A hundred years passed, and my brother and I discovered the new Avatar, a giant ship named the Titanic that's totes at the bottom of the ocean.
I was OBSESSED with the Titanic when I was little (morbid as hell, I'm aware), and I still geek out if someone even mentions it. I can tell you the mechanics of how it sunk, the fact that the fourth funnel up there was just for show, how Bruce Ismay got absolutely scorned for being like "um women and children first? MOVE, B****, GET OUT THE WAY," the
Carpathia was the rescue ship's name, and glass is what gets preserved the best under miles of water.
All joking aside, the entire history is fascinating. The amount of hubris present is so overwhelming you kind of wonder if the engineers had recently read a Greek epic and were like "LET'S DO IT." I'm pretty sure Mother Nature heard someone call the ship "unsinkable" and went "challenge accepted." However, since a shitton of poor people had to die for her to make her point, this just reinforces the known fact that Mother Nature is a cruel mistress.
The entire thing was a microcosm of the world at that time. First class had very high survival rates, while about one in ten men in steerage lived. People were heroic; people were terrible.
And then we have TITANIC. THE MOTION PICTURE. A movie so bloated the iceberg itself unmelted and went hunting after James Cameron's modes of transportation. A movie that decided a sinking ship wasn't dramatic and exciting enough and had to have an officer shoot people. A movie that made everyone in the world legitimately hate Celine Dion for a year on average. A movie that proves you can't have "Titanic" without "tit." (Too far?)
What's so ridic about it? LIST TIME.
1. Jack's Italian and Irish friends. Stereotypes to the max: Fabrizio is basically what would happen if the Sopranos, Chef Boyardee, and ignorance had a baby, and I kept waiting for Tommy Ryan (yes, Tommy Ryan, was Seamus O'Reilly just too far or something?) to blurt out "they're after me Lucky Charms!" and toss out clover. Also they obvs died in dramatic ways (CRUSHED BY FUNNEL! SHOT BY OFFICER!) instead of "oh for the love of God they probs drowned or froze like everyone else."
2. Billy Zane. I can't. I CAN'T. Like everything that comes out of his mouth is hilarious because it's BILLY ZANE. Also the movie gets infinitely funnier if you imagine Hansel from Zoolander coming up behind Rose every time Cal talks and saying, "Listen to your friend Billy Zane."
3. I legit feel bad for Rose's husband. It seems like she basically lived her entire life with this dude according to a plan she made with another dude she knew for like 3 days.
4. That frickin' necklace. The name sounds like a Celebrity cruise ship name, and because I'm a jerk, I regularly call it "Big Ol' Sapphire of the Sea." It's also tacky (and I hate it). Dolly Parton and the 80s both rejected it before it became a part of this film. Also legit every museum curator watched this movie's ending and sobbed harder when she tossed it into the ocean than when Jack died.
5. Theoden King sunk the hell out of a ship. And because I'm a jerk I can no longer see this film without dubbing all his lines with "I know your face" and "dark have been my dreams of late." It's also fun to dub them when he's staring out over the Atlantic with "Is this all you can conjure, SARUMAN?!?!"
6. The dialogue. First of all, nearly 90 percent of it is the two main characters shouting each other's names. My personal favorite is "you're so STUPID, Rose, you're so STUPID." The rest is either camp/uncomfortably scripted/both. "Jack, this is where we first met!" Are we joking here. Is this a joke. Also "draw me like one of your French girls" still makes me giggle every damn time because I picture every meme ever with some chubby dog or cat and that text superimposed.
7. Rose's mother and Cal's butler-footman-type dude are both sociopaths and I'd love to actually see a movie starring the two of them in some kind of Bonnie and Clyde-esque psychological drama. But noooo.
8. Dramatizing the hell out of specific moments of one of the biggest peacetime naval disasters through needless complications. Funnel crushes people. First Officer turns into something like the bad guys in Braveheart and shoots people. Poor little coal dude has to dive under that closing door like he's freaking Luke Skywalker. Jack gets handcuffed. Rose turns into Uma Thurman for two hot seconds to slice through metal and then goes back to being exceedingly waterlogged. Jack and Rose get stuck behind gate. Rose gets put on lifeboat. Rose jumps off of lifeboat ("you jump, I jump, right?" GROOOOAN). Both hold onto ship. Find piece of wood OH NOES it's not good enough for both of them so we watch really uncomfortably as Jack dies and Rose doesn't notice (sidenote, Rose almost certainly would have died from exposure in those few minutes as well, sorry to be a downer). Rose delivers worst line ever and then promptly LETS GO, you LYING WINSLET. Rose can't call out because voice is frozen? but swims and finds whistle. Yay? Whomp. Like, the movie got spoilered for everyone before they saw it, so kind of all of that was a waste.
Does this movie make me feel? Yes, and I do get sad, but it feels like one long episode of a CW drama plus Romeo and Juliet plus a boat sinking plus ugh. Sorry I'm not sorry.
