(First I have to disclose that I work for Viacom, which owns Paramount, which is releasing Titanic 3D. But please make no mistake: If you see Titanic I will make money. Boatloads of it. Something like $3 per ticket or $2 if you take home your returnable glasses.)
Men cry at Titanic. The first of the three times I saw Titanic 2D in theaters, a 40+ year old man wept in front of his pre-teen boys. I think about, mostly, how they must think about it. I think no man is comfortable seeing his father cry; I think if he does it at Titanic it’s potentially childhood-devastating.
The man who cried next to me said “Not again” while he was crying.
It’s hard not to want a new interpretation for Titanic 3D to make the whole experience of seeing Titanic again somehow relevant and worth it. So here’s mine: Let the love story recede and think long and hard about all the people who died on Titanic. Unlike a plane, where classes are separated but you all basically die the same way, class mattered in this accident. This really mattered. As this person writes: “The numbers make it all too clear that a rule of First Class First far outweighed any guiding principle of Women and Children First.” More first class men survived than third class children. If you were a third-class male your rate of survival was 13%.
In this interpretation this is Occupy Wall Street:
On the other hand screw the class stuff and focus instead on the love story. Or the actors. We couldn’t know it then, but we know now that Leonardo DiCaprio picks his movie roles solely based on how little they are like his Titanic character. (He skipped the premiere of Titanic 3D.) We also know now that, if caught topless and doomed, Kate Winslet would put on a bra.
I wonder if Billy Zane watched the 3D Titanic and saw his beautiful butt-cut in 3D and closed his eyes and whispered “I remember…everything” and then saw his hairline running up his head’s staircase and meeting his forehead at the clock and embracing for the last time? Probably?
The CGI has not aged well. Why didn’t James Cameron fix this stuff? It’s not like Titanic is Star Wars and people would be screaming about purity and integrity. As is, the pans over the Titanic look like Legos goose-stepping across a deviantART jpeg.
Some not funny jokes to do while seeing Titanic 3D: Yell “I’m king of the world,” stick your arms out during that scene. Funny 3D jokes to make: Trying to touch Kate Winslet’s breasts during the drawing scene, trying to catch DiCaprio’s hand during his death scene. Funny 3D or 2D Titanic joke to make: When Winslet tells DiCaprio “When this ship docks, I’m getting off with you,” yell “You already did!” then hi-five for the last 40 minutes of the movie.
Titanic exists to make you cry and if you don’t cry it has failed. Like you know those horror movie previews where they show the audience gasping and crying in night vision during the movie? To show you how scary it is? They should do Titanic 3D previews with night vision and men just weeping and weeping.
This James Cameron Titanic 3D-ness is a lot like the Avatar 3D-ness, where it just seems to disappear and not be too showy. So about 30 minutes in you forget it’s Titanic 3D, and now you are just watching Titanic in a movie theater while wearing glasses.
But the glasses have a practical purpose: They hide crying eyes. Some people kept them on all the way to the street.
Okay, yeah, I cried. Just a little.
