YMMV / Titanic (1997)

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• Actor Shipping: One of the most famous examples of this trope. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet have been shipped since 1997. The two of them are actually good friends in Real Life.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Now with its own page.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • A significant number of people are/were under the impression that the Titanic was not a real ship and was only invented for the movie. This misconception revealed itself twice in 2012 due to separate occurrences. The first was the Costa Concordia disaster in January, which Entertainment Tonight described as a "real-life Titanic". Additionally, the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster in April brought with it a number of tweets from people who previously didn't know that it was a real boat which really sank.
  • Among those who were aware the disaster was real, some assume that the band playing as the ship sank was a dramatic touch made up for the movie when in fact survivor accounts attest that really happened, although opinion is divided on what their last piece of the night actually was.
  • When Jack and Rose are talking on deck, a bird can be seeing in the background. While likely a production mistake, as the film was shot on land and thus well in range of common birds like seagulls, there are many kinds of birds that are capable of trans-ocean crossings and can be seen while at sea.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: The Troubled Production made many, including James Cameron himself, expect the movie to sink just like the real-life ship itself. According to Victor Garber, many of the cast and crew thought of Waterworld, which famously bombed two years earlier, and they thought they would be next. Instead, it became the highest-grossing movie ever (until Cameron broke his own record with Avatar) and won eleven Oscars, tying with Ben-Hur (1959).
• Anvilicious: The first act hammers home that women in 1910s society had it hard. Not a scene in first class passes without some mention of Rose's future being a Stepford Smiler surrounded by Upper Class Twits. The scene where the family are revealed to be bankrupt, Ruth underlines the moral with "we're women, our choices are never easy."
• Applicability: It's a movie about early 20th century class struggles set on a ship making its way across the Atlantic Ocean to New York City—and the hero's best friends are an Italian and an Irishman. While the film isn't technically about immigration, it gestures broadly enough at the theme that it's easy to read it as a celebration of immigrant pride.
• Awesome Music:
  • James Horner really outdid himself with the soundtrack, to the point where it is one of the best-selling movie soundtracks of all time. Of course, he deservedly ended up winning the Original Score Oscar for his work on the film.
  • Let’s also not forget Céline Dion's "My Heart Will Go On", a beautifully sad but bittersweet song that wraps up the film nicely, and one of the most successful songs in the history of mankind. For many, this song even become associated with the historical RMS Titanic herself, despite being written and recorded more than eight decades after her sinking.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Rose, full stop, largely because of what she did in the climax of the film: having the wooden panel all to herself even if there was not enough room for Jack and herself. Many detractors think that she's too immature, self-centered, and unappreciative of her lifestyle to be likable, while supporters sympathize with her for those same reasons: love can make you do stupid things like jumping out of a lifeboat.
  • The words of Rose’s mother: "We're women, our choices are never easy" has split viewers into taking her side all the way or hating her for forcing her daughter into marrying a guy that she loathes.
  • Billy Zane sympathizes with Cal, as do several other fans, while others think he's just a hot-headed asshole with no redeeming qualities.
• Broken Base: Viewers and critics remain divided as to whether Jack and Rose's love story was necessary for the film, with many feeling that a story focusing strictly on the historical events and real life figures would have been a great on its own.
• Cliché Storm: The biggest criticism of the film. For its detractors, the central love story is just one melodramatic romance cliché after another, which makes it unappealing to them and diminishes the real life tragedy it's supposed to be portraying.
• Common Knowledge:
  • Much like the real event, one of the reasons the Titanic was such a tragedy was because there weren't enough lifeboats. Truth in Television: The Titanic did help update ship protocol so that there were more lifeboats, and yes, the Titanic really was out of compliance for the board of trade, but not in the way you think. At the time, the Board of Trade only required enough lifeboats for 1060 people — the Titanic could accommodate over 1,170. Yes, they could have had twelve other lifeboats, but they weren't removed to "cut costs" — it was because they felt the deck would be too cluttered. Additionally, two collapsible lifeboats couldn't be fully launched. It was also intended for lifeboats to ferry passengers to rescuing ships back and forth, not keep them out the entire night.
