' Titanic ' or ' ' A Night To Remember '--Which Do You Prefer?

Everyone forgets the 1953 movie "Titantic" with Barbara Stanwick.

 

You can tell that from his continuing stream of failure's at the box office.

 

Haven't forgot, just have never been a Barbara Stanwick fan...

 

For me, Night To Remember hands down.

Cameron is awesome with special effects and story ideas. A great technical director. But, I've always found his screen writing to be a bit lame.

 

I just watched Titanic again. Anyone who says they feel nothing when they watch the tragic romance of Jack and Rose or the film itself have to have a heart of stone. That’s the only explanation for anyone who feels that cold towards it.

 

I like her just fine ...as a film noir femme fatale.

 

12 min. of film on one roll brought down to a depth of 12,800+ feet. On top of that directing a couple of mini submersibles in the process to get the giant liner on film is something that still amazes me to this day. The surroundings are as dangerous as outer space and yet James pulled it off. All of hollywood noticed as well as inspired people to get into film.

It's amazing facing the ocean atmosphere along with the huge financial issues & pressure of moving the opening of the film from June 1997 to Dec. 1997 with all of hollywood & press predicting Titanic would flop if and when it was released. Cameron had guts to go down to that deep ocean. The same could be said of his 2012 dive with Deep Sea Challenger in the deepest part of the ocean. I always believed Cameron had to have a little bit of insanity in him.

I don't know of any directors to do that especially directing mini submersibles to film a rusting old liner. It's almost mind boggling when I think about. All of hollywood took notice as well to me Cameron may not be everybody's cup of tea but to me I'm still in awe of his underwater filming. Everyone has their own opinions and that's what makes places like this fun.

 

Interesting video on some of the similarities between the two films.

 

Cameron studied it well.

 

Man watching that I'm just reminded of how bad the CGI was in Cameron's version. Yikes.

 

One issue I have with A Night To Remember is that everyone’s generally way too calm. Extremely unrealistic.

 

Which scene in that 14 minute video is a problem for you and why?

 

I'll give you one section; around 2:40 the ship and sea do not match up and the scale of the ship seems very, very off to my eye.

 

It's a zoom out shot, looks fine to me, size/scale will vary according to distance, the smoke from the stacks would look a lot better in 2021 vs 1997 that's about it.

 

For YEARS I refused to see the Titanic movie because Cameron CHOSE to focus the film around fake characters rather than select REAL people to weave the story around.

Cameron claimed in advance that he wanted a film of Romeo and Juliet on the Titanic. BLAH!!

 

Just sharing this.

 

I watched A Night to Remember last night for the first time (Criterion version). Excellent, very well done. I found one of the main differences between the two was the added focus on the Californian and Carpathia. I will definitely watch it again and do a straight up comparison with the 97' version, I can understand why Cameron chose to add the fictional side stories to his version, he had to make his pitch to Paramount/20th Century and I don't think a straight up re-telling of the story gets the green light, certainly not a $100 million budget (which ballooned to $200m). He maintained the core of the story and the horror of the tragedy which is the most important part.

 

I believe the cost bottomed out at a whopping $243,000,000+, 1990's cost, just sayin..

 

and this little tidbit from The Hollywood Reporter

The Hollywood Reporter estimated that after a combined production and promotion cost of $487 million!!!!, the film turned a net profit of $1.4 billion, with a modern profit of as much as $4 billion after ancillary sources.


What Is the Most Profitable Movie Ever? – The Hollywood Reporter

Titanic, the most expensive film ever made at the time of its release, cost $210 million ($337 million today) and earned $2.2 billion around the world. That box office gross should be broken into two — $1.8 billion of it came in when the picture was first released; and another $400 million came in when it was re-released in 2012. The total is roughly $3.33 billion, adjusted for inflation.

But how profitable was it?

Here’s where the math becomes tricky. The picture’s backers — Paramount and 20th Century Fox, which split the rights — spent around $150 million (in today’s dollars) on marketing. Add marketing to the inflation-adjusted “negative” cost and you have a total expenditure of around $487 million, per sources.

But Titanic received a much bigger slice of the box office pie than most movies.

Usually, studios get back about half of the box office gross in rentals; but Titanic played in theaters for a long time, and the longer a film remains in theaters, the higher the percentage of the box office goes to the distributor.

In reality, Paramount and Fox received around 58 percent of the box office revenue or around $1.9 billion in today’s dollars. That leaves a theatrical profit of around $1.4 billion — still less than Gone With the Wind.

 

The former is a movie in every sense of the word, the latter more a documentary. I prefer the latter.

 

Saw this documentary in Dec. 1997 on fox ch. 5. T.V. I just came back from seeing the movie. Fascinating doc with Cameron and crew.

 

That was excellent, thanks for posting.

 

Titanic is a love story gone wrong...

 

Yeah I know who saves their movie ticket stubs? I actually stuffed a few of these stubs in my Making Of Titanic 1997 book.