TITANIC: The Best Motion Picture Ever Made
by NABIL BAKRI
“Titanic is probably not the best motion picture you have ever seen as an individual and nobody can change that. However, Titanic is the best motion picture the world has ever witnessed as a whole and nobody can change that.”
Titanic received a lot of backlash short after the Academy Awards bestowed the dazzling 11 Oscars to the movie and the (then) newest record of the highest grossing film had to be reset in favor of Titanic, but the current trend shows us that the backlash has grown even bigger and it is somehow considered as ‘cool’ to trash Titanic. It is the new norm to mock something that is too popular and too successful. As a matter of fact, a popular film magazine, Empire, reduced the 5 (five) stars of Titanic to 4 (four) during the peak of the backlash trend. However, the magazine then reinstated the 5th star and Titanic is back with its initial 5 out of 5 (Stars) score in Empire alongside the statement (from the magazine) that reducing the score was unprofessional and all the effort and trend to insult Titanic is just strengthen its pedestal as the most famous film ever made and it proves that Titanic, after all these years, remains the world’s most beloved and acclaimed motion picture. It is interesting, however, to look back at the ‘initial’ backlash or, in a more open way, insults, delivered to the film even before FOX/Paramount released it worldwide. Critics started to speculate that the film about a sinking ship is going to sink due to its expensive budget and an incredibly predictable storyline. So many critics seemed to hate Titanic before they actually see the movie that the story became an international sensation, that the media could not stop talking about how the movie was doomed to fail since day one.
What is the point in bringing back the story that is well-known enough that studios had released several movies concerning Titanic already, prior to James Cameron’s (Titanic, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, A Night to Remember). Even if, say, the film did enjoy critical success, could it earn enough money just to pay the bills of whooping $200 million? Well, that was unlikely to happen, so the media tried their best to make the most out of it by shooting endless spears of negativity. Critic’s predictions that Titanic is going to be the biggest box-office bomb ever had inevitably transformed to a form of hope, it was not enough to say that it’s going to flop, they wanted it to flop. There was a daily column in Variety called ‘Titanic Watch’, a small image of a clock counting down the release date of not a Titanic movie, but an expected box office disaster.
“From the beginning, the movie about one of the biggest disasters of all time seems itself headed for disaster.”
-George Lewis (NBC News/1997)
George Lewis was not the only critic gave the prediction of Cameron’s downfall, but the fact is that the majority of critics (and eventually everybody) agreed that Titanic is going to hit the box office iceberg and take Cameron and the studios down to the bottom. It is easier to say that during the time of filming and editing, the world seemed to agree that James Cameron is the dumbest person on earth for pushing the film full steam ahead and shows no sign of stopping.
***
Titanic was released in 1997. I was only two, so it was impossible for me to really comprehend the size of Titanic and I certainly was not in theaters watching the movie. It wasn’t until I was 12 or 13-ish that I saw Titanic for the very first time but believe it or not, I was just like the critics from Titanic’s initial release moments. I hated the movie for no specific reason. I saw the commercials on TV, a massive ship, hit an iceberg, it sank. I was like, “What? What’s good about it?” I talked about Spider-Man 3, The Ghost Rider, King-Kong (2005), The Golden Compass, Prince Caspian, The Order of the Phoenix, and many other hot issues of movies from 2005-2008-ish eagerly, including the format war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray, but never really want to talk about Titanic even though I read that noun everywhere in movie magazines and it’s a reference to a lot of movie reviews, simply put, Titanic is a must-see movie (even in 2007). Okay, but “It’s gonna be terrible,” I said. Then I saw the movie.
Good Lord…
I felt like James Cameron himself slap me in the face. The film is fantastic, it’s beautiful, it’s majestic, and it’s amazing. This must have been what it feels to become those critics in 1997. It’s like Anton Ego eats Ratatouille (2007) for the very first time. So, do I like Titanic? Guilty! I love it so much but before you sneer and say, “Oh, he’s a fan, no wonder he’s saying that Titanic is the best motion picture ever made,” let me tell you that you’re right. So, now, allow me to put my sentimentality away for a moment and judge Titanic the way it is, detaching the analysis from my personal judgment. Shall we start now?
***
At the time, it was clear: everybody knew that Titanic would not prevail and therefore many people had no interest in seeing the movie. But then Fox released the very first trailer of Titanic in Sho-West. And all the negativity started to turn positive.
“When I went to the movie theater and I saw the trailer, when Jack and Rose are on the back of the boat, and it’s going down, and the camera comes behind them and Leo yells… The audience was absolutely dead silent, and then they began to cheer. And then we all knew this was going to be something special.”
