comment #1

Brian O says ...

The test screening of "Titanic" was held at the Centennial Lakes theater (I believe now a strip mall) in Edina, MN, not the Mall of America.

comment #2

Bobby Cooper Superior says ...

Cuaron's Great Expectations always felt more heartfelt, despite its flaws, than Cameron's Irwin Allen meets Lady and the Tramp sinking-ship epic.

comment #3

cinefan says ...

"Irwin Allen meets Lady and the Tramp sinking-ship epic."

Perfect description of the overbudgeted piece of junk otherwise known as Titanic. If only money had been spent on getting a decent screenplay and someone who could act in the villain role (Billy Zane is the best you could get? WTF!), then Titanic would be more regarded today as a great film and not an overrated blockbuster that stole the 1997 Best Picture Oscar from two vastly superior films, Boogie Nights and L.A. Confidential.

comment #4

Jonathan Spuij says ...

Cinefan, get over it. The movie simply IS cinema. I hated it too when I was a naive teenager but now I see that it truly is a great film. The pace and impact are simply awesome.

comment #5

NotImpressed1Yet says ...

"The movie simply IS cinema. I hated it too when I was a naive teenager but now I see that it truly is a great film. The pace and impact are simply awesome."

+1

I'm as hard edged, cynical and jaundice-eyed as they come, but Titanic on a big screen melted through all of that with its unabashed syrupy romance and drama, serviced by at the time mind-blowing special effects that never once for me took me out of the story. For all its ham-handedness, it is an elegant and beautiful piece of filmmaking.

comment #6

Kyle_D says ...

"If only money had been spent on getting a decent screenplay and someone who could act in the villain role (Billy Zane is the best you could get? WTF!), then Titanic would be more regarded today as a great film and not an overrated blockbuster that stole the 1997 Best Picture Oscar from two vastly superior films, Boogie Nights and L.A. Confidential."

And had L.A. Confidential won, you'd see more Internet talkbackers bitching that for everything good that came before it, that film's generic final shootout and Russel Crowe's incredulous survival rendered the film unworthy of "Best Picture" and "robbed" Cameron of his Oscar. There's gotta be a backlash to everything.

I'm not saying Titanic is a better film than L.A. Confidential or Boogie Nights, but the endless harping on it has really gotten stale. It's a better-than-solid blockbuster that caught a zeitgeist. The way some have pegged it, you'd think it were The Day After Tomorrow or some other hollow piece of Roland Emmerich schlock.

comment #7

Tom Reagan says ...

I'm with Jeff Wells on Titanic--in spite of whatever flaws it might have, the ending is just too extraordinary for words. A great ending can overcome a lot of problems. Yes, Billy Zane sucks. But I still watch the movie whenever I'm channel-surfing, especially if the ship is sinking. It's my guilty classic.

comment #8

Scott Mendelson says ...

I knew Titanic was going to be great right at the opening credit sequence. That haunting footage of the various passengers embarking on the ship, with a sorrowful version of the theme playing in the background. It was a symbol right there of what made Titanic great and what separated it from the likes of Pearl Harbor or The Day After Tomorrow: the film openly acknowledged that every single life lost on that ship was every bit as tragic and unfair as the eventual fates of our leads. And, as the film played over the next six months, when you asked people what part they cried at, it wasn't anything to do with Jack or Rose. It was the mother singing to her children as they prepared to drown in her arms... it was Victor Garber setting the clock just right before the water came pouring in... it was the ship's band leaving and then returning to play it out. I will defend Titanic every time out, because it really was a great movie.

comment #9

markj says ...

Titanic may have wooden acting and terrible dialogue but it also has a unique power and vision that only a maniac like Cameron could bring to a project. You've got to admire his unwavering self-belief.

comment #10

mpneeb says ...

I love that it was tested in a theater in Minnesota. When 20thCF was testing Sound of Music... it got its best responses in Minneapolis.
The studio went on to test a lot more movies in Minneapolis (though I think their "lucky theater" has now been torn down).

comment #11

Bobby Cooper Superior says ...

