This weekend, I decided to devote three hours and 14 minutes to watching James Cameron’s “Titanic.”
Now I have to admit, I was pretty excited to watch it. Partly because I had never seen the movie the entire way through; when I was younger, we fast-forwarded through the naughty parts.
Seeing it for the first time as an adult, my appreciation for the movie grew even more. Not only was the acting superb and the love story timeless, “Titanic” is a visually pleasing and remarkable movie.
I’m the type of person who becomes slightly obsessed about something after I finish it and have to discover things about it. So, I turned to the handy dandy Internet to learn as much about the production of the movie as I could.
I watched a couple YouTube videos about the making of the movie and was amazed to find out that it cost $200 million to make, which made it the most expensive film ever made at the time of its release.
The scenes in the beginning of the movie where the treasure hunters are looking at the remains of the ship are actual real images of the Titanic, which is incredible if you really think about it.
Cameron and his crew also created and built a life-size model of The Titanic. Parts of the boat were on hydraulics, which enabled the front part of the recreated ship to be fully submerged in the water, making those scenes essentially lifelike.
Another fact was that the water the actors, actresses and stunt people fight their way through was freezing cold. Cameron said they could not heat the water due to steam.
Kate Winslet, the actress who played Rose, remarked in several interviews how she was badly bruised from filming and many actors got sick from filming.
Due to the immense amount of time and work that went in to making this unbelievable film, as well as the acting of many great people, “Titanic” won 11 Academy Awards, including best picture, best art direction, best cinematography and best visual effects.
The reason I bring this up is because when people talk about the movie, the argument of the door being big enough for both Jack and Rose to fit on it always comes up.
The argument makes me irritated for several reasons. First, Cameron was going to kill off Jack no matter what, as he remarked in the episode of MythBusters dedicated to testing out the Titanic theory.
Second, part of the reason people love “Titanic” is because of its tragic love story. If Jack had survived, the movie would be dubbed too unrealistic. If both died, it would be too tragic.
But “Titanic” is more than just a love story; Cameron remarked that the movie is a way to honor all those who lost their lives in the sinking.
I think knowing about how difficult it was to the make the movie will give people a new found respect for it. And if you can’t appreciate it for the romance, appreciate it for the visual effects and how intense making the movie was.
SAMMIE JANIK
