James Camer-thon: A Review of "Titanic", Part 1

♫"Just sit right back and you'll see a tale; a tale of a fateful ship! That started from this British port,
built by some Irish men. The lead was a scrappy hunky guy, the lady hot and pure. The passengers
set sail that day for a four-day tour... a foooour day toooour."♫

Happy Friday, and welcome back to another James Camer-thon installment. We're on the back-nine now, so to speak. So far, we've seen nothing but action movies come from the man. The terrific one-two punch of The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day... the badass sequel Aliens... the adventurous undersea conflict The Abyss, and the comedic action-couple's epic True Lies. James Cameron truly by this point had built himself an incredible, noteworthy filmography. If there were a Pro Football style Hall of Fame for filmmaking... you know that wasn't the "Library of Congress"... James Cameron would for sure have that spot in it. A big brass bust, of him, goatee and all... smirking as he nail-guns your cell phone to the wall for ringing on set. (Something he is very prone to doing).

The World Series of Poker, 1912 edition. Poker brat
Jack Dawson wins two third-class tickets on Titanic.

By 1994, as soon as True Lies finished production, or even during the production, Cameron already began detailing and crafting the story for his next film, described as an epic star-crossed love story aboard a famed steam liner that sunk on its maiden voyage! No... not The Poseidon Adventure! The other steam liner... no, not the Britannic, though that would be an interesting choice to set a love story on. No, not the Olympic either... why would you even--NOTHING EVEN HAPPENED TO THAT ONE! No, we're talking about arguably the most famous shipwreck of them all. The Titanic. Cameron even pitched the film to film execs at both Fox and Paramount, reportedly by holding up a picture of the famed ocean liner and simply stating "Romeo and Juliet... this ship." The film stars then-relatively fresh faces Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Leo was looking as young as the girls he dates nowadays, and Kate Winslet was fresh off her dynamite background character performance in A Kid in King Arthur's Court. Yeeeah... 10 points if you can gimme the plot of that movie.

Titanic was and still is a one-of-a-kind movie. Everybody who's anybody knows this movie, or has seen this movie, or has heard about this movie... or at one time laid eyes on that infamous gold dual-VHS boxset of this movie in somebody's cabinet, once. I know I saw that VHS boxset in my dad's collection... but I also for some reason can picture it sitting in an old person's fine-china cabinet somewhere. Yes, James Cameron undertook arguably the biggest film production of any company or director at the time. Titanic has the distinction of, at the time in 1995-97, being the single most expensive film ever produced. So much so that the opening credits reveal two of the industry's heaviest hitters in 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures had a hand in developing/distributing the movie. That, as well as its production design, it's set work, it's props and cinematography... all wrapped in a mammoth near-200 minute runtime truly spells an "epic"; a grand scale motion picture that we're dealing with here, and it was gearing up to be James Cameron's magnum opus. His Ben-Hur, his Spartacus, his Cleopatra, his Ten Commandments, his <another bloated religious-historical-mythological movie from the golden age of cinema...> Titanic stands with them as another noteworthy triumph of production.

"Hey Leo, Kate; let me introduce myself. I'm--"
"Holy cow! First Tom Arnold, now Roseanne
Barr! James Cameron is a friend of the little
people of Hollywood!"

... but how is the movie itself? Well... I think it's a pretty solid flick, but I also think it's where Cameron started to (and I hate to say this) become a tad lazy with storytelling. Writing? Not at all, but that's different than storytelling. See, that's the thing. I have met people who despise this movie, calling it "some dumb chick flick", saying it's "too long", that it "drags", that "it's only really good here-and-there". To me it's not quite up there with the caliber of Cameron's work in science-fiction, where he tends to shine. There's a lot of small details and things about life onboard the Titanic in 1912 and how the ship operated and how the historical characters behaved and fraternized which I think Cameron definitely took some liberties on; but I think from start-to-finish, it's quite an emotional journey over the three hours. Let's step through and figure out why. I'll go ahead and knock out where the first tape or VHS ended for now, which is just after the iceberg collision. Yeah sorry the ship hits an iceberg, I hope I didn't spoil anything for anybody.

The film opens in 1996, aboard the research vessel Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, Brock Lovett (Favorite Cameron buddy Bill Paxton) and his team search the wreck of RMS Titanic. They recover a safe from the room of a person named "Hockley", a safe they hope contains a necklace with a large diamond known as the Heart of the Ocean. Worth billions. This is where the first issue with the story comes out. It's cliché... Brock's the archetype treasure-hunting asshat who is only initially in his endeavor for the money, who by the end of the movie learns the error of his way and has a change of heart. It's a popular framing advice, almost as popular as a character in elderly form being a member of the story from the past and re-telling the story through their eyes. Instead of the Heart of the Ocean, they only find a drawing of a young nude woman wearing the necklace. The sketch is dated April 14, 1912, the same day the Titanic struck the iceberg that caused it to sink. 607-year-old... or 100-year-old (if you listen to the movie) Rose Dawson Calvert (Gloria Stuart), the woman in the drawing, is brought aboard Keldysh, as Brock believes even if Rose doesn't have the necklace any longer, she'll at least know where to find it. After Lewis Bodine (Lewis Abernathy) tortures Rose with a weirdly timed digital presentation of how the ship sank... something Rose would definitely have no doubt remembering... Rose breaks down and decides to regale the group with details on where the diamond is, by telling her story of her life aboard the Titanic... meaning she will serve as our character in elderly form who was a member of the story from the past and re-telling the story through her eyes..... D'OH!

