“Then I don’t have to remake the freaking film”: Even Master of ‘Attention to Detail’ James Cameron isn’t Sure of $2.2B Movie Scene
The visionary director James Cameron’s cinematic brilliance needs no description. The American filmmaker has been entertaining the world with his spectacular projects like Titanic, Avatar series, Terminator, and Aliens for a long time. His cinematic brilliance has earned him accolades and awards.
James Cameron’s magnum opus project Titanic not only brought him on the global map but his movie also comes under the list of movies with the maximum Academy Award nominations and awards. However, he had one regret.
James Cameron Talks About His Biggest Regret About The Sinking Scene Of Titanic
According to the filmmaker, recreating the sinking scenes for Titanic was not an easy job and despite being able to execute the direction of cinematic spectacle, James Cameron felt there was something missing with respect to the recreation of the sinking scene.
In the National Geographic special Titanic: 25 Years Later with James Cameron, the director mentioned the sinking scene and felt that it was just half right. He said-
“The film Titanic depicts what we believed was an accurate portrayal of the ship’s last hours. We showed it sinking bow-first, lifting the stern high in the air before its massive weight broke the vessel in two. Over the past 20 years, I’ve been trying to figure out if we got that right,”
James Cameron pointed out
“It happened to real people, and it still resonates down through time in this very powerful way,”
According to the Avatar director, he simply disliked the way he recreated the sinking of the ship. He said-
“I have no way of saying that is in fact what happened, but I’d like to be able to rule it in as a possibility ’cause then I don’t have to remake the freaking film!”
The filmmaker had appointed a team of engineers and scientists to discover whether the 1997 movie accurately portrayed the sinking of Titanic or not as a part of the National Geographic Special Titanic: 25 Years Later with James Cameron. After repeated hydrodynamic tests, James Cameron concluded that the recreation of the 1912 disaster which went on to kill more than 1500 people was only half right.
James Cameron Left No Stone Unturned For The Perfect Sinking Scene In Titanic
Undoubtedly Titanic was a meticulously made project and the filming of the sinking of the ship was the most difficult part to achieve as mentioned by James Cameron. According to National Geographic’s Special Titanic: 25 Years Later with James Cameron, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker revealed that they had sunk the ship’s model with the help of pyrotechnics devices and rigging and left no stone unturned for the perfect scene. James Cameron explained in the documentary-
“We found out you can have the stern sink vertically and you can have the stern fall back with a big splash, but you can’t have both,”
He further explained-
“So the film is wrong on one point or the other — I tend to think it’s wrong on the ‘fall back of the stern’ because of what we see at the bow of the wreck. I think we can rule in the possibility of a vertical stern sinking, and I think we can rule out the possibility of it both falling back and then going vertical. We were sort of half right in the movie.”
Over 1,500 people died in one of the worst incidents in the history of mankind. Titanic was on its maiden voyage to Southhampton England and New York in 1912, when it struck an iceberg in 1912. The movie went on to earn $2.257 billion worldwide and secured 11 Academy Awards under various categories out of 14 nominations.
Titanic: 25 Years Later with James Cameron is currently available on Hulu.
