DBWI: Who remembers James Cameron's Titanic

[Luath]

Hello all, does anyone remember this 1997 work of the famous director behind the Terminator franchise, Aliens and later Avatar, with its distinctive soundtrack, all star cast, and sumptuous set design? I speak of course of James Cameron's excellent documentary series on the famous middle ship of the White Star Line's Olympic Class Ocean Liners, the Titanic. The first documentary dealt with her construction, fitting out, and maiden voyage, including her encounter with an iceberg that damaged her and the subsequent efforts of the crew and her designer Thomas Andrews to get her to New york. The second was an examination of her wartime career, how she and her sister ships Olympic and Britannic were converted to troop transports, though the Britannic was later a hospital ship, and earned the nickname 'the reliables', this documentary also included her epic rescue of the Cunard Liner RMS Mauretania after that ship was torpedoed in the mid Atlantic. The third documentary focused on her post war life, and the developments of the White Star Line company, finally the Titanic was sold for scrap and almost faced the breakers yard, if not for the intervention of the Second World War and the Royal Navy, who duly pressed her back into service as a hospital vessel, which would see her present at Dunkirk, before her immense size forced her out of home waters to New York. Here the Titanic would languish in a dry dock, deteoritating, until she was donated to the City of Belfast and towed back across the Atlantic for the final time.

Belfast would spend almost half a billion pounds and twenty years restoring Titanic to museum condition and it is just next door to the yard that built her that the Titanic remains as the focal point of the 'Titanic Museum', in full 1912 condition, an arresting sight for visitors to Belfast and living link to the Ocean liners of the past.

Camerons documentary would go on to win 3 oscars, and is widely praised as the gold standard of historical documentaries.

Luath.

 

[Resurgam]

Of course I remember it! What Titanic buff worth their salt wouldn’t. The only thing I could think of that’s more of a “bible” is Walter Lord’s A Night Saved.

 

[Luath]

Of course I remember it! What Titanic buff worth their salt wouldn’t. The only thing I could think of that’s more of a “bible” is Walter Lord’s A Night Saved.

Ah yes, I remember catching the tail end of that film, I do believe it was just as the ship arrived in New York with the somewhat apocryphal scene of the citizens of New York packing on the Brooklyn Bridge to give the ship a hero's welcome, apocryphal because the bridge is on the other side from the White Star pier, thus the Titanic sailed past it, rather than under it as the film depicts. I should go and look for it at some point.

 

[Resurgam]

Ah yes, I remember catching the tail end of that film, I do believe it was just as the ship arrived in New York with the somewhat apocryphal scene of the citizens of New York packing on the Brooklyn Bridge to give the ship a hero's welcome, apocryphal because the bridge is on the other side from the White Star pier, thus the Titanic sailed past it, rather than under it as the film depicts. I should go and look for it at some point.

I do hope you've read the book. The movie is victim to the usual Hollywood embellishment.

 

[Plateosaurus]

I hear instead of doing Titanic, James Cameron was briefly tapped to direct the sequel to Jurassic Park [OOC: known as Jurassic Park: Terra Incognita, which features a different director of your choice and is a bit closer to the book The Lost World by Michael Crichton] . Who knows what that film could have been like?

On that note, Jurassic Park is still being merchandised to this as one of the highest grossing film of all time, even after it was dethroned by Marvel and Sony's Champions in 2009.