"See Kate? This one's Courteney Cox, this one's
Jennifer Aniston... here's Lisa Kudrow!"
"Leo, this is gross. It's just drawings of naked
actresses from F*R*I*E*N*D*S!"
"It's not gross! See? Here's David Schwimmer--"

In 1912 Southampton, 17-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet), her wealthy fiancé Caledon "Cal" Hockley (Billy Zane... who surprisingly, plays a douchebag), and Rose's widowed mother, Ruth (Frances Fisher), board the Titanic. Ruth emphasizes that Rose's marriage to Cal will resolve the family's financial problems and maintain their upper-class status... you know, being the son of a Pittsburgh steel tycoon in 1912 would certainly lock that money down. Meanwhile, Jack Dawson (Leo boy himself), a poor young artist, wins a third-class Titanic ticket in a poker game and, questionably bypassing customs and health inspection checkpoints... boards the ship with his buddy, Fabrizio (Danny Nucci). After setting sail, Rose, distraught over being rich, being pretty, having everything handed to her... remembers she's in a loveless engagement with someone twice her age. She takes it upon herself, runs off into the night, and climbs over the stern railing, intending to jump overboard and bid this cruel world adieu. Jack appears and coaxes her back onto the deck, telling tales of how cold Wisconsin is. That's usually how I try to strike up conversations: "Ya ever been to Wisconsin? They have beer, and cheese curds, and the Green Bay Packers... come back over the railing now, don't kill yourself." His saving her from committing suicide helps the two develop a tentative friendship. When Cal and Ruth strongly object, Rose acquiesces and discourages Jack's attention, but upon realizing she has fallen in love with him, she returns to him and he reciprocates.

Rose brings Jack to her state room and pays him a dime to sketch her nude, wearing only the Heart of the Ocean necklace. Movie goof: The dime Rose hands Jack, is a Roosevelt dime. That's Franklin Roosevelt. So some whacky time travel antics there. I think I'll touch upon the time-traveler theory another time. They later evade Cal's servant, Spicer Lovejoy (David Warner)... who has just a badass character name. After finding themselves in a stranger's Renault Towncar car, they decide to celebrate the occasion and have sex inside of it. Good thing the owner doesn't know about that. What you don't know won't hurt you I guess. After they make their way back to the forward deck, and smooch some more... they witness the Titanic's collision with an iceberg and overhear its officers and builder discussing the serious situation. They realize they need to report back to Cal and Ruth to let them know... for some reason... Meanwhile, Cal discovers Jack's sketch and Rose's insulting note left inside his safe, along with the necklace. When Jack and Rose return to warn the others about the collision, Cal has Lovejoy slip the necklace into Jack's pocket to frame him for theft. Jack is then confined in the master-at-arms' office. Cal then puts the necklace into his own overcoat pocket.

"Leo... I get why you're here, but why did
you invite your dad, your high school chess club
team, your brother, your neighbor, and your
mailman to set today?"

That's where the first tape in the VHS-dual set ends. Even my first DVD set of Titanic ended here. I thought for sure being a DVD they'd be able to fit more of the movie on there than they did. I think, though I can't remember... my Blu-ray set has the entire movie on one disc. At this point, if the movie was designed to be a two-part epic film with an intermission, then so be it. Hell, there's forty-five minutes worth of deleted material that gets included on every set. I say this to James Cameron; go all Peter Jackson and give us the bloated, extended edition of Titanic already!

As for the movie itself so far... right away, you can see so much love, attention to detail went into bringing the life of 1912 to the screen in the most accurate way. The cinematography on this movie is brilliant, and the SETS and COSTUMES... holy moly, no wonder this flick took home eleven Oscars in 1998. The sets on this movie are magnificent recreations of the ship as it appeared in 1912. It probably helps that the team got the blueprints from the original Harland & Wolff shipbuilding company. They reconstructed a solid shell of the original ship for exterior shots, deck-walking shots, and other outside angles of the journey. The entire set was also built on top of hydraulic lifters and shifters so it could be tilted to simulate the Titanic sinking from the bow, but putting the set in a new angle would take hours. To make up for lost time, in some shots the apparent tilt angle was simulated with various tricks, such as tilting the camera and horizon, and having the actors lean forward. Oh James Cameron, you master of filmmaking trickery and deceit, you.

I'll get into the final half of the movie as well as more about the production, the cost, the cast members, and everything else when it comes time to do the sinking. That's right, Titanic ain't over yet! Check in for Part 2 next week... James Camer-thon's going overtime!