-Bob Gazzale (President&CEO, AFI)
Not all films have the privilege of being so loved that the audience willingly and automatically clap their hands and cheers during the end credits. Now, when did the last time you go to a cinema and witnessed such massive impact caused by a mere trailer of a movie? When did the last time you go to a cinema and the trailer got more the attentions than the actual movie you’re going to watch? If it is ‘that’ difficult for an actual movie to get such praise, wouldn’t it be even harder for a trailer to achieve such praise? Sure, with current Marvel Superhero Movies or Star Wars we cheer to the trailer, but that is based on the notion that the movie is well-anticipated and people expect it to be good (plus current trailers are designed to be presented online rather than in theaters, so chances are people who watch those trailers are interested to the movies to begin with while in theaters, people cannot choose what trailer they want to watch). With Titanic, it was different since universally, people believed that it’s not a movie worth the money and the time. Since the first trailer, however, there was a strange change, a change cherished by almost everybody, a strange but special situation in which someone could actually be part of a mass euphoria which didn’t happen much.
“When Titanic ended at the premiere, I thought the whole theater was gonna come crashing down. People were just screaming at the top of their lungs. They were so overwhelmed, they were so excited.”
-Geoff Burdick (VP, Lightstorm Production Services and Technology)
After the trailer, it’s the time to show Titanic to the audience. During its first ‘performance’ in the US, the moment the film ended, everybody in the theater screamed out loud, as if something had changed them completely, that they were unable to let go of the Titanic. When did the last time you experience such an enormity in the world of cinema, in which people screamed so loud to praise the movie, and that was not even the first time they did it!? As a matter of fact, the audience started to scream the moment the screen transitioned from the rusty wreck of the Titanic to the new and elegant ship of 1912. Lots of people want to experience such hype because it was such a hype that had happened to great movies such as Gone with the Wind and Star Wars. It was one of those rare occasions where people could actually participated in the history of cinema.
“Titanic became something you had to see because you wanted t talk about it. People just wouldn’t stop talking about it. It did something to us. It doesn’t happen often, and when it happens, it’s very special to a movie.”
-Tom Sherak (President, AMPAS 2009-2012)
The movie entitled 2012 (by Roland Emmerich) was so famous in many Asian countries. I should know because I live in Indonesia, I was there when that movie hit local theaters with such massive impact that kids skipped school to watch it in theaters. Indonesia is also a very religious country so 2012 was generally well-received. But wait a minute, 2012 was not a massive hit in the US with so many critics praised only its special effects but panned any other aspect of it. The case is totally different with the release of Hugo, the movie praised so high by a lot of US critics, but didn’t run so well in Indonesia. We didn’t even get the chance to watch Saving Mr. Banks because ‘which Indonesian wants to watch it?’ after the fact that the average viewers of The Artist was only 2-10 per run in Indonesia and the DVD distributor had to put the label “This movie is black and white and is a silent movie” so that people won’t feel ‘cheated’ by the company. These kinds of differences across the globe, however, did not happen during Titanic which stood almost a full year in theaters while other movies would disappear after few months only. It’s funny that most movies gained most of its revenue during the first weeks and started to decline within a month, but Titanic gained the highest revenue two months after its initial release which was December 1997 and gained even more money in February 14th 1998. 20 years later, in 2017-2018, we once again witnessed a huge gap of revenue within different countries with Star Wars: The Last Jedi with countries like China, Indonesia, and Malaysia did not cheer the movie as fans in the US. But that didn’t happen to Titanic because 1997 is the first year (and so far it’s the only year (with 1998)) that the world seems to agree to crown Titanic as the most favorable film ever.
(The Following Pictures were Processed by Nabil Bakri from the DeLuxe Edition DVD)
“The thing that I found most satisfying is that the film played number one in every country it was released in, which means that it was playing across language barriers, it was playing across societal and cultural barriers, religious barriers, (and) whatever it might be. And it’s not like I was trying to do that. But obviously, what it meant was people were connecting to the emotions. There was some kind of value system that was universal enough. We all want to have the sense of love and belonging, we want somebody to see us…”
-James Cameron (Director, Titanic)
Titanic became the king of the world, it ruled the box office all over the world, in Japan, USA, Indonesia, China, and even England in which Prince Charles attended the premiere in London although we all know that it was short after the tragedy that took Princess Diana’s life in Paris. There were a lot of people who had never or who used to hate to go to theaters and watch a movie multiple times in big screen, broke their own rules by going to theaters more than twice to see Titanic. Most of them were extremely selective about who’s going to watch Titanic with them in a certain moment so, mostly, they showed up in theaters with different friends or family members. And it really was a crossing and a melting pot between ages, generations, religions, and cultural backgrounds. I remember a story from a fellow movie collector that it was like his whole village went to the theater for Titanic because he saw so many familiar faces there. Surprisingly, many more people share the same story remembering the hype of Titanic.
