“It will be like Romeo and Juliet aboard the Titanic,” James Cameron initially warned when he wowed Fox studio execs as he pitched his next project in the mid-1990s.
The director took advantage of the carte blanche he had thanks to the popularity of the two Terminator and, above all, to the recent Outright liesa box office hit despite being one the first film whose cost exceeded 100 million dollars.
“This will cost 150 million and will have no sequel”, James Cameron doubled down and showed himself capable of selling the Eskimos an iceberg, even if today it seems much more difficult to get that long-awaited green light for a project of that risk with these characteristics within an overpopulated industry of superheroes.
That ship is my obsession
The director has been obsessed with the sinking of the Titanic ever since he dived into the depths of the sea in the late 80s during filmingr The secret of the abyss. “Guys, I want it to be like we go into a time machine and film what happened,” Cameron asked his crew as shooting began.
Already the director he had spent over a year investigating the details of the sinkingwhich involved several descents to the place where the remains of the ship rest.
James Cameron has caused concern in Hollywood for not respecting the delivery times and, above all, the budget. The specialized press already assumed the film’s failure and mocked it in advance with all kinds of unfortunate comparisons between Titanic, ship and film. Until the premiere finally arrived in December 1997.
The success that covered everyone’s mouth
The success of titanic it was enormous, to the point of being measured in billions and it has maintained its register of collections for years until James Cameron himself decided to beat him Avatarsa project that a priori sounded even crazier, but that’s another story, one that today finds the director still halfway through his second chapter.
titanic it was the film that took the director to the top of the world. The Hollywood Academy has recognized Cameron’s work with a record fourteen Oscar nominations in several categories and the movie he remained with eleven of the statuettes, a goal that until then had only been achieved by Ben Hur.
The director thanked the Academy by exclaiming “I am the king of the world” as the outrageous scream on the prow of Jack’s ship, a character for which Leonardo DiCaprio was ignored at the awards ceremony.
The relationship with the main players
James Cameron had entrance problems with the leads. The director wanted Rose to be played Gwyneth Paltrow rather Kate Winsletwho at 23 had already shot so many period films that she was nicknamed Kate Corset.
At 21, Leonardo DiCaprio was a youth star who had just made the modern version of Romeo + Juliet by Baz Luhrmann and made things more complicated for the director with his whims. Leo refused from the start to do the script readings and, although he later had to give in, he also unsuccessfully insisted on change, on the advice of the father, matters relating to the origin of Jack.
Cameron decided to do the same with the young DiCaprio and Winslet, who immediately became perfect Jack and Rose and are the real engine of titanic. The embrace, with a “small aerial gesture”, between the hard-working gallant and the rich and sensitive girl at the bow of the ship is an image that has managed to last even longer than the sinking itself.
That moment was the preamble to Rose’s breakup, when she asked Jack to draw her wearing only her signature emerald, another unforgettable scene for any viewer.
And from there there are only a couple of small steps to confinement in the ship’s hold inside a car whose windows steam up due to the sheer force of love, to break with all the class prejudices that the characters carried, while the unforgettable reason of My heart Will Go Onfrom Celine Dion.
problems with the ending
The end of titanic It was the most problematic for Cameron, but not because of the technical feat of sinking the ship, but because twenty five years after the premiere he still needs to explain the death of Jack and because they both couldn’t stay afloat above that door which acted as a raft holding Rose to the rescue.
Director, Fed up with interrogations, he is willing to present a forensic study which he carried out together with a hypothermia expert who reproduced the same conditions as the outcome of the film to conclude that the survival of the two on the raft was impossible.
Regardless of any type of evidence, the best conclusion is that dramatic weight should never be underestimated. The romance between Jack and Rose seemed impossible to sink and that catastrophic outcome is essential overshadowing the real tragedy of the Titanic while remembering it.
Cameron did a melodrama about death and separation, which would have made no sense with Jack’s survival. The director, a quarter of a century later, still insists that the protagonist “had to die. It is a film of love, sacrifice and death. Love is measured by sacrifice. It’s like Romeo and Juliet.”
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Source: Clarin