  • The issue with the floating door was never that there wouldn't be enough room, but that it wouldn't be able to stay afloat under the weight of two people. Funnily enough, Cameron actually cut a bit of dialogue where Jack spells this out, figuring the brief bit where it tips over when they both try to get on would be enough for people to get the idea.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The final minutes of the ship's sinking where the passengers tumble and fall from the stern, with some even bouncing off obstacles such as gates. It's saddening and horrifying, but you just can't help but laugh at times. The best known example of this is likely the propeller guy.
• Delusion Conclusion:
  • Though not the most popular theory, there are a few fans who claim Jack Dawson never actually existed and was merely conceived as a coping mechanism by Rose, who was about to be forced upon an Unwanted Spouse by her family. A prominent justification is how Mr. Lovejoy inexplicably stops pursuing Jack and Rose once they get to the cargo hold, and how (relatively) unconcerned Rose's family seemed to be with Jack's social rank as a penniless artist, even inviting him to dinner with them. Even the fact that this person who Rose apparently loves so much, was never mentioned by her for 84 years. Made Hilarious in Hindsight when near the end of the interview, Lovett tells Rose that there was no "J. Dawson" on the passenger or crew manifests; Word of God claims the name was made up, but by coincidence, there actually was a J. Dawson (first name Joseph) who died aboard the Titanic.
  • A more extreme version of this theory holds that Rose not only made up Jack Dawson, she was never even on the Titanic! The entire 1912 sequence which makes up the majority of the film is told by an old Rose to Brock Lovett and his crew in the Framing Device, with even Rose's granddaughter initially doubting her claim to be the woman in the picture. Thus, some viewers conclude that Rose Calvert is just a senile 100-year old woman with an overactive imagination and Rose DeWitt-Bukater is a different person who actually died on the ship. The scene with an elderly Rose dropping the heart into the Ocean was likely put there just to dispel this notion.
    • A Saturday Night Live skit parodies this theory as well, with members of the original cast reprising their roles. It turns out that old Rose just wanted to ride on a helicopter before she dies, and the crew violently assault her for wasting all of their time. The skit ends with James Cameron telling the audience that he only made the film because he wanted to see a "really old lady get beat up".
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • There are some people who think Cal was meant to be with Rose and believe he had every right to be angry with Jack for being an interloper who basically "stole" his bride-to-be away from him. What these people forget is that Cal only wanted to marry Rose to gain his millions and their marriage would have been an arranged one, whereas Jack and Rose fell in love naturally.
  • Rose's mother gets at least some form of sympathy from fans and historians who understand the complications of what women could or could not do in 1910s society.
  • J. Bruce Ismay (and his real life counterpart by extension) receives a ton of sympathy from those who believe that the sinking of the Titanic was not entirely his fault.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Fifth Officer Harold Lowe, for being the only lifeboat commander to go back to look for survivors, showing tremendous remorse and respect for those who died, and who ends up saving Rose's life.
  • Charles Joughin, who also survives the sinking by staying on the ship as long as possible, all while drinking from a flask (also Truth in Television; the real Joughin stayed warm in the icy water by drinking and was among those rescued later).
  • Thomas Andrews is well-liked for being the Only Sane Man among the White Star Line employees, for being one of the few upper-class characters who's equally nice to Jack and Rose, for his tearjerker of a death scene, and for Victor Garber's memorable performance. Case in point: one of the most upvoted posts of all time on Reddit's Titanic subreddit is a post praising him.
• Estrogen Brigade: The movie developed a reputation of attracting Squeeing fan girls just there to see the young Leonardo DiCaprio.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: RMS Titanic buffs and people who hate the Jack and Rose romance may be interested to hear that the film had one hour of deleted scenes and another of unfilmed scenes in the original script, and that most of them were based on real people aboard the ship and their experiences during the sinking. In fact, it could have been perfectly possible for Cameron to cut all the Jack and Rose scenes, film the others, and still have a coherent plot!