“The Academy members bought into it because they’re no different as moviegoers as we are. They fell in love with the story, they fell in love with the cinematography, they fell in love with the make-up, they fell in love for with the movie.”
-Tom Sherak (President, A.M.P.A.S 2009-2012)
The Oscar celebrated its 70th Annual Ceremony in 1998 and that particular ceremony hosted by Billy Cristall is the most-viewed Oscar ever thanks to Titanic. The nominees were mysterious while the winner was almost too obvious people would, probably, literally tore down the ceremony building if Titanic did not get the 11 Oscars it got including one for Best Picture. Titanic was in countless parodies, Titanic-themed cruise ships were becoming popular, and a lot of foreign countries handed their honorary awards to James Cameron for such an achievement. Plus, Titanic became the highest grossing film of all time for 12 years and the re-releases of the movie in 3D in 2012 and in Dolby Cinema in 2017 proven to be highly successful. Titanic was what today’s people experience as a ‘viral’ project that is so good it stands against the test of time. But then again, financial success (in film industry) does not always equal to a good movie. So, can we still consider Titanic as a good movie?
“We’re never gonna beat Titanic. Nobody can…it’s just one of those things, it just happens…it defies reality…”
-George Lucas (Director/Creator/Producer: Star Wars, American Graffiti, Indiana Jones)
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| George Lucas congratulates James Cameron |
***
“You have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by the love story in Titanic, or just all these people dying. Some people don’t want to be put through the wringer like that and so they sneer at things and they act ironic and superior.”
-Joseph McBride (Film Critic, Film Historian)
A lot of people mock the storyline of Titanic, as if they completely forgot that the movie is based on a true story and therefore, there’s not much that the director could do to the story except to determine who the main character is, where the angle should be taken from, who should be introduced first, and so on. Whether you like it or not, the ship is going to sink. There are also a lot of complaints basically saying that Titanic is a good movie ruined by three points:
1. (A) Titanic is good, but the fictional characters ruin the movie. It’s better to focus on the real historical figures only.
2. (B) Titanic does not deserve the Oscar for Best Picture because the dialogue is awful. A Night to Remember is better, Cameron’s Titanic is just a rip-off.
3. (C) The ‘present day’ shot should be deleted and the deleted scenes concerning more historical figures should be reinstated.
“When I first heard that he (James Cameron) was directing this film, it was a question, for me, of how realistic was he intending to make this? ‘Cause if it was going to be extremely fictional, I’m not sure that I would have been involved as a historian. But once I found that it was going to be as factual as possible, I really wanted to be onboard at that point.”
-Don Lynch (Titanic Historian)
The fundamental reason for Cameron to make Titanic was to make it as realistic as possible and the implementation of Jack and Rose was never to ruin the horror of the tragedy while he introduces the audience to the ship. But to make the movie concerns only to the historical figures would not make Titanic a romance the way it was intended, but rather, a docudrama that has been done before in A Night to Remember. As we all know, Cameron asked two Titanic experts to help him with Titanic and the result is the fact that there are many parts of the movie added as the suggestion of Don Lynch who specifically said that he would not help Cameron if the movie was going to be highly fabricated. But after Lynch knew that Jack and Rose are the perfect ‘tool’ to make people care about the movie that will make them care about the sinking, Lynch jumped in to the board of Titanic movie crews. Don Lynch and Ken Marschall were the audience’s ‘agents’ to spy Cameron for any conflicting historical fact, so if Lynch and Marschall said ‘yes’ to Cameron’s ideas, it’s safe to assume that the movie is basically pretty accurate, even way more accurate than any other depictions of Titanic, the most accurate depiction of Titanic in Hollywood so far. For instance, Rose stays in the room reserved for J.P Morgan who was unable to join the cruise, so Rose’s room was practically empty during the actual tragedy, thus the fictional character does not contradict historical information of who were in her room initially during the tragedy.
“Part of the reason that the film community so embraced the extraordinary popular appeal to Titanic, by recognizing it with many Academy Awards and honors throughout the years, is that they were applauding a risk taken, and one that scored. And it scored on such a titanic level, I think, made this community realize that if you don’t take those risks, and you don’t operate outside the rules a little bit, you’re never going to really get there. And I think they welcomed Jim and the movie as they should have, because he really went for it.”
-Tom Sherak (President, A.M.P.A.S 2009-2012)
According to Tom Sherak, the A.M.P.A.S chooses the best talents and movies based on a lot of criteria and the individuals of the board of jury do not choose without any critical consideration. Looking back at how big Titanic was, the movie really deserves its Oscars. Nothing is perfect in everything, but saying that Titanic does not deserve the Oscars because it lacks in the depth of dialogue while it triumphs in many other aspects seems arrogant, as if a math teacher is unqualified because he/she is unable to balance a check book while he/she is the master of algebra. Titanic’s other aspects were ‘that’ great, the lack of its writing seems minuscule and forgivable. As for the claim that A Night to Remember is simply better that Titanic, that film is plagued by so many inaccuracies, the lack of which Cameron wanted to eliminate since day one.
