Over the weekend, I went to watch the Titanic 25th anniversary re-release with two delightful colleagues from Euronews.
The 1997 Oscar-winner is now out in cinemas in 4K 3D and has already grossed $22.3 million at the global box office, while Avatar: The Way of Water added an extra $25.8 million to its tally in its ninth weekend of release.
I was thrilled at the prospect of re-watching this epic on the big screen once more, and to my surprise, they’ve changed it completely.
In a twist no one saw coming, the unsinkable ship manages to dodge the iceberg, pass the Statue of Liberty on time, Rose DeWitt-Bukater does get off with Jack Dawson as she promised and that adorable older couple holding each other on the bed while the ship was flooding in the original cut make it out alive and go on to enjoy twilight years in peace.
A bold move on James Cameron’s part to tamper with the original cut so much, but what a joy to witness a happy ending for the ages.
I jest, of course.
Jack gets human-popsicled, the evil Cal survives and Rose goes on to tell her story to Bill Paxton and his Heart of the Ocean-hungry crew. And further tears were shed at what is arguably the saddest death in movie history when Isidor and Ida Straus (that sweet couple in bed) accept their fate and manage to sneak in one last spoon.
It’s no coincidence that this re-release comes in time for Valentine’s Day. Cameron is a numbers man and Titanic 3D has now buoyed the movie to $2.217 billion globally, meaning that it still stands as the Number 3 worldwide release of all time. The second Avatar has reached $2.213 billion and it will doubtlessly overtake Titanic in just a matter of days. And that will be a sad, sad day, considering how terminally naff his long-gestating sequel truly is.
Nevertheless, and putting my cynicism aside for Cameron and his box office domination plans, I sauntered into the theatre with my two compadres and sat down to watch one of the greatest cinematic spectacles of all time.
Here’s what I learned.
1) The 3D does nothing
First things first: the 3D 4K HDR and high-frame-rate transfer of the film is a scam.
While the visuals still take your breath away and the story remains engrossing, this restauration proves once again that all 3D does is muddy the vibrant colour palette and adds absolutely nothing to the spectacle. All it does is make viewers fork out for a more expensive ticket – which goes some way to explaining the re-release’s already huge box office intake.
Worse, the conversion effort adds little depth and there were irritating flashes on the screen. That, and when the ship finally sank, the sea looked bright red for no apparent reason, showing that the conversion needed far more thought and careful consideration. The whole endeavor didn’t feel planned out properly, and it looked like the same 3D re-issue version we’d already been given in 2012.
So, if you do go watch Titanic again on the big screen – something which you absolutely should do – try to find a non-3D showing. You’ll miss out on nothing. Granted, it can depend on which theatre you visit, but having gone to the biggest multiplex, 3D and its annoying glasses remains a fad that needs to sink to the bottom of the ocean and stay there.
2) The unsinkable film
While the 3D conversion is a nightmare and a shameless ploy to gain extra ticket revenue, the film itself remains pretty damn close to perfection.
It was joyful to hear audience members laugh, gasp, cry and snivel, especially at the end once Celine Dion’s power ballad kicks in. I’m certain some members of the audience in the screening I went to had never seen Titanic before, as there were audible reactions that truly made the viewing experience an excellent one.
While I have seen Titanic countless times before – and twice when it came out in 1997 because my younger sister wanted to go a second weekend in a row, bless her heart – nothing since has dented my appreciation for the epic and its especially tense moments. Not the disastrous poster fail for the 2023 re-release. Not even some of the best memes and parodies around.
I’m thinking in particular of these two gems, the first from OwlKitty, the second from SNL:
3) I knew I’d heard that line before…
I grew up with a (not so) healthy appreciation for Twin Peaks, an obsession that has followed me well into adulthood. I have rewatched all three seasons of the iconic show so many times, the last being during the pandemic lockdowns.
And when I watched Titanic this weekend, it suddenly struck me: one of the film’s best lines isn’t Titanic ’s at all! It was taken from Twin Peaks.
When Rose finally confronts her cruel fiancé Cal with the line “I’d rather be his whore than your wife”, it dawned on me. The exact same line was spoken previously in Season 2 Episode 16 of Twin Peaks.