• Fandom-Specific Plot:
  • There have been many alternate fanfics written about Jack surviving the disaster with Rose as stated above.
  • A popular fanfic topic has Rose or Jack having a sibling who serves as an author insert or OC.
• Fanfic Fuel: Quite a few fanfics imagine scenarios about Jack surviving the Titanic, and what he and Rose would go through had they stayed together after the fact.
• Fan Nickname: One First Class extra with a completely bald head and grey mustache has been dubbed “Monopoly Man”. Even more hilarious since the man actually makes an appearance wearing a top hat and tuxedo in one scene.
• Genius Bonus:
  • After Brock opens the safe to find nothing inside, Lewis remarks that "the same thing happened to Geraldo and his career never recovered." Younger viewers may miss that this is a reference to when Geraldo Rivera hosted a much-hyped special in which he opened what he purported to be gangster Al Capone's vault, only to find nothing inside.
  • There is a small one involving the Hockleys. We are told that Cal's father made his fortune in steel. Cal mentions to Rose's mother while escorting her to dinner that there's "several thousand tons of Hockley steel in this very ship" in "all the right places, of course." Ruth teases that if anything goes wrong, they'll know whom to hold accountable. If you've studied the sinking, you'll know that the ship's hull plates were made out of rolled steel and that those plates buckled when the iceberg struck. Guess we have one more reason to hate Cal?
  • Some of the band's music choices throughout the film get hilariously (or morbidly) inappropriate. "Valse Septembre" is an elegiac (mournful, sorrowful) piece. "The Blue Danube" is about a body of water. "Galop infernal" ("Music to drown by" in first class) is a part of "Orpheus in the Underworld", which is also where many passengers will go. "Barcarolle" originally talks about the beauty of the night and of love, even as Titanic passengers died in the cold night. "Nearer, My God, to Thee" plays over a very moving montage, but one can hardly stop people from panicking with a piece that reminds them of meeting their Maker. (This one at least has the excuse of having been reportedly played in real life.)
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • It's still the most watched film ever in French cinemas, with 22 million admissions.
  • The 2012 reissue of this film set a box-office record in China, opening at $67 million (more than it made in its entire 1998 run in the country).
  • It was the first Western-made film to succeed at the Indian box office, owing to its similarities to Bollywood.
• Girl-Show Ghetto: Part of the movie's Hype Backlash came about because of the love story and the fact that a lot of women and girls enjoyed it.
• Ham and Cheese: Billy Zane is going all out as a pompous Upper-Class Twit.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • One of the most memorable early scenes is Bodine narrating an animation of the sinking and essentially describing it like a video game, giving no consideration to the horror that Rose experienced. In 2012, James Cameron hosted a documentary that aimed to gain a better understanding of the sinking, and his narration wasn't that different from Bodine's.
  James Cameron: (in the documentary) Badda-bing, badda-boom, that's exactly what we're looking for.
  Old Rose: Thank you for that fine...forensic analysis, Mr. Bodine. Of course, the experience of it was...somewhat different.
  • During the deep sea dive to the Titanic wreckage, treasure hunter Brock Lovett casually mentions the sheer depth and immense pressure his submersible is currently in and how if any part of the submersible gives way, he and his three-manned crew will instantly die in less than a second from the implosion. In 2023, this became eerily prophetic of what happened to OceanGate's Titan submersible, which suffered a catastrophic implosion and killed all five people onboard (including OceanGate's CEO, Stockton Rush) in a few milliseconds. Even worse, that said-submersible was diving for the Titanic wreckage.
  Brock Lovett: Two and a half miles down. Three-thousand, eight hundred and twenty-one meters. The pressure outside is three-and-a-half tons per square inch. These windows are nine inches thick, and if they go, it's sayonara in two micro-seconds.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • It's noted that Rose is a hundred years old at the time the long-lost painting is found. Her actress of the movie's current day setting, Gloria Stuart, actually did live to be a hundred years old before passing.
  • Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet immediately got along and stated that they wouldn't have been able to do the film without one another's support. This friendship has endured ever since into one of Hollywood's longest-lasting and closest friendships for over 20 years. Both have stated that their relationship is like "family" and that they would do anything for the other, regarding the best thing about Titanic as their friendship. In 2016, when Leo won his first Oscar, Kate watched with tears in her eyes, rushing afterward to him to be one of the first ones to hug and congratulate him. "I'll never let go," indeed.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Jack calls himself "the king of the world". In Leonardo DiCaprio's next film, he'd play the king of France!
  • In 1998, Billy Zane made an appearance on Conan where he joked that there could be a prequel to Titanic about the building of the ship ("critics agree! it's riveting!"). 2012 would see Titanic: Blood and Steel a twelve-part TV costume drama about exactly that.
• Ho Yay: The scene where Fabrizio is standing right in front of Jack at the bow of the Titanic in the "king of the world" scene, the same way Rose later does.
• Iron Woobie: Several of the surviving crew members (Lightoller, Fleet, and Joughin), who each had a difficult childhood with either an absent parent or a parent who died while they were still a child.
• It Was His Sled:
  • The hankie-grabbing reputation of the film guarantees that pretty much everyone knows that Jack dies during the sinking.
  • The Heart of the Ocean (the blue diamond) was with Rose the entire time and she drops it into the sea at the end. Even funnier is that this was only ever perceived as a twist, as Cal outright says that Rose has the diamond right after trying to kill them; it's just easy to miss or forget on a first viewing.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: To the point where its popularity sank after a while — even being named the worst movie ever! — but resurged during its 15th anniversary and 3D re-release.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Cal. He genuinely cannot understand how Rose could possibly be happy as the wife of a homeless man with no financial security. Hell, even today you could forgive him for being bewildered. His treatment of Rose is also a direct by-product of his upbringing and culture, though that doesn't make it any less deplorable. Rose and Jack themselves, meanwhile, are clearly ahead of their time as far as their values go (this may explain why so many people view them as anachronistic characters). In short, he genuinely believes he loves Rose but does not know how to show it properly, he loses her to Jack, and then gets to New York thinking that she's dead. For all we know, she could have been his Lost Lenore. The original script takes it even further, when he does find her alive and tries to make amends, the harrowing ordeal no doubt inspiring him to at least attempt a Heel–Face Turn. When she rebuffs him, he's genuinely heartbroken. When she turns away from him after he confronts her on Carpathia, the script says plainly: "We see that in his way, the only way he knows, he does truly love her."
  • Could be applicable to Charles Lightoller. He is particularly nasty towards the male passengers in preventing them from boarding the lifeboats, but the fact is his life was impacted by many tragedies before and after the sinking. Start with his mother dying shortly after giving birth to him, going to sea age 11 and dealing with fierce conditions, compounded by the life or death struggles he faced, and topped off by two of his sons dying in World War II. All of which cause him to suffer several bouts of depression over the course of his lifetime.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Hands up, who just skips to when the ship's sinking?
  • The VHS release of the film splits into two cassettes and Tape #2 picks up a little after the ship actually hits the iceberg (specifically, with the scene with Cal slapping Rose and then the steward coming in to tell them to put lifebelts on), so you could have just started from there if you wanted. (When the VHS tapes were released, video stores were only allowed to show the first tape on in-store televisions, to avoid showing the nude scene.) At least one DVD release also has two discs with this same deal.
  • If the Rose and Jack romance doesn't grab you, you'll be Rooting For The Iceberg by this point.
  • Not to mention the hordes of teenage fan girls who watched the movie only to see Leonardo DiCaprio.
  • The guys, on the other hand, were there to see Kate Winslet.