“In 1950’s Britain, it was so important to have films that would make the British public feel good after the horrors of the Second World War. What better opportunity than to have a real thoroughly British film even though it’s a tragedy, it has got heroic characters in it. That’s the perfect vehicle to cast somebody like Kenneth Moore in a film like that. So he’s perfectly cast as the 50s idol playing a British hero. But the way Lightoller was portrayed in the film is a complete distortion of what actually happened that night.”
-Paul Louden-Brown (Historian, White Star Line)
The present day scene was included to drag the audience from what they already know. It is also necessary to introduce us to the Old Rose or else the ending would be meaningless. Perhaps the reason why the ‘present’ day shot looks a little bit off through time is because the present day in the movie is not the present day anymore in real life, it’s more of 1996-ish, so it is important to look at it not as the present day anymore, but as 1996 because if the film is made today, the scene of the ‘present’ day would be different. The establishment of 1996 as the ‘present’ day also important to make the character of Gloria Stuart (Old Rose) more believable because she would have died if the setting of time is years after 1996.
There are indeed many shots depicting historical characters but if those were included, the running time of the movie would be way much longer and the focus of the story won’t be Jack and Rose anymore. It is very easy for us to judge whether or not a scene should be included, but the editing process of Titanic really was long and exhausting. And although the final decision is in Cameron’s hands, he had to have a screen test in order to determine which part should stay and which part shouldn’t. All of the deleted scenes in Titanic (and almost all professional movies) were deleted after going through long processes of selections and possibly reshoots and there must have been a lot of considerations why a particular scene is not included in the final cut.
***
“Titanic is popular merely because teenage girls fall in love with young Leonardo DiCaprio!”
My question is: “Oh, really?”
If DiCaprio is the centre attraction of this movie, why Baz Luhrman’s 1996 ‘Romeo+Juliet’ was not as successful as Titanic although DiCaprio was technically younger and there are more shots of him shirtless in that movie than Titanic? DiCaprio is one of the many factors why teenage girls came to see Titanic multiple times in theaters and later on VHS, DVD, digital, and so on, but that is not the ultimate reason why the majority of the teenage girls saw Titanic in the theater. They were included in the mass hatred towards Titanic led by the media even though they knew that DiCaprio was in it and the media should have predicted the cash machine for the movie and guessed that even though it’s going to be a critical bomb, it might get all the money from teenage girls, but instead, the vote was quite unanimous to call it a trash, similar to the way people called Disney as the stupidest man alive in mid 1930s during the production of Snow White. And although casting DiCaprio was the best possible choice because casting a middle-aged man won’t help the story, David Lubin, the writer of ‘BFI Modern Classics: Titanic’ decided to went to the theater to watch Titanic once again and he did not expect to get the answer from teenage girls he met in the theater.
“So when I decided to write the book on it and I went to see the movie again, there were two teenage girls sitting behind me and they were weeping. And I said, “How often have you seen this film?” And they said, “Maybe six or seven times.” And I said, “why do you love this film so much that you keep seeing it?” They said the payoff in the movie for them was seeing those photographs at the end. It was seeing this old woman who had been the young women and that she had lived a really rich and full life and that she had survived all these troubles and had made something of herself. And that was so inspiring. This movie gave them an opportunity to think about their own future in a way that was transcendent and it enabled them to envision an empowered, productive life.”
- David Lubin (Writer, BFI Modern Classics: Titanic)
***
I was not there when Titanic was first introduced and released to the public, but digging up the information about what actually ‘happened’ during 1995-1998, I appreciate Titanic even more than ever. If a lot of people say that I am unqualified to say that Titanic is definitely one of if not the best motion picture ever created or that it deserves the Oscars and all the awards, I just hope that they can read or witness the testimony of critics, the president of A.M.P.A.S, AFI, or many other important figures during the hype of Titanic. I certainly want to say that a movie that is responsible to a huge hype does not equal to a bad movie. I just hope that people can see that and understand that for a movie to gain such success, it must have done something right. Although not to a few of them, but to the majority of people. Judging a movie objectively should be like judging a singing competition. No matter how we want our idol to win, when she fails to become the winner, we should not insult the actual winner, but admit that the winner is better than our idol ‘in this particular case’. Maybe a lot of people hate Titanic, but I think, based on the history of cinema, there’s no reason for calling it a bad or even mediocre film, but I’m sure admitting that it must have done something right would not hurt, even thou they dislike the film. I’m sorry that I do not like The Wizard of Oz or Casablanca, but I dare to admit that those films are important to the history of cinema…
if you are a Titanic fan, you can find interesting works here
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