Re: TITANIC on the INDY Board

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Posted by Ultraman Tiga from ts003d04.las-nv.concentric.net on March 28, 1998 at 16:12:48:

In Reply to: Re: TITANIC on the INDY Board posted by Harmonica on March 27, 1998 at 05:15:09:


: It certainly wasn't the hype that turned me off the movie. I tend to
: try not to listen to the hype, and I loved Jurassic Park which was
: one of the biggest hyped movies of the decade over here.
: I went to Titanic knowing two things, They had gone seriously over
: budget( what movie hasn't) and that Jim Cameron had directed it.
: I presumed that because of Cameron's involvement in the movie that
: it was going to be good. I was completely wrong.

Boy, if you were a proffessional film critic (I'm sure you're not aspiring to be one either) you'd have a very hard time finding work - this is a very bad review of a movie! Here's why:

: I felt that the movie centered on Jack and Rose's charactors
: way too much.

They are the main characters, so I shouldn't have to point out what's wrong with that statement!

Kate and Leonardo's performances were not strong enough
: to carry a movie.

Okay, if you feel that way I could accept it - but you don't explain what in particular is so weak about their performances. I thought both of them showed a good eye for restraint in scenes that they easily could have overacted (then maybe that's Cameron's inspired direction). I also thought they both held a realistic amount of emotionalism dealing with the love story scenes, AND the scenes where they are surrounded byt te constant deaths happening around them. For instance in the end, Winslet is peering into the faces of complete strangers, wondering who will die next - even though she cannot help them in any way. Who wouldn't do that?


Plus they were surrounded by interesting real life
: people who had to settle for supporting roles. The designer,
: The captain and many others had hardly anything to say in the movie.

They've all been written about ad nasueum - what could they have contributed that most of us don't know already? Besides, I didn't actually know that much about them, and what I did get in the film was already fascinating enough in itself (especially the designer, Andrews). What little I have learned since isn't anything I'm too suprised to hear and felt, "Well my god, why wasn't that fact in the movie?".

: Cameron should have taken some artistic liberty and developed their
: charactors.


Huh!?!?! If he would have to take artistic liberty to develop them then they can't be too interesting in the first place - right? So which side fo the fence do you want to be left standing on here, anyway? For Cameron to do that would have been entirely pointless. Artisitic liberty has no place in a movie being scrutinized for realism, and Cameron's already under-fire for that anyway. If he was going to take artistic liberties, then he may as well have made up characters - and he did in Jack and Rose!

Apart from the Celi scene the poor people on the ship are
: practically ignored for the first part of the movie and then, we're
: supposed to care about them in the second half. By the time the ship
: sank I didn't have an emotional attachment on any of the charactors
: so I couldn't care less and just sat back and watched an hour of
: amazing, but uninvolving special effects.

So, if you had been on the ship, you wouldn't be affected by the sight of the total abolishment of 1500 strangers? I certainly cared.

: I don't see why this thing has developed into a kind of INDY and
: Starwars V's titanic battle, but because you brought up the issue I'll
: address it. You siad that the Titanic movie will outlast them because
: the story has been told for the last 80 years and will be continued to
: be told. The story of Titanic will outlast Starwars but Jim Cameron's
: Titanic will not.

Purely conjecture, and besides probably not true at all. The minute this movie released people were praising A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, which didn't even win Academy Awards! That movie has also been readily made available to tape once again (from two different sources no less) and is considered an undisputed classic (see any Dave Letterman episode where someone brings up Cameron's film). By the time someone else does another popular version of the ship's story, people will be flocking back to their VCR's and DVD's and popping in the Cameron epic to once again admire the amount of skill that went into the making of the film.

I might as well say that the Indy films, Schindlers
: List, and The Longest Day are the same thing because they were all
: based around WWII. In creating Indy and Starwars, Lucas created a
: brilliant Charactor, and a whole world. In 20 years time if there are
: spin off novels, games, fan clubs etc for Jack and Rose and all the
: ficticious charactors that Cameron created then his movie will have
: outlasted Starwars.

Again conjecture. Considering that the new SW films are the definitive LAST of them, it IS unlikely there will be a Fan Club (for Lucasfilm yes - just like in the 1984-1991 period when there was no SW F.C.). Even if there were a F.C. for Star Wars by then, just because there won't be one for TITANIC will not have meant the movie isn't a classic. It'll be up to how people regard the film then.

Indy Jones is my favorite fictional character of all time, and both RAIDERS and TITANIC are generally regarded as FOUR STAR films. But RAIDERS, is spite of being called a classic, has definately fallen to the test of time (you won't be seeing any retrospectives on the movie's impact on the 80's audiences that went to go see it)! STAR WARS has stood times test a little better, but it does get a lower raiting from some critics who (quite unfairly) cited it's storyline too derivative of comics and fables (I say 'unfairly' because that's precisely what inspired the movie, so what's wrong with that)? But general audiences themselves had let the original movie down by consistently pointing out the technical flaws that eventually led Lucas to do the Special Edition versions (heck even Lucas admits he just didn't get it right the first time around).

There you have it. I am open to more debate if you have any more points to make that strongly counterpoint the ones I've enforced here.


Sincerely, TIGA




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