What struck me as phony in Titanic were scenes of people sloshing around relatively unfazed in water which would have been near the the freezing point.
I missed this the first time around in the thread, but since it, like Jack Dawson in “Titanic Two The Surface”, is back, I can comment.
Funny you mention ANtR as the comparison. Didn’t it, too, have a scene with a young couple finding each other on the ship, and even having the same scene with them and Thomas Andrews in front of the mantle clock? Almost word for word? Admittedly, the romance wasn’t the focus of the movie, but wasn’t it there as well?
It’s been a while since I’ve seen ANtR, so I might be confusing my Titanic movies. I’ve seen nearly all of them, including the Nazi Titanic (actually a good movie, except for the glaring factual inaccuracies. If they’d have called it something else, history might not be so harsh. Inaccuracies, and nazis), Titanic 2000 (of the lesbian-vampire subgenre) and related films such as *History is Made at Night *(Cameron practically stole the plot of Titanic whole from this movie) and *Goliath Awaits *(about the discovery of long term survivors trapped inside a sunken ship), so I could be confused.
Never seen it. One too many people told me “you have to see this movie!!!”… So I decided " no, I don’t".
And the message- it’s OK to cheat on your fiance if you meet another guy who is smelly and ignorant but looks like Decaprio.
LotR is the very best Film set of all time.
Casablanca. Indiana Jones. Star Wars. Maltese Falcon.
I’ve always felt the best way to watch Titanic is simply to skip the first half and start watching when the iceberg shows up. From that point on, it’s actually a rip-roaring action movie with a love story thrown in to balance the plot.
If you want a better story that involves the ocean, there’s Das Boot. Or even Jaws.
Romancing the Stone.
Best. Movie. Ever.
Yeah, Airplane! is densely written in a way few movies are. Brilliant stuff.
Millers Crossing or Collateral.
I’m glad this topic came up, because it gives me an opening to ask something I’ve always wondered about…
One of the criticisms that’s most often leveled against Titanic is that “it tacks a fictional love story onto a real-life tragedy.”
But the thing is…isn’t that what historical fiction’s been doing since it was invented? That is to say, putting fictional stories/characters up against the backdrop of real-life events?
No one slams Gone with the Wind for putting the fictional story of Scarlett and Rhett into the real-life Civil War. No one slams Casablanca for putting the fictional story of Rick and Ilsa into the real-life World War II and Nazi occupation.
So why is it only wrong when Titanic does it?
I guess because no one has claimed GWTW or Casablanca to be the “Best Film Ever!”
… oh, wait…
Uh… because WW2 and the Civil War are not important/interesting events in and of themselves and therefore need a romantic interest in order to get people to see the movie?
… dammit, I don’t think that’s it either…
How about… GWTW and Casablanca had positive black characters while Titanic just dealt with White People Problems?
… no, that’s not going to work…
Hell, I don’t know. At least in Titanic you actually get to see Kate Winslet’s… you know, there’s a bad pun there involving the first three letters of the film’s name, but I don’t know if I’m up to the challenge of making it. 
You sure showed them!
Titillating performance?
Fact: I haven’t seen Titanic all the way through because it annoyed me so much.
I tried. Twice. It lost me before I could even get to the boat actually sinking. The love story seemed formulaic. I found the characters shallow, cliched and unlikeable. I found myself rooting for Mr Iceberg to come in and metaphorically throat punch them. That ultimately was what kept me going the second time as long as I did. I wanted to to see the cool graphics I heard about. I wanted to see the annoying protagonists suffer. It was kind of like “Jar Jar Binks in love on a doomed boat” and I was rooting for the Dark Side. Ultimately the pacing was so methodical even that wasn’t worth waiting around for. The Dark Side was weak in me; I rolled over and took a nap.
This was almost my experience, except that I only tried once. It was not as boring as 2001 A Space Odyssey but much more irritating.
Sadly, the iceberg only got one of them.
I always thought of the romance as a way to show you around the ship. That was the real star of the movie. It brings you back to a place that no longer exists. It’s their chasing each other around and hiding that got them to go into every part of the ship where an average passenger would stick to their level.
Think of it as a travel documentary.
Reminds me of the jazz people who say, “You have to listen to the notes that they don’t play.”
To appreciate Titanic. you have to listen to the great lines that nobody says.