That galley excerpt has been on my mind all day - the test audience chose spectacle over sincerity - I remember Gwyneth Paltrow said way back that she turned down Titanic and went with Great Expectations because one had great characters and a great director and the other had a ship.

comment #12

Bilge says ...

I was in the opening night audience at the Ziegfeld for GREAT EXPECTATIONS and you could cut the disappointment in that room with a knife and spread it on toast. That movie is an abomination.

comment #13

michael says ...

Bobby Cooper- I hope you're not suggesting that she made the right choice. Now, 12 years later, who the hell is still talking about 'Great Expectations'? That movie, not the book? Gweneth has always been the worst thing about almost any film she's been in. That movie may have had a ship, but Kate Winslet made you feel the loss and pain of her life and she was amazing in the final scenes of the film. I think it's because she's a....what is it called again? Hold on, it'll come to me...oh right, because she's an actress. Which is something that Gwenteth is not now and has never been. It's an old fable in hollywood that the only reason she was in Shakespear in love was because she blew Harvey Weinstein. It may not be true, but the point is solid. She sucks.

comment #14

Slothrop says ...

I'll defend Titanic against haters any time, any day of the week. Firstly, the impact the movie had on moviegoers at the time is ridiculously underestimated - on its first weekend it opened at #2 below Tomorrow Never Dies! Yet people went to see it again and again and again and again for weeks and months, partly by word of mouth and partly because people went to see it again.

Secondly, pre-release it was pretty much discounted as a surefire bomb. It was as far as I can remember pushed back from '96 to a summer '97 release to a christmas '97 release with all the press saying Cameron was out of his mind and it was going to bankrupt 20th Century Fox.

Thirdly, the script. It's as perfectly constructed piece of mass entertainment as you're likely to find this side of Star Wars, albeit skewed towards adolescent females more than males. The amount of work it puts into delivering that devastating should be the envy of any screen writer working today. Fine, the Billy Zane character is a bit shit and the actual dialogue doesn't sparkle the way Pulp Fiction does, but there's not a moment in that movie that doesn't pay off in the end.

Fourthly and finally, on every single level it's absurdly well put together. Leonardo DiCaprio might annoy you in hindsight but it's a movie star performance from beginning to end. Kate Winslet sells every piece of the melodrama and the backdrop of Victor Garber, Kathy Bates, David Warner, Bernard Hill, etc. work brilliantly. The effects are near-perfect, the score is haunting (and memorable) and the three (THREE!) hours flow by with hardly a hitch.

I don't get the Titanic hate. At all.

comment #15

Slothrop says ...

edit: that devastating FINALE.

(don't know how to edit posts)

comment #16

Glenn Kenny says ...

Shortly after it opened I took my then-girlfriend's 93 year old grandmother, an Italian who didn't speak a word of English, to see "Titanic," and her reaction was really a lesson in the power of cinematic storytelling. She was rapt the entire time, and crying at the end, despite not getting any of the dialogue. It works at the level of a silent picture, really. Just extraordinary, and something you have to acknowledge even if the film doesn't much appeal to your own "taste."

I had seen it before, at a small screening for some magazine people. The "Premiere" crew loved it, but there were quite a few others who not only despised it, but predicted very confidently, that it would be a box office debacle. I chuckle, not at all bitterly, at the fact that one of those individuals actually still has a job at "Entertainment Weekly" (no, I'm not talking about Owen G.).

comment #17

Yuval says ...

I think Titanic is a bloated mess with some effective parts. I do understand there are people that love it, stop being so defensive. The same as with Lord of The Rings, whenever anyone wants to defend it and does so by stating box office grosses, academy awards or favourbly comparing it to Star Wars and Roland Emmerich films, I have to ask myself if these really are the most redeeming aspects of this "timeless classic".
This movie doesn't even come close to L.A. Confidential, let alone Boogie Nights. Nothing that was said here makes me want to rethink my position.

comment #18

Slothrop says ...

LA Confidential is a half-decent adaptation of a great novel. Boogie Nights is a sophomore growing-pains effort of a now-great director.

comment #19

cinefan says ...

