There’s a good chance you’ve seen Titanic. James Cameron’s epic story of love, loss and a massive iceberg was pretty hard to miss when it was released in cinemas in 1997. Grossing a Titanic-sized $1.8 billion at the box office, the tale of doomed love and disaster became one of the most talked about movies of the century. On April 6, fans are going to get another chance to hop aboard the ill-fated luxury liner and go for a spin in glorious 3D, but is this just another money-making scheme and lazy marketing trick to boost James Cameron’s bank account?
Who knows what James Cameron does when he’s not sneezing at the Oscars, nailing mobile phones to walls and hobnobbing with the guys at NASA? He’s only made one feature film in the last 15 years and he’s given himself a nice long rest until he follows up Avatar with a sequel (set for 2016 apparently). So what is Cameron going to do to tide him over until the overgrown Smurfs return for a six-hour sequel if he finds himself strapped for cash? If only something would miraculously surface that could keep him and his favourite movie studio afloat for a few more years.
But wait. It’s been 15 years since James Cameron’s Titanic hit cinema screens, a hundred since that fateful maiden voyage began and a hundred since Paramount Pictures, the film studio that made a billion bucks with Cameron’s juggernaut blockbuster, first set up shop. Seems like the perfect time for a celebration to me, and a perfect excuse to milk the Titanic cash cow even further (though a re-release of Celine Dion’s droning love anthem, My Heart Will Go On, isn’t necessary).
In a no-brainer marketing strategy, Paramount and Cameron will be saluting three momentous occasions with a re-release of the biggest film of the last three decades (adjusted for inflation, Titanic is the sixth highest grossing film of all-time with over a billion dollars, while Gone With The Wind still reigns as champion with $1.6 billion). Titanic sets sail once again in the hopes of becoming even bigger in 3D, and who knows, maybe it will even knock Gone With The Wind off the top spot?
While a multi-million pound boat to celebrate the Queen’s diamond jubilee seems a bit daft in the middle of a world recession, flinging even more money at a pretend digitally enhanced boat just seems plain crazy. Do we really need to see that “king of the world” scene again, albeit in 3D with Leo’s dirty blond locks threatening to whip the popcorn out of our very hands? Probably not, though Cameron has insisted that the Titanic re-release is no mere moneymaking scam that’s attempting to use 3D as a tool to dupe the movie-loving public out of more money.
The world of 3D entertainment has had its fair share of critics who have accused the technology of being a gimmick, a flash in the pan and a ploy to get people back into cinemas and away from the DVD player, and having sat through wave after wave of underwhelming 3D movies during the last few years, it’s hard not to be cynical about the technology. However, Cameron wouldn’t. In fact, while many would be happy to see the 3D fad die, Cameron has been its unofficial lobbyist.
With Avatar, Cameron re-invented the concept of 3D movies and showed that with a little perseverance and a lot of money, the 3D concept can go a long way. From creating Terminator 2: 3D for Universal Studios back in 1996, to his 3D underwater documentaries, James Cameron has continued to push the format forward, insisting that 3D is in fact the way forward and the one thing that could help bolster box office returns. If Avatar is anything to go by, he may be on to something. Released in 2009, grossing $2.7 billion worldwide and breaking all kinds of box office records, Cameron’s 3D Avatar reinvented the concept of 3D and took motion capture to the next level. So maybe re-releasing Titanic won’t be such a waste of time and such a lazy money spinning strategy after all?
“Commerce, baby”
Quashing claims of marketing tricks and greedy movie studios, Cameron has insisted that Titanic 3D isn’t going to be a rush job. “Even watching it in 2D, it looks more amazing than it did in ’97,” said Cameron, during a preview screening of the first 18 minutes of the film. “I wanted it to be the equivalent of what it would have looked like if we actually shot it in 3D.”
When challenged with the gimmicky nature of 3D, Cameron was quick to reply: “It's commerce, baby. It’s art and business put together, and I have no problem with that whatsoever. If you could wave a magic wand and give everybody in the world an orgasm simultaneously, there’d still be people looking for a way to criticise that.”
Worldwide population-giving orgasm machines are all very well, but what exactly has Cameron and his crew done to make Titanic more impressive than say, Jaws 3D. Well, it’s reportedly taken 60 weeks, 300 artists, painstaking frame by-frame processes and about $18 million to take Titanic into the wide-open shores of 3D.
While all this talk of 3D sounds very impressive (the film will also be rereleased in good old fashioned 2D by the way, albeit with a slick new digital print master), the rerelease will essentially be the same Titanic. There will be no deleted/additional scenes, and definitely no alternate ending where Leo lives and singlehandedly saves the ship from sinking. This may be surprising to those who are aware of Cameron’s previous re-releases and ‘special editions’, which have often featured extra footage taken out of the original theatrical run for whatever reason.
Cameron: king of the re-release
Yes, Cameron’s been down the rerelease path before, usually taking advantage of home entertainment mediums to revisit older projects with alternative versions of previous box office hits, so its understandable that we should raise a cynical eyebrow at re-releasing a former box office heavyweight in an era of sequels, spin-offs, remakes and bloody Avengers preludes.