  • Some Titanic/maritime history enthusiasts enjoy this movie, not for the romantic plot but for being one of the more accurate depictions of the RMS Titanic disaster to date (albeit further research has debunked a few minor theories on how the ship sank since then). The Titanic sets and effects are stunning as well as the portrayals of historical characters (although some really hate the inaccurate and negative portrayals of J. Bruce Ismay and Officer Murdoch). Fans of A Night to Remember will also enjoy the many references to the film, to the point where it's almost a remake. The historical accuracy was so impressive that an accompanying CD-rom was released containing historical documents, blueprints, and first-hand accounts intercut with footage from the movie. It was basically possible to watch all of the non-romance focused scenes this way. Many of the cut scenes mentioned in the Alternative Character Interpretation entry were used for the CD-rom, giving more characterization to Andrews, Ismay, the wireless operators, and other historical figures.
• Mandela Effect: Rose's line "I'll never let go" is sometimes misremembered as "I'm so sorry, Jack." In addition, her line "Jack, I want you to draw me like one of your French girls" is often remembered as "Paint me like your French girls."
• Memetic Loser: Rose's Second Love that she married some time after arriving in the US is often ragged on a lot for what appears to be Rose having never truly moved on from Jack. This is especially the case when the film's ending heavily implies that the older Rose finally passed on to the afterlife, and that her version of Heaven was finally reuniting with Jack aboard the Titanic. Not to be with the Second Love that she was married to and lived out her life with for many years, but instead chose to be with the guy that she only knew for a few days on an ocean liner.
• Memetic Mutation: Now with its own page.
• Misblamed: The scene where Murdoch shoots a passenger and then turns his gun on himself is often believed to be purely an invention of James Cameron, thanks to the controversy the scene caused with Murdoch's family and hometown. This was based on the testimony of three survivors whom historians typically give little-to-no credibility. None of them accurately described Murdoch, whom more reliable testimony points to having been killed in the forward funnel's collapse. They were possibly referring to Fifth Officer Lowe who did fire warning shots during the actual disaster (Lightoller was also rumored to have done the same). Cameron didn't pull the scenario out of his ass just to add some drama to the film — in fact, the previous year's miniseries Titanic (1996) depicted Murdoch doing the exact same thing.^note The video game Titanic: Adventure Out of Time, which was also released the year before this film, likewise had a passenger shot during the evacuation, but by the ship's fictional third officer rather than Murdoch.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Cal Hockley crosses it when he decides to frame Jack for stealing the Heart of the Ocean. This was around the time the Titanic hit the iceberg too, and so Jack would have drowned in the brig if it weren't for Rose saving him. When Cal tries to redeem himself (in Rose's eyes at least), it is still shown he wishes to leave Jack to die. When Rose ultimately refuses to leave the boat without Jack, Cal attempts to shoot them both, in public no less. Not Good with Rejection much?
    • Given that, it's still possible that Jack might have been allowed to leave the brig... if Cal had not specifically ordered Lovejoy to sock him in the gut and leave him there.
    • In an earlier version of the script, Cal actually murders Fabrizio in cold blood by beating him to death. In the final cut, however, Fabrizio is killed by the ship's falling smokestack.
  • Lovejoy crosses it when he pockets the key to Jack's handcuffs and leaves him in the master-at-arms' office before it starts to flood. If that's not enough, he also attempts to shoot Rose in a deleted scene.
• Narm:
  • Near the end of the film, when the aft of the ship is sticking up out of the sea, there is a poor fellow hanging onto the railing for dear life and his grip slips, causing him to fall to his death... and then he bounces and spins off the propeller on the way down with a loud "BWOOONNNG" sound.
  • "Hold on, Miss Trudy!" Cue Trudy sliding down the ship showing her undergarments to everyone on the way down.
  • The sheer number of times Jack and Rose have Say My Name moments.
  • During the sinking, Guggenheim and his valet decide to go down with the ship. Badass. However, Guggenheim’s valet has an expression on his face that makes it look like he doesn’t actually want to go down with the ship at all. Especially noticeable during the “Nearer My God to Thee” scene, where the valet is looking at everyone around him running away. The cut and his face make it seem like he ditched his employer and decided to make a run for it.