The sad thing, though, is, even if your assessments of Confidential and Nights are true, they're still both much better than Cameron's film. If you want to see a superb film made about Titanic, catch A Night to Remember on DVD (superior to the 1997 film in every way except for its dated visual effects).

comment #20

austin111 says ...

This back and forth debate reminds me of the repubs and dems going at it on health care. One group sees it one way while the other sees it another. The real test of Titanic is that it appealed to worldwide audiences of all ages, cultures and languages, like nothing before it with the exception of Gone with the Wind, another film which could also be accused of having wooden acting and dialogue in spades and yet worked amazingly well as a story. While one can argue till they're blue in the face that Confidential and Boogie Nights are both better films in some kind of artistic sense, the same can never be said of them. And A Night to Remember is a rather wonderful film, truthful to what actually happened. Nothing against Night, yet as moving and true as it is, it nonetheless doesn't have the same scale and entertainment value that Titanic has. It's like comparing a docudrama to an epic "hollywood" filmmaking triumph. There's really no comparison you can make that carries much weight. They're two different animals, both great in their own way, but still two different animals.

comment #21

Geoff says ...

There was one incredibly overrated piece of crap that year, which was nominated for Best Picture and it's name is As Good as It Gets - think back now and remember that Nicholson and Hunt both won the big acting Oscars for that thing. It had ONE good line - "You make me want to be a better man" and that's it.

Titanic deserved all of the praise and awards it got - the screenplay was actually quite underrated. I'm still amazed how they lay out how the boat sank in the first 15 minutes so you can buy it later on, and there's still tension every minute of it. Cameron is a master...bring on Avatar!

comment #22

cinefan says ...

"The real test of Titanic is that it appealed to worldwide audiences of all ages, cultures and languages."

Completely valid points about Titanic and Night to Remember. If we're discussing how well Titanic works as a film, though, its world wide success means less than squat to me. I think you can easily liken the film to Mcdonalds. Just because Mcdonalds appeals to members of all ages, cultures, and languages doesn't means it's the best-tasting and most satisfying food that one can eat.

comment #23

cinefan says ...

*doesn't mean*

comment #24

BanksAreForRivers says ...

Ugh. I knew I shouldn't have read the comments on this one.

You people are like high school girls fighting over who in your class has the best wardrobe.

FYI, it's Becky Sinclair. But only because her mother is a drunk and buys Becky whatever she wants to make it up to her.

Plus, she's too fat to really pull any of it off.

comment #25

Bobby Cooper Superior says ...

Does it pass the foreign grandmother-test? Yes. Does it fulfill the four-quadrant phenomenon. Yes. Does it offer anything in the way of personal authenticity/thematic richness? Aside from Paxton and his crew sating Cameron's diving fetish, there was very little going on that didn't feel like pitch-perfect yet predominately soulless big studio formula filmmaking. Flourishes here and there show Cameron has an attention to detail second to none, but I sensed no greater spirit or worldview to the work besides the spectacle of it all. That said, I respect the points made in support of the film and am grateful the conversation has not turned ugly.

comment #26

austin111 says ...

Hmmmm......about McDonald's I would argue that there are some things on their menu which, even though I know they aren't good for me, taste wonderful when I am in the mood for them. That's where McDonald's worldwide popularity comes from, not the supersizing nonsense. So comparing Titanic to McDonald's is somewhat apt in a way and not necessarily pejorative.

comment #27

DarthCorleone says ...

Boogie Nights is a "sophomore growing-pains effort"? I bid you and your silliness a good day.

comment #28

Eloi Manning says ...

I doubt Steven Spielberg's goddaughter would need to blow anyone to get ahead in Hollywood.

Titanic is great fun. Cineastes line up to praise the likes of KIng Kong, because it's black and white, but refuse to give props to Titanic despite it being better than most of their beloved films.

comment #29

austin111 says ...

I can also argue that while one can call the filmmaking formulaic and try to dismiss it at that level, the plain honest fact is that two of the most appealing as well as talented young actors at that time had the pivotal roles. The chemistry was right and some kind of ridiculously successful alchemy came about as a result. I know it sounds weird but I actually enjoyed the first part of the film as much for what they put into their rather formulaic roles as I did the part of the film where the ship was actually sinking. I'd have to say that the film did indeed have enough soul to work as well as it did....and the fact that it does work extraordinarily well even at a silent film level, as glenn kenny put it, is testimony to that fact.

comment #30

Eloi Manning says ...

