on REPEAT. No one in their right mind could watch that movie 1000 times. So perhaps the reason you lost count after 300 is because that’s when the lobotomy was completed.
Seriously, this movie isn’t even close. Ot’s take the script. Horrendous. If you cut the words “Jack” and “Rose” out of the script, the movie is about 50 minutes long.
The casting comes next. We don’t need to go any further than Bill “I am NOT a statue, I’m a 2x4!” Paxton, with the epic line delivered in perfect Paxton tone deaf style… “Titanic, I never really got it.” WTF? You were looking for jewels to harvest Bill, you didn’t and. Never will care about Rose’s story.
And let’s look at old Rose. The selfish old bag, whose granddaughter is caring for and could clearly use some financial help with the old bitch, tosses the only thing she has to give to her granddaughter in an inheritance. Why would she do that? You keep that piece of multi million dollar hardware all those years, never use the money, and when you are on your last legs, you toss it into the North Atlantic? “Whoops”, my ass. I wish your granddaughter was behind you when you dropped that necklace, because you would be going in after it.
Beyond that, Rose I’d going to give up a seat on a lifeboat to be with Mr Potatohead, ruining her mothers life, and probably go down to her death, while she gives up a life of opulence and luxury. Yeah, right.
The plot comes next. It’s boring and absurd. I understand its a love story, and they don’t have to be Shakespearean in quality, but is thing sucked. It defied belief. Rose wouldn’t be able to stand downwind from Mr Dawson, yet alone have sex with the filthy ship rat. N the man never changed his clothes once (except for the tuxedo scene). Rose would have cut off Jacks arm with the axe. She would have NEVER found him in the cavernous labyrinth of the ship. They would have both had hypothermia from spending such a long time in the water before they made it to the deck. They went in the water at the stern. they would have both been sucked under and drowned with the ship, but amazingly they not only survive, but find each other. It goes on and on. Here’s a question… Rose has never worked a day in her life, and has had a life of luxury to this point in her life. How does she leave the boat, with no money, no clothes, no name, and is able to make it in America? Top it off with some not-meant-to-be-but-were-hilarious death scenes “the poor bastard PINGING off the propeller shaft”, causing this moviegoer to burst out laughing in the theater comes to mind, and you have a winner! This movie gets a 6or 7 on the strength of the special effects, but e rest of the movie is shit.
There are too many plot holes, that alone would have sunk the ship. You can’t compare the Movie to Citizen Kane because they simply aren’t comparable. We cannot look at Citizen Kane in today’s world and think it is special. But back then, it was the most innovative film of all time, and just about every critic agrees with this. I personally don’t get it, but I’m not a film major either. The titanic? I’ve heard Avatar eating more props for being some great masterpiece compared to Titanic, and that movie was another turd sandwich.
I’m betting more people disagree than agree with you on this one. Time to go back and read some of the comments. The OP was priceless.
(All typos are courtesy of my iPad, the most hideous writing tool ever produced with an auto-correct feature made by monkeys)
The General (Keaton)
Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov)
I Was Born, But… (Ozu)
Trouble in Paradise (Lubitsch)
Man’s Castle (Borzage)
The Crime of M. Lange (Renoir)
His Girl Friday (Hawks)
The Lady Eve (Sturges)
Meet Me in St. Louis (Minnelli)
Black Narcissus (Powell/Pressburger)
The Seven Samurai (Kurosawa)
Vertigo (Hitchcock)
La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
Persona (Bergman)
Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky)
The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo)
Salesman (Maysles/Maysles)
The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah)
The Spirit of the Beehive (Erice)
Chinatown (Polanski)
In fact, I can think of half-dozen films by almost all of these directors that are better than Cameron’s film. Heck, even The Terminator and Aliens are far, far superior.
The truth is, outside the world of Visual Effects, there is absolutely nothing inventive about Titanic, which puts it in the same league as The Jazz Singer, a technical marvel but little else. It is just Big. But Big does not equal Good.
Is there some good acting? Sure, by good actors. But there is a lot of really bad acting too (Exhibit A: Billy Zane, though Leo’s two ethnic buddies rank a close 2nd and 3rd). The writing is, by and large, clunky and derivative. The film simply has two things on its side: (1) scale, and (2) a simple, uncomplicated, incredibly non-sophisticated love story that people can latch onto.
