Titanic (1996) / YMMV

Fan Nickname: Due to the graphic rape scene and a subplot concerning child murder, some Titanic Enthusiasts nicknamed this dramatization Titanic: Special Victims Unit.^{As it happens...}
Faux Symbolism: The virtuous and chaste Aese is brutally raped just before the brand new Titanic is penetrated and defiled by an iceberg in the middle of its maiden voyage. It's not subtle. At all.
Hilarious in Hindsight: In this miniseries, Isabella is introduced wearing black. In the script for the 1997 film, as they're heading to board, it's mentioned that Rose had to change because she was wearing black and Cal said that wearing black when a ship is setting sail is bad luck.
Narm: Take your pick: the dialogue, the acting, the historical inaccuracies...
Narm Charm: Captain Smith's final scene, where he engages in lengthy speech where he compares those who built the ship to the Titans of legend. While the speech is over-wrought, mythologically inaccurate, and doesn't even feel in-character for Smith^note, George C. Scott nonetheless sells the hell out of the speech and makes the scene remarkably poignant in spite of itself.
Retroactive Recognition:
- Catherine Zeta-Jones would have been known to British viewers thanks to The Darling Buds Of May, but was a virtual unknown in America at the time. After seeing Zeta-Jones in this, Steven Spielberg recommended her to The Mask of Zorro director Martin Campbell, which launched her Hollywood career.
- Wireless operator Harold Bride is played by Barry Pepper, who later found fame with appearances in Saving Private Ryan, The Green Mile, and True Grit, along with infamy for Battlefield Earth.
- Future scream queen Katharine Isabelle has a small role as one of the Jack children.
Serial Numbers Filed Off:
- Besides the expected overlap between any films based on the same historical event, there are a lot of curious similarities with the Cameron movie, the production of which was well underway by the time this miniseries was made. Some scenes appear to have been lifted directly:
  - Both show First Officer Murdoch shooting a passenger, then turning the gun on himself.
  - On board the Carpathia, Jamie thinks he has found Aase, but when the woman turns round, it isn't her. A deleted scene from Cameron's movie shows Cal on the Carpathia mistaking a red haired woman for Rose.
  - Both feature a lively party in steerage.
  - While running past the band playing on the deck, a character in each movie snarks that it is "music to drown by".
  - Jamie Perse is a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for Jack Dawson. Besides having a name with the same first initial, both are young, fair-haired poor men who board Titanic with a Third Class ticket that originally belonged to someone else. They both fall in love with another passenger, mingle in First Class with a borrowed tuxedo and have a conversation with John Jacob Astor.
  - Both feature Captain Smith being asked by a passenger to help save their child after all the lifeboats have been launched, only for him to realize there is nothing he can do and walk off to the bridge to await his fate.
  - The original script had a romance between a woman from First Class and a man from Third Class.
- More bizarrely, there are several big similarities with the infamous Nazi propaganda film version made in 1943. Namely:
  - The main subplot concerns a pair of ex-lovers who become reunited during the voyage.
  - Titanic is ahistorically attempting to set a speed record.
  - The ship's designer Thomas Andrews is omitted from the story and his role is taken up by Bruce Ismay.
  - Bruce Ismay is portrayed as an unscrupulous, callous Corrupt Corporate Executive who has unlimited influence over Captain Smith and the operation of the ship. He uses his power to sail Titanic at breakneck speed to its doom.
  - John Jacob Astor and his wife Madeleine Astor form a major secondary subplot.
  - One of the lead characters goes to the wireless room to send a telegram to her husband/fiancé, informing him that she has fallen in love with someone else on the ship and is leaving him.
  - When the stricken Titanic starts firing rockets to catch attention of the nearby Californian, one of the crew members complains they should be red instead of white to signal distress.
  - Both portray the Grand Staircase A-deck landing and the First Class Dining Room immediately adjacent to each other, when in reality the dining room was five decks below on D-deck, adjacent to the First Class Reception Room, which is omitted in both films.
  - Both films feature an anachronistic dance floor in the middle of the First Class Dining Room.
  - The set for the wireless room in both films incorrectly features a service window that passengers use to send and receive telegrams.
So Bad, It's Good: Between the narmy acting and laughable inaccuracies, you can definitely have a good time watching this.
Special Effects Failure:
- It seems the production ran out of money before they could film Titanic's final plunge, so the ship's final moments are "artistically implied" through an endless montage of confusing and abstract close-ups.
- Shots of water rampaging through the decks reveals that most of them are very brittle set pieces made of cardboard.
- The scene where the steerage passengers are blocked from the lifeboats by a locked gate was obviously filmed on stairwell of a relatively modern office building somewhere in Vancouver.
- When the First Class men have a final toast in the smoking room, it's apparent that only the camera is tilted with the painting set askew. The actors aren't even leaning to compensate for lack of an actual list.
- When the Jack family arrives on the boat deck, there is clearly a wall representing the edge of the set. A lifeboat appears to be far below them, even though the boat deck is supposed to be awash now.
Tear Jerker: As bad as the film is, the Jack family accepting their fate is legitimately sad.
Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Isabella is this in spades. She flaunts an affair with her ex-lover Wynn while aboard the ship and decides to abandon her loving husband and daughter to be with him on a whim. Later, it is discovered she has been lying to both her husband and ex-lover about her daughter's true paternity. After the sinking, Isabella accosts random passengers aboard the Carpathia and self-righteously admonishes them about their own survival and even attacks Hazel Foley for rescuing her helpless little dog. In the end, after her affair remains hidden on a technicality at the cost of 1,500 lives, Isabella just smiles warmly and walks off with her husband and young daughter into the sunset.
The Woobie: You can't help but feel sorry for Mr. Dickie as he's watching Titanic steam off without him. Of course, considering over eighty percent of the men in steerage perished, it's unlikely he'd have survived the sinking.

YMMV / Titanic (1996)

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