Secondly, comparing Oscar winners to the other films nominated that year is absurd. If you need a gold statue to decide the films worthy of praise then you can pretty much fuck right off right now.

Is Forrest Gump better than Pulp Fiction? Probably not. Is Forrest Gump therefore shit and worthy of scorn from every douchebag hipster motherfucking critic cunt who wants to prove how fucking worldly and excellent they are? No. It's a fucking great film. Fuck off.

I'm fairly wasted. SNL is great tonight, I rate Talyor Swift.

comment #31

Gordon27 says ...

"The same as with Lord of The Rings, whenever anyone wants to defend it and does so by stating box office grosses, academy awards or favourbly comparing it to Star Wars and Roland Emmerich films, I have to ask myself if these really are the most redeeming aspects of this "timeless classic"."

I don't think anybody is saying those are the redeeming aspects. The point is that taste is highly subjective. There's no way to argue that the acting *isn't* wooden (or even, more likely, that the wooden acting doesn't interfere with the movie overall.) But the "wisdom of crowds" theory is a way to get a more objective measure of taste -- if the vast majority of people around the world have an emotional response to a piece of art, there's clearly *something* there.

I'm going to turn your point around on you -- are you really saying that the main things that bothers you about 'Titanic' is that it beat 'L.A. Confidential' (and 'Boogie Nights', but, since that wasn't actually nominated...)? Because that's not a criticism of the movie, that's a criticism of the Academy circa 1997.

comment #32

Jonathan Spuij says ...

Is "Formulaic filmmaking" necessari;y a bad thing?

comment #33

markj says ...

Cameron's "I'm the king of the world!" was the greatest "Fuck you!" ever delivered at the Academy Awards.

comment #34

CitizenKanedforChewingGum says ...

Hmmm...I'm almost positive I'm in the minority on this, but I've always considered Magnolia to be PT Anderson's cinematic "growing-pains effort." I don't deny that Cruise is awesome in it, but my God does that thing just drag on and on at its own melodramatic pace. Not saying it's bad, just not my cup of tea, exactly.

IMHO, Boogie Nights has a little too much verve and audacity (how 'bout that opening tracking shot??) to be outright dismissed. Not to mention that it's the film that really put him on the map. Without the success of BN, I don't know that PT Anderson would have hung around mainstream Hollywood long enough to make the more "mature masterpieces" like TWBB.

As for Titanic, I think I'm still one of the few people to have only seen it once -- opening night in the theater. Like all Cameron features, it's an enormously well-crafted, fine-tuned piece of filmmaking. Just because I've never gone back to revisit it doesn't necessarily mean I wasn't enormously satisfied with it the first time -- quite the opposite, in fact.

I don't really understand all the people (cinefan, I'm looking at you) that try to compare Titanic unfavorably to any movie released in 1997 -- or ever. Seriously, where is the hate coming from? Is it the money it's made, it's popularity? The picture was always meant to be a throwback to the epic filmmaking of the Demillian Age of Hollywood a la Spartacus, Lawrence of Arabia, Ben-Hur, and The Ten Commandments. And as such -- I think it's an enormous success. I think it's undoubtedly *one* of the best films in its genre, which is really all you can hope for when setting out to make a movie.

Instead of McDonald's, I think I'd compare Titanic to In-n-Out -- a place that serves delicious burgers and shakes, by almost anyone's standards. But for some unknown reason, cinefan wants to keep alerting us to the fact that we can't get a chef salad there.

comment #35

CitizenKanedforChewingGum says ...

"Flourishes here and there show Cameron has an attention to detail second to none, but I sensed no greater spirit or worldview to the work besides the spectacle of it all."

I don't know that I'd totally disagree with this statement, but you do have to admit that Cameron anchored the entire movie with the love story between Jack and Rose. It may be shallow, and it can definitely be cheesy, but soulless? I dunno...like I said before, I've only seen it once, but those last 15-20 minutes definitely got to me, and I'm not particularly easily gotten.

