Director James Cameron at the helm
If nothing else, the reissue of Titanic, this time in 3D, offers a panoply of handy metaphors and analogies with which to place it into something resembling a meaningful cultural context. These would be, in descending order of obviousness:
The sinking ship is a metaphor for a troubled global economy.
The sharp class divisions aboard the ship, particularly the obscene luxury afforded by the uppermost tier, is a perfect distillation of the current “99 per cent versus 1 per cent” political movement.
Conversion from regular 2D to 3D (see also The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and others) is this era’s answer to colourisation of black-and-white films: expensive, debasing, and largely pointless.
Leonardo DiCaprio is fatter now; Kate Winslet is thinner. Discuss.
Are we done yet? Alas, probably not. When Titanic hits cinemas on 6th April, nearly 15 years after its original release and just a few days shy of the centenary of its namesake’s ill-fated departure from Southampton, it’s sure to leave equal amounts of excitement and derision in its wake. Both responses will be perfectly legit. On one hand, it’s inarguable that James Cameron’s 1997 epic is not merely a technical masterpiece but something of a miracle of craft. The boat was a $57m custom sound stage built almost to scale. The sets were nearly exact replicas of the staterooms and Titanic historians were employed to authenticate every aspect of the production design—down to pieces of furniture and dishware and even the carpeting, which was made by the same company that supplied the real Titanic’s carpet. On the other hand, the movie is bloated and sappy, a paint-by-numbers love story superimposed over a slicker, pricier, post-digital version of The Poseidon Adventure. For all his perfectionism, Cameron’s knack for dialogue doesn’t match his ability to simulate a 45,000 tonne ocean liner breaking in two and sucking thousands of meticulously costumed extras into the Atlantic. Ergo those oft-mocked clunkers like “you shine up like a new penny” and, of course, the film’s signature chestnut “I’m the king of the world!”
As it turns out, 3D doesn’t do much for Titanic. It cost Paramount and Twentieth Century Fox $18m to do the conversion, which is a mere shiny penny considering the film’s original budget exceeded $200m. Still, despite Titanic’s grand optics, there’s no getting around the fact that it was never intended for the 3D format. The result is that what leaps off the screen and what doesn’t feels a bit arbitrary. The lifeboats attached to the deck have a discernable in-your-face quality (ditto for swinging doors and certain ladies’ hats) but the disaster sequences, even those in which multiple tons of water crash through wood-carved walls, are curiously flat.
So what does an $18m 3D makeover buy a film? Most likely in this case, analysis and commentary of the most predictable kind. In addition to the aforementioned talking points about class hierarchy and economic collapse there will be inevitable references to last January’s sinking of the Italian cruise liner, the Costa Concordia, which claimed 17 lives. Direct comparisons would be a stretch, but both disasters were the result of reckless sailing by the respective captains. On the Titanic, at least under James Cameron’s stewardship, White Star Line manager J Bruce Ismay is seen nudging the captain to go faster for the sake of generating headlines.
There’s debate over whether that actually happened, though it’s well known that Cameron himself pushed his cast and crew to the limit. Winslet told the LA Times that she chipped a bone and feared drowning. At one point an unidentified crew member spiked Cameron’s soup with the hallucinogen PCP. Back in Hollywood, the name Titanic became an industry punchline. After its release, when it won 11 Academy Awards and grossed more than $1.8bn worldwide, it became industry legend.
The moral of that legend: let James Cameron do what he wants. His next venture, Avatar, cost an estimated $300m and earned more than $2bn worldwide. But unlike Titanic, Avatar was conceived, shot, and edited for the 3D format. It makes you feel like you’re inside the movie rather than about to be poked in the eye with a plume from an Edwardian-era headpiece. But, then again, the blue, Na’vi people of Avatar can hardly compete with a 23-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio and a 21-year-old Kate Winslet (with bare breasts, no less.) Some things just don’t need any help from 3D. Not that the studios care. At the rate the post-conversation craze is going, look for The English Patient in Smell-O-Vision to come to a cinema near you.
