I just don’t understand it how such a Banal and cliche film could be that sucefull
Well, it wasn’t that bad of a film. A lot of people take an inordinant amount of glee in decrying it, but seriously, they seem to be the sort who harps on anything/anybody #1.
Like Star Wars (another “not-so-great” film that was #1), it was a film that resonated with a youthful audience, those people with the time/money/desire to see a film over and over and over again. More importantly, unlike SW, it was a film that registered with an audience larger than teenage boys and children - it hit with teenage girls as well, and hard. It was THE date movie of 1997/98 which effectively doubled it’s audience size, and given the incredible repeat business (“Tony, lets go see Titanic again. I’ll promise that we’ll do it.”), it wasn’t surprising that the grosses were so, well, titanic.
yeah brilant
don’t love it when you have something that sounds clever in you head and comes out as some one line statement that isn’t even a sentance brilant.
Now i feel obligated to elberate my question
I find it strange that a movies witha story that could have come out of a romance novel bout at a super market could capture such an intence following the spent over a billion dollars in ticket sell world wide. Its not becuse any aspect of the film was something orginal it raised not questoins (like logans run), made no insight into the human condtion (Dr. Strangelove), it didn’t draw any form of classic story telling (Star wars), even visualy I found nothing great (and at least i can least say the first Jurasic Park moive was that)
So how did this film mobalize millions of teenaged girls into being the demographic that spends more on pop culter than anyone eles (I my hate this film more for that than anything eles)
ok I think that is a much better post
It is a prime example of being in the right place at the right time.
If I recall correctly, it was orignally supposed to be released in the summer, but due to reshoots, the release date was pushed back to the holiday season. This probably helped it’s box office, as it didn’t have to deal with the usual summer blockbusters.
And it was a good story.
Yeah, some of the characters were horribly one-dimensional (Billy Zane’s character being the worst offender), but it was a good story.
And it hit with teenage girls who are more likely then any other group to go and see a movie again and again and again.
Dirty Dancing had the same sort of thing happen. It made so much money 'cause teenage girls were going to see it again and again and again. And then rushing home to pet the horse while thinking about being ravished by Patrick Swayze.
It’s amazing that a movie that was over 3 hours long was able to make over $500 million at the US box office.
“didn’t draw any form of classic story telling (Star wars)”
And you don’t consider romances to be a “classic” form of story telling? :rolleyes:
$600 million, Wsler, not a mere $500 mil. 
And $1.2 billion in non-US grosses to boot.
And what’s so bad with teenage girls, Lear? Why are they so much worse than the misguided boy who thinks The Matrix is wonderfully inventive and original?
Part of it’s due to inflation. I’ll bet that if you adjusted for that the top 10 movies off all time would be completedly jumbled.
Adjusted for inflation, Titanic is #6.
Let me clarify:
Adjusted for inflation, Titanic worldwide grosses are #1, barely beating out Star Wars (1.8 billion to 1.762 billion). So Titanic is #1, adjusted or not.
Dammit. Let me do this again.
Titanic’s non-adjusted grosses are $1.8 billion. Star Wars adjusted (worlwide and US) grosses are $1.762 billion. Titanic’s adjusted grosses are $2.252 billion. The other adjusted films with US grosses bigger than Titanics’ (Ten Commandments, GWTW, and Sound of Music) had little in the way of worldwide grosses (at least according to Box Office Mojo). But I will concede that the lack of evidence for worldwide grosses for these three movies might be a fault of BO Mojo’s.
ok the Matrix may just boldly rehash what other works of science fiction (to be specific Cyber punk) have said before. But at least dose try to raise questions and address questions about the human condition, at least you have to admit the matrix tries (now how great of an artistic achievement it is well I’ll leave that up to the individual to decide).
And everyone who scene the matrix has to admit you never scene anyone do that with a movie camera before.
JohnT beat me to it, I was also going to point out the similarities to Star Wars. They both targeted an audience that was willing to go back to the theaters and watch it again and again and again, and they both hit the bulls-eye. I hadn’t considered the ‘date factor’, but I’d imagine that was also substantial (it’s gotten me into a lot of movies I normally wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole).
It shouldn’t really be that surprising that the #1 grossing film is “banal and cliche”. To draw a huge audience like Titanic did, you have to appeal to an extremely broad range of people, which means not doing anything that would turn off a broad range of people. This tends to exclude things that are daring, controversial or thought-provoking. It doesn’t necessarily make them bad films, but it means you’re probably not going to see something mind-altering.
I think STAR CROSSED LOVERS is a pretty classic story.
And maybe you found nothing visually great but I think most of the audience did.