    • Ironically, in real life Victor Gaitan Andrea Giglio made the choice of his own recognizance to stay behind. After his death, multiple friends and acquaintances stated they were unsurprised, and that he would have willingly given his life to save others, including his high school principal who explicitly stated Victor would have "Met death bravely and even willingly rather than take the place of someone else in the lifeboats."
• Narm Charm: There's a reason many aspects of this movie are often parodied, but a fair chunk of those parodies are in some measure affectionate. Not for nothing did Chicago Tribune film critic Michael Phillips once call it "the worst-written film I ever happily saw twice".
• Older Than They Think:
  • "I'm king of the world!". That line was yelled out by Homer Simpson seven years prior in the Season 2 episode "Bart the Daredevil".
  • The line "I'd rather be his whore than your wife!" was also said verbatim earlier on Twin Peaks.
• One-Scene Wonder: The Propeller Guy. He appeared for all of 2 seconds, and yet everybody remembers him◊.
• Popularity Polynomial: When the film was released, it became the highest-grossing film ever and won 11 Oscars including the much coveted Best Picture and Best Director. However, its fame in the 2000s plus the squeeing Leo fangirls turned the movie into a pathetic joke at worst and something people wouldn't admit they liked at best. However, it has become more acceptable again thanks to its 3D re-release, and the fame of its leading stars. Lindsay Ellis, a normally Caustic Critic, even released a 40-minute video explaining why she loves the movie.
• Retroactive Recognition: Ioan Gruffudd is Fifth Officer Harold Lowe, the one that rescues Rose from the icy waters.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: A common point of criticism is that the story of the Titanic and its sinking is dramatic and interesting enough to not need the somewhat formulaic and cliched "star-crossed lovers" romance taking up all the attention.
• Ron the Death Eater: Due to Rose's reunion with Jack and the other passengers of the Titanic, whether in her imagination or the afterlife, completely ignoring the family & friends she's made since the disaster. There are many who paint her as a deeply inconsiderate and ungrateful person who didn't value any of the relationships she made since meeting Jack.
• Rooting for the Empire:
  • Cal is not without his fans, and there are even some who think that he and Rose should have ended up together. Mainly because Jack and Rose's relationship would not have been plausible on the real Titanic and if their romance had been made public, it would have caused a huge scandal.
  • There are but a few fans that feel that Rose's goals and dreams can come across as misguided or selfish. Many of these fans tend to side more with Ruth as a result, feeling that for all her flaws, she is the more reasonable one in the conflict and the more sympathetic character overall, especially since she wants Rose to marry Cal to prevent a scandal if she goes with Jack.
• Signature Scene: Several well-known (and oft-parodied) scenes:
  • The scene where Jack draws Rose in the diamond necklace...just the necklace.
  • Rose's first appearance at Southampton, with her face reveal from under her wide-brimmed hat.
  • Jack and Rose standing at the front of the ship with their arms stretched out before having their first kiss.
  • Jack standing at the front of the ship yelling "I'm the king of the world!"
  • Jack and Rose making love in the car in the cargo hold, especially when one of their hands gets pressed against the condensation-covered window.
  • The musicians playing "Nearer My God, To Thee," and saying It Has Been an Honor even as the ship continues to sink.
  • The ship breaking in half and sinking.
  • The "I'll never let go" scene (cue tissues).
• Slow-Paced Beginning: First there's the framing device, then there's the love story and then the ship sinking. A lot of people prefer to skip straight ahead to the sinking.
• Special Effect Failure: Although it's considered one of the biggest visual effect achievements of the late 90s, it still has a few instances of this.
  • On some of the wide shots, it’s obvious that the people on the ship are CGI. They move robotically and don’t have enough detail. One of the easier places to notice this is the wide shot just before Murdoch tells Captain Smith they're moving at 21 knots, mostly because his and Smith's models are close enough that you can tell.
  • The film has one of the first digital face replacements, i.e. the faces of two stunt doubles are replaced with the faces of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in the shot where they're running away from the water, just after their attempt to rescue a lone child. It is painfully obvious, to say the least.
  • A few times during the sinking where there's a few revealing shots, people hitting foam and rubber objects, people sliding down on skateboards.