If nothing else, the reissue of Titanic, this time in 3D, offers a panoply of handy metaphors and analogies with which to place it into something resembling a meaningful cultural context. These would be, in descending order of obviousness:
The sinking ship is a metaphor for a troubled global economy.
The sharp class divisions aboard the ship, particularly the obscene luxury afforded by the uppermost tier, is a perfect distillation of the current “99 per cent versus 1 per cent” political movement.
Conversion from regular 2D to 3D (see also The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and others) is this era’s answer to colourisation of black-and-white films: expensive, debasing, and largely pointless.
Leonardo DiCaprio is fatter now; Kate Winslet is thinner. Discuss.
Are we done yet? Alas, probably not. When Titanic hits cinemas on 6th April, nearly 15 years after its original release and just a few days shy of the centenary of its namesake’s ill-fated departure from Southampton, it’s sure to leave equal amounts of excitement and derision in its wake. Both responses will be perfectly legit. On one hand, it’s inarguable that James Cameron’s 1997 epic is not merely a technical masterpiece but something of a miracle of craft. The boat was a $57m custom sound stage built almost to scale. The sets were nearly exact replicas of the staterooms and Titanic historians were employed to authenticate every aspect of the production design—down to pieces of furniture and dishware and even the carpeting, which was made by the same company that supplied the real Titanic’s carpet. On the other hand, the movie is bloated and sappy, a paint-by-numbers love story superimposed over a slicker, pricier, post-digital version of The Poseidon Adventure. For all his perfectionism, Cameron’s knack for dialogue doesn’t match his ability to simulate a 45,000 tonne ocean liner breaking in two and sucking thousands of meticulously costumed extras into the Atlantic. Ergo those oft-mocked clunkers like “you shine up like a new penny” and, of course, the film’s signature chestnut “I’m the king of the world!”
As it turns out, 3D doesn’t do much for Titanic. It cost Paramount and Twentieth Century Fox $18m to do the conversion, which is a mere shiny penny considering the film’s original budget exceeded $200m. Still, despite Titanic’s grand optics, there’s no getting around the fact that it was never intended for the 3D format. The result is that what leaps off the screen and what doesn’t feels a bit arbitrary. The lifeboats attached to the deck have a discernable in-your-face quality (ditto for swinging doors and certain ladies’ hats) but the disaster sequences, even those in which multiple tons of water crash through wood-carved walls, are curiously flat.
So what does an $18m 3D makeover buy a film? Most likely in this case, analysis and commentary of the most predictable kind. In addition to the aforementioned talking points about class hierarchy and economic collapse there will be inevitable references to last January’s sinking of the Italian cruise liner, the Costa Concordia, which claimed 17 lives. Direct comparisons would be a stretch, but both disasters were the result of reckless sailing by the respective captains. On the Titanic, at least under James Cameron’s stewardship, White Star Line manager J Bruce Ismay is seen nudging the captain to go faster for the sake of generating headlines.
There’s debate over whether that actually happened, though it’s well known that Cameron himself pushed his cast and crew to the limit. Winslet told the LA Times that she chipped a bone and feared drowning. At one point an unidentified crew member spiked Cameron’s soup with the hallucinogen PCP. Back in Hollywood, the name Titanic became an industry punchline. After its release, when it won 11 Academy Awards and grossed more than $1.8bn worldwide, it became industry legend.
The moral of that legend: let James Cameron do what he wants. His next venture, Avatar, cost an estimated $300m and earned more than $2bn worldwide. But unlike Titanic, Avatar was conceived, shot, and edited for the 3D format. It makes you feel like you’re inside the movie rather than about to be poked in the eye with a plume from an Edwardian-era headpiece. But, then again, the blue, Na’vi people of Avatar can hardly compete with a 23-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio and a 21-year-old Kate Winslet (with bare breasts, no less.) Some things just don’t need any help from 3D. Not that the studios care. At the rate the post-conversation craze is going, look for The English Patient in Smell-O-Vision to come to a cinema near you.