There are no nuances, no shades of grey. It is a black-and-white moral universe, that allows us to wallow in both sentiment and cultural superiority. Sometimes, great Art can come from such simplicity, but Titanic is (IMHO) not a good example.
I saw Titanic before it was released in the theaters, before practically any critic got their hands on it, certainly before I had any opportunity to be swayed by one allegiance or another. And I thought then what I think now–that it is visually spectacular and emotionally inert; that it stacks its deck in favor of the lovers in the most hokey, inelegant way possible; and that the film is agonizingly predictable, and that repeated viewings (I was married once, so I have sat through it on other occasions) yields absolutely nothing new in terms of character insight or motivation. It is a one-dimensional movie.
Nothing wrong with that. I have no problem with other people liking it, just like some of the films I listed people won’t like either. But to assert it’s the Best Anything is simply, to these humble-but-experienced eyes (I’ve worked in the industry for two decades) ridiculous.
1 - A Canterbury Tale (Powell/Pressburger)
2 - A Matter of Life and Death (Powell/Pressburger)
3 - Seven Samurai (Kurosawa)
4 - The Wicker Man (Hardy)
5 - I Know Where I’m Going (Powell/Pressburger)
6 - The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell/Pressburger)
7 - Robin and Marian (Lester)
8 - Amacord (Fellini)
9 - Some Like it Hot (Wilder)
10 - Local Hero (Forsythe)
11 - The Maggie (MacKendrick)
12 - Citizen Kane (Welles)
13 - Henry V (Olivier)
14 - Peeping Tom (Powell)
15 - Night of the Hunter (Laughton)
16 - Shadow Warrior (Kurosawa)
17 - Master and Commander the Far Side of the World (Weir)
18 - Z (Costa-Gavras)
19 - Oh What a Lovely War (Attenborough)
20 - The General (Keaton)
I can’t, I’ve never seen it.
clearly, Apollo 13 is the best movie ever.
I can tell because every time I watch it (and I’m only up to a dozen so far) I am barely able to stand the suspense when they are coming back down through the atmosphere and* I don’t know if the heat shield will hold.*
While I agree with pretty much everything else you say, this is actually inaccurate. Survivors testified that there was little to no suction whatsoever when the ship actually sank. In fact, I think one man said he simply stepped off without even getting his head wet.
(Personally, I’m waiting for someone – NOT Cameron – to make a movie about the Lusitania. And not some stupid love story. Base it on the actual event – it has enough drama)
I totally agree, and in fact that’s why I didn’t like Titanic. All those REAL people who no doubt had very interesting stories of their own, and Cameron thought the important part was two fictional teenagers in rut?
Just have to disagree with two of your points.
But also a life of being slapped around by Cal. And probably ditched when her looks started to fade and he found someone younger and fresher and more compliant.
Except that we’re shown that she was already looking outside the luxury bubble. She liked interesting people, especially artists, and she was checking out Jack the first afternoon, on the deck. And there’s nothing like someone talking you out of suicide and then saving your life for real to make you reevaluate.
Eh, make that three.
Andrews gave her directions.
Now that I do wonder about. Maybe she did more posing au naturel for artists?
That problem is explained at least somewhat in the movie and there are even more hints if you pay close attention.
They say at the beginning of the movie that Rose started working as an actress after she landed. Her acting career is only documented back to the 1920’s (the Titanic sank in 1912) but she must have started doing something theater or movie related before then. That was during the era of silent films so she may have found work in them. I am sure she had some drama training. The movie does suggest she didn’t stay in New York that long after she landed. I assume that the White Star Line had some type of temporary assistance for the survivors but that is the type of story that gets just about anyone to help you.
We know Rose ended up in California some time relatively quickly after she landed in New York. There are photos of her beside her bed at the end of the movie that show her at the Santa Monica Pier just like she had talked about with Jack as well as riding horses on a beach and flying a plane. All of those appear to be on the West Coast.
After acting, she moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa to settle down with her husband with the last name Calvert and an unknown first name and punched out a couple of kids as Brock Lovett so eloquently puts it. One of those was the parent of her granddaughter Lizzie who escorts her to the salvage ship.
Shagnasty, I’m with you on this one. Titanic is movie perfection. I love it. the ending is perfect. the music is amazing (im listening to the soundtrack right now!). i still remember the feeling i got when i saw that movie for the first time in the cinemas. and the craze that swept the world when that movie was in the cinemas, was incredible!
awesome awesome movie, right up there at the very top of my fav movies (along with lord of the rings).