I also agree that the films release in the spring season (Jan through April) were by and large a pretty weak lot. So Titanic was able to keep the big screens in the multiplexes. (by big screens I mean the ones with the large seat counts and ticket sales) It was also amazing that ‘The Man in the Iron Mask’ which starred LEO (insert swooning girl here) did not push Titanic out of the number 1 slot at the box office. (it took Lost in Space to do that)
So basically the film hit the right notes at the right time.
The decision to move from the July 2 opening all the way to December 17 was a very good decision. Many people thought the film would be pushed to July 25th and that Harrison Ford asked Paramount to not do that to his film Air Force One. (that never happened) But James Cameron credits the extra time to complete as what made the movie great as he was able to do a very fine tuning of the editing. You gotta admit that for 3 hour flick the pacing is pretty good.
I’m not a huge fan of the inflation adjusted rankings; they make for nice trivia but fail to consider the societal changes since their original release. Gone With the Wind never had to deal with people saying, “I’ll wait till video.” Does anyone truly think that it would gross over a billion domestic if released as an original film today? Over spans of more than 10 or so years, inflation adjusted rankings fail to have a real comparative meaning.
Just to echo was Lear’s_Fool already said: The Matrix was inventive and original, literally. That is a fact. How many times have you seen the camera freeze and spin around a person/object in the last three years? How many times did you see it before The Matrix? They invented that shot. It was original.
Also…I’m not a big sci-fi buff so I could be wrong about this but The Matrix was the first story I know of that blended science fiction with mysticism/eastern-philosophy, so that would qualify the story as original as well.
Did you even see the movie? Or are you just annoyed that a story with bad actor/teen throb Leo DiCaprio is #1?
The movie was certainly not about the banal love story of Di Caprio and Winslet (who is a good actress BTW). And it very much dealt with “questions about human condition.” The love story was just the vehicle that was needed to keep the audience interest going for the 3hrs the movie lasted. If you really saw it, you might have noticed a lot of other things going on - things telling us a lot about the rich and the poor, about privilegies ASF.
I can’t be bothered to do the proper analyzing right now, but hell, your statement is just wrong.
Originality isn’t required to make a good or a popular movie, and the fact “Titanic” wasn’t original is totally irrelevant. GWTW wasn’t original, either.
It was a good story, well told, and perfectly aimed for the movie demographics. You had a star-crossed love story for the women plus and good action sequences for the men (not to mention Kate Winslett topless).
People react negatively to its popularity, but the main thing about “Titanic” is that it was entertainment (in the movie sense). Very few movies are these days, so people flocked to it.
Maybe Titanic did so well because the film’s appeal was not limited to this demographic?
I was certainly not the target audience for Titanic. I’m a young 30s, conservative, with a M.S. in biology. Not some giggling teen-age girl or reader of romance novels.
I also tend to shun Hollywood “blockbusters” (with some exceptions of course), gravitating more to Asian films.
I loved Titanic. Saw it twice at the theater and bought the video when it came out. Can I explain this to your satisfaction? Probably not, but I bought into the love story and thought the effects were neat. Good tension as the ship was sinking. I had never heard of Kate Winslet before Titanic came along, but she made my heart go pitter-pat (nice to see a pretty woman who doesn’t look like she escaped form the anorexic ward of the local disorder clinic).
That’s my two cents, anyway.
There’s one other thing it had going for it. People were fascinated by the story of the Titanic long before the movie came out. I remember reading about it in a comic book while visiting my grandmother when I was 12, over 20 years before the movie came out.
The true tale of the sinking itself raises many questions pertaining to the human condition, including what would you do in a similar situation. Some years ago, I was discussing the sinking with my then boyfriend and told him I wouldn’t get into a lifeboat; instead, I’d choose to stay with him. He told me he’d see to it I did. When I asked him how, he told me, rather sheepishly, he figured I had a glass jaw. It told us both a bit about each other, including that we were both chivalrous idiots. The more commonly known stories range from that of Ida Strauss who, when urged to get into a lifeboat said, “No, I will not be separated from my husband. As we have lived, so will we die together,” to the story of one lifeboat which left the ship half empty and was not allowed by the crewman commanding it to go back for others.
Excuse me. I’m not a geek sitting in a room surrounded by Titanic memorablia, I swear, but it is a story that will probably always hold a certain fascination for me. As for the movie, I’ve seen enough of Cameron’s movies to realize that they’ll probably appeal to me. I’d say The Abyss was better, but Titanic was a wonderful way to waste three hours. I just wish I could have said the same of the fellow I saw it with.
CJ
Yes, but similarily, there are much more people in the world today able to afford a ticket. Actually, there are much more people, period. So necessarilly, a modern movie has a much larger potential audience than a movie from the 50’s.