You do realize that working on this epic scale, with this kind of budget, and in this genre, it's not exactly possible to be hitting that Ingmar Bergman level of personal artistic depth, yes? For those people calling Titanic "soulless" or "empty," I'd urge some of you to go back and look at David Lean's later work. It's probably a little more detached and impassive than you remember.

comment #36

Howlingman says ...

Am I allowed to love Titanic as much as I love Boogie Nights and L.A. Confidential, or am I only allowed to pick one?

comment #37

Yuval says ...

Gordon, there is a way to argue that acting isn't wooden, it's called your opinion, and there's a chance you may present your opinion in a convincing manner. It's actually the only thing of value you have on a blog. And yes, it is "subjective". I agree that when something is so popular there's clearly *something* there, if that *something* is a redeeming aspect or not is also a subjective opinion. My point was that to use box office success to "defend" a film from the "haters" makes me think the defenders feel a little too defendy. If someone needs the compforting blanket of box office success to make a point, I always feel like I'm talking to a child.
Titanic doesn't "bother" me at all, I liked some parts of it and I feel it fails as a film, that's my opinion. I'm not a "hater". That's putting way too much emotional involvement in it (I feel it's projected from other people's defendiness). Everyone is in disagreement about most of the academy awards winners. So to use an academy award as a redeeming aspect of a film is another empty reasoning tactic.

comment #38

cinefan says ...

"I don't really understand all the people (cinefan, I'm looking at you) that try to compare Titanic unfavorably to any movie released in 1997 -- or ever. Seriously, where is the hate coming from? Is it the money it's made, it's popularity? The picture was always meant to be a throwback to the epic filmmaking of the Demillian Age of Hollywood a la Spartacus, Lawrence of Arabia, Ben-Hur, and The Ten Commandments. And as such -- I think it's an enormous success. I think it's undoubtedly *one* of the best films in its genre."

So I guess if you feel that Titanic is a deeply flawed and unsatisfying movie that is nowhere near being "undoubtedly 'one' of the best films in its genre", you have to have some kind of passionate hatred of the movie? I love how often ardent fans of the film automatically equate any criticisms of it to some sort of deep-seated, passionate hatred of the film rather than well-considered and logically thought-out analysis of a film's merits or flaws. I agree with Yuval about not being a "hater" of Titanic because I have zero emotional involvement in the film as well - the amount of time I've thought about the film since I saw it twelve years ago probably wouldn't fill an hour.

I also think Kaned criticizing me for comparing Titanic to other films from 1997 is a bit ridiculous. It seems to pretty natural to compare films from the same year when talking about movies. For example, I've talked a lot with friends and others about which film they liked best from 1939 (Wizard of Oz, Wuthering Heights, Gone with the Wind, etc.) or from 1974 (Godfather Part II, Conversation, Chinatown, etc.)

comment #39

austin111 says ...

Yes, of course you can compare apples to oranges if you must. But even you have to admit they're very different. Each film is it's own world in a way, even within specific genres. On the other hand, everyone can have their own particular favorites. It's allowed. Like Howlingman said, some of us liked Titanic, Boogie Nights and L.A. Confidential because every one of these is a different film. I happen to agree with him. They're all great, imo. I don't have to pull one down to push the others up. And I don't have a preference particularly depending on what kind of mood I'm in.

comment #40

mattn says ...

Not to pile on to cinefan, who is ably defending his point of view even if he is 100% percent wrong :), but I have always found the comparison of films made in the same year to be a bit silly. I don't see how one reasonably compares Rules of the Game and Gone with the Wind (to use a fairly relevant pair of films for this discussion), for example. I don't expect one film to encompass all aspects of cinema, so different films can both be successful in their own right.

It seems fairer to say that Titanic compares poorly to other films of its type (I like it, but I'm not sure I'd put it in the top ten epics of all time, but maybe top twenty), or to say you don't like the genre it represents (one might find epics in general to be too manipulative and/or shallow).

comment #41

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