Cameron’s seminal sci-fi action flick, Aliens (1986), enjoyed a special edition some years later when it was released as an extended cut on laserdisc (remember those?) in 1992 and then on DVD in 1999, adding 17 minutes of extra footage to flesh-out the story and add a touch of matriarchal emotion to the proceedings. Cameron’s follow up, The Abyss (1989), was also rereleased on Laserdisc and subsequently DVD as a longer, ‘special edition’ after Fox realised Cameron’s money-making potential and paid him to add some costly special effects to the movie (which were initially cut due to tight schedules and funding). Terminator 2: Judgement Day, also received some special edition treatment in 1993 on Laserdisc, and included 17 minutes of previously unseen footage.
Perhaps Cameron’s most questionable re-release came with Avatar. Re-releasing a special edition of Avatar at theatres just six months after the first insanely lucrative run, Avatar: Special Edition included seven more minutes of footage (including more of the disturbing sex scene with the blue people), pushing the running time up to a bum-numbing 171 minutes. During the 12-week re-release, it grossed an extra worldwide total of $33.2 million. While you’d think Fox and Cameron would be more than happy with that, they went and released a third version on Blu-ray, taking it to 178 minutes with an Extended Cut. The film sold 222,824 copies on the Monday of release, selling more in one day than previous Blu-ray record-holder, The Dark Knight, sold in its first week.
While there may be some artistic merit in tinkering with his earlier sci-fi classics like Aliens, with Cameron going back and inserting additional content all for the sake of maintaining his original vision. Avatar’s triple release within a 12-month period though, has more than a whiff of cash-in about it. But, maybe it’s not money that drives Cameron. Perhaps he is after all, just a perfectionist.
Practically perfect in every way
We know, from the stories we’ve heard about him from the actors he’s worked with, that Cameron is a stickler for perfection, working 18-hour days on the likes of Avatar and taking only a few days off during the four and a half year production.
Cameron describes himself as a ‘rightist’, as in before moving on, he does things over and over until they’re right. According to Rebecca Keegan’s candid book on the filmmaker, The Futurist: The Life And Films Of James Cameron, which saw the author granted access on-set visits to watch the master at work, Cameron is an extremely hands-on director, doing everything from manning the camera to chipping in with the make-up. His hands-on perfectionism is no doubt why Avatar took twice as long to make as most movies, as Cameron relied on untested technology with the intention of getting it right before moving on.
And then of course, there’s Titanic, a film drenched in authenticity and painstakingly peppered with the smallest details. Cameron researched the real Titanic for five years and even developed a new deep-sea camera system for filming the real remains of the Titanic. He is such a martinet for getting it right, that they even used real Beluga caviar for the film, which no doubt pushed the budget up a few quid (you can get 250g of the stuff for less than a grand if you shop around). Cameron’s perfectionism resurfaced again when he forfeited his $8 million director's salary and his percentage of the gross when the studio started to panic about going over schedule and over budget, and lets not forget that Titanic is the first Best Picture Academy Award winner to be produced, directed, written, and edited by the same person. But perhaps in these cynical times we are missing the point of the Titanic re-release.
If ever there was a film that deserved a re-release in 3D, then it’s surely the billion-dollar chick flick. This is a film that not only became a box office sensation, it swept audiences up like few films before it, seducing people back to the cinemas for repeated viewings and was released on DVD and VHS while it was still playing to packed theatres. Indeed, it’s not unlike that other event movie released nearly 60 years previous.
“Frankly. Rose, I don’t give a damn…”
Upon its release in 1939, Gone With The Wind quickly became the highest grossing movie of all time, taking over the previous record holder, Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs. However, not content with a lucrative and long box office run, MGM re- released the film to theatres multiple times throughout the following decades. The film was granted a new lease of life in 1947, then was released in widescreen for the first time in 1954, and was then released in 1961 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. It was then re-released in 1967, 1974, 1989 and 1998, and that’s just re-releases in the USA. This kind of marketing makes Cameron’s re-release frenzy seem positively tame by comparison.
But Titanic is a lot like Gone With The Wind in many ways. Both films provide sweeping tales of action and romance amidst an important historical period, both cover similar themes of class; both feature ridiculously high production costs and both made a fortune at cinemas. Star-crossed lovers, doomed fates and wooden acting: seriously, you could be talking about the same movie here.
Like Gone With The Wind, Titanic 3D arrives at a time of war, financial worry and economic downturn, and fuses chick flick sensibilities with testosterone fuelled action to provide the perfect piece of grand scale escapism. But Gone With The Wind was a bigger deal. It was preceded by parades, balls and unheard of publicity, and the day of the film’s release was declared a state holiday in Georgia where it premiered on December 15, and tickets were reportedly sold at 40 times the going rate. Titanic isn’t quite there yet, though expect to pay a premium rate for those 3D tickets. And who knows, maybe April 6 will be declared ‘Titanic Day’ and we’ll all get the day off.