  • At one point, when Rose is approaching Jack on deck, the background of the ship looks extremely fake and cartoonish.
  • When the watertight doors are sealed, after Barrett gets out of Boiler Room 6, we see two stokers scrambling to a door that has just closed in another room. Behind them, there is a mirror that is meant to make the boiler room set appear larger than it actually is.
  • In the original release, the night sky is mirrored, with two identical halves. The 10th anniversary release fixes the mirroring issue, while the 2012 3D re-release features a completely new star pattern sent in by Neil deGrasse Tyson.
  • It's hard to see at first because it goes by so quickly but if you watch when the first funnel falls over and crashes into the water you can see during the impact that it's not the same funnel, it is missing several features as well as being covered with holes. The black paint on top is missing as well. According to a behind-the-scenes documentary, they dropped an empty tank from a truck trailer on the water to make the effect.
  • When the ship is about to break in two, a stock gunshot sounds when a plank cracks.
• Strawman Has a Point: Cal might be a controlling scum who starts to Kick the Dog more frequently as the movie goes on, but he is Rose's fiancé, and has every right to be angry about her going to a party with the guy she had just met yesterday. Being just unchaperoned friends was out of the question for the time, and it's worth noting he initially thought that Jack had attempted to rape Rose, not truly buying Rose's mostly-true explanation that she merely fell over the railing and he saved her.
• Testosterone Brigade: There were a large amount of teenage boys who turned up just to see Kate Winslet.
• Unconventional Learning Experience: While the film certainly takes several liberties with the actual event for the sake of the story, it is still an incredibly accurate recreation/representation of the Titanic itself; everything from the bridge, the Grand Staircase, the decks, down to the furniture and even the silverware. It also serves as a window into the general attitudes, fashion, practices, and mindset of The Edwardian Era. And finally, unlike previous movies depicting the event, the film really goes out of its way to show how much of a chaotic disaster the actual sinking really was, including being the first film to show that the Titanic actually broke in half as she sank. Indeed, while he admitted to approaching the film as a filmmaker rather than a historian, James Cameron put A LOT of effort into portraying the ship as (reasonably) accurate as possible, and it shows.
• Unintentional Period Piece: In the 1990s, it was just plausible that someone who was seventeen in 1912 would still be alive in the present day. A couple decades later, this would no longer be possible at all.
• Values Resonance: Rose is a pretty kickass female lead even twenty years removed from the movie's release. She's a woman who was raised in the restrictive 1910s and expected to marry a monster to save her family from financial ruin — essentially raised to be a decorative doll and nothing else. The film repeatedly shows that she has far more going on than her society would think — superficially a keen interest in art and literature, a knowledge of ships, and is more than able to match the men in terms of party spirit. When she's thrust into the disaster, she's understandably scared but does her hardest to remain calm and proactive. She's responsible for saving Jack when he's chained up below deck, and saving herself by getting a whistle to alert the lifeboats. She's also quite sex-positive, as noted above, and appears to be the more sexually experienced partner without being demonized.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: A few flubs aside, the film had some very groundbreaking effects for its day, both in practical and digital effects, which naturally won it the Oscar for Visual Effects. Perhaps the most spectacular effect was the set, which was built to Harland & Wolff specifications and was nearly as large as the actual Titanic. For the actors and even historians who were helping Cameron, you weren't walking onto a set; you were on the Ship of Dreams herself.
• The Woobie: It is not hard to feel sorry for Jack. He is an orphan since he was fifteen years old and homeless, not to mention his harsh, brutal death in icy water. He noticed Rose when she was at her most vulnerable (trying to kill herself) and was willing to listen and care about how she felt when no one else would.
  • Any child victim in the sinking really counts, especially those who died.
  • None of the dogs shown in the film were Pekes or Poms, meaning all of them died.
  • The majority of the 3rd class passengers, who weren't even given a chance to make it to the lifeboats, including (but not limited to) Fabrizio, Tommy Ryan, Cora (and her parents), the Irish mother and her two children, etc.

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