‘Titanic’ rises again in ‘ultimate’ 3-disc set
When the special edition of Titanic arrives in stores Tuesday, movie fans will finally be able to pick up the definitive DVD version of Hollywood’s biggest-grossing movie.
Director James Cameron says he’s so pleased with the three-disc set ($30) that he won’t go back for another round, something that has become standard practice.
Noting that his blockbuster Terminator 2 already has come out on DVD in four different incarnations, including an “ultimate edition,” Cameron says: “Our intention here was to jump through all those intermediate iterations and get right to the ultimate version and tell people, point blank, this is it. This is the ultimate disc.”
The film is notable not only for its $600 million gross but also for its controversy. The Titanic budget spiraled out of control to reach $200 million. And midway through production, 20th Century Fox sold half the rights to Paramount.
Cameron now concedes that even he had misgivings about whether the film would turn a profit. “It was a chick flick set in 1912, it was three hours long, and everybody dies in the end √≥ how could it possibly be successful?” he says with a laugh.
“I don’t think anybody really believed in its upside potential, myself included.”
When Titanic finally hit theaters the weekend before Christmas 1997, a ho-hum opening almost led to panic in the boardrooms of both studios. But the film didn’t taper off; it steadily chugged its way into the record books. It was No. 1 on the box-office charts for an astounding 15 weeks.
“That’s something that simply doesn’t happen anymore,” says Robert Dowling of The Hollywood Reporter. Today’s movies, he says, typically take in one-third of their gross the first weekend and rarely remain No. 1 for more than a week.
The controversy over the film’s production probably helped, Dowling says.
“If you remember the amount of press that movie got, about people losing their jobs and how much money it was costing, that’s going to stir up interest.”
Titanic also was able to stay on top for so long because of repeat viewers. “What makes a movie work,” Dowling says, “is it resonates with where the world is at the time, and every once in a while everything just hits the right note. And Titanic was such a movie. People felt good when they saw it, told everyone else to see it, and then if they really liked it, saw it again.”
Cameron has his own theories: “There was this kind of pre-millennial angst in the air, and the film keyed to that sense of impending disaster and how important it is to live life well. The lesson of Titanic is you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow or even tonight.
“People used to mock us and say, ‘Well, we know how it ends.’ And we said, ‘Yes, you also know how your own life will end √≥ with death.’ It’s just a question of what you do in the meantime.”
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