‘Titanic’ is as good now as when it came out 25 years ago

James Cameron's epic re-released in 3-D

Today's expression: Root for
Explore more: Lesson #553
March 9, 2023:

The movie "Titanic" shattered box-office records, demonstrated the possibility of special effects, and elevated artists like Leonardo DiCaprio and Celine Dion to stardom. Now, 25 years later, James Cameron's three-hour epic film has been re-released in 3-D, and it's just as good as when it came out. Plus, learn the English phrasal verb "root for."

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Looking back at the movie Titanic, 25 years after its release

Lesson summary

Hi there, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English, where we help you upgrade your English skills using current events and trending topics. JR is the producer and he has uploaded today’s full lesson to PlainEnglish.com/553.

Twenty-five years ago! I was there, I saw the movie “Titanic” in the theaters when it was first released. And I saw it again last month when it was re-released into theaters. So on today’s lesson, we’ll take a look back at, really, one of the most popular movies of all time.

In the second half of the lesson, I’ll show you what it means to “root for” someone. And we have a song of the week—you get three guesses. No, you have one guess. You have one guess, and if you get it wrong, you were not paying attention when Titanic came out.

All right, let’s get going.

Titanic: still a hit, 25 years later

It’s one of the oldest love stories of all time: boy meets girl , the boy is poor , the girl is rich , they can’t be together for reasons of class , society, family, expectations . Their hearts pull them in one direction , but their families pull them in another. In this story, the reader, the viewer, or the listener, is rooting for the young lovers to be together, against all the pressure of society .

It’s also one of the most tragic events in the twentieth century : the ultra-luxurious , unsinkable ship , the Titanic, sank into the frigid waters of the North Atlantic Ocean on the night of April 14, 1912. It was a rebuke to the hubris of mankind , a reminder that forces of nature were then—and still are—more powerful than man’s technological innovations.

The movie came out on January 1, 1998, eighty-six years after the Titanic sank and four hundred years after “Romeo and Juliet” was written. Director James Cameron’s innovation was to combine the classic love story with the arresting Titanic tragedy.

The result was one of the best films of all time—and certainly one of the most successful . Prior to that time, no film had made $1 billion at the box office . Titanic made $1.8 billion—a record that stood for twelve years. It won eleven Oscars, just the second film in history to win that many. Later, a book about the making of Titanic was a bestseller , the first time a book about the making of a movie ever had that much success.

But even this doesn’t capture the cultural significance of the movie. The movie came out just as the age of the multiplex theater was really maturing in the United States. For most of the history of cinema, movie theaters were small places in the center of towns, with one, two, or maybe three screens.

But all that changed in the mid-1990s with the development of the multiplex theater—big movie theaters with 10, 15, 20, or even 30 screens. The screens themselves were enormous . The sound was big. Even the snacks were huge . Going to the movies was a big event. And just when this was starting to get popular, Titanic came out and captured the imagination of moviegoers . It cemented the multiplex theater in the culture.

It was also a showcase for the possibility of special effects . When modern special effects were first used, they created monsters or fiery explosions . Think of “Independence Day” and movies like that. The “Terminator” movies, for example, were a showcase for special effects. But they weren’t believable in any way.

Titanic combined innovative filming and set design with cutting-edge special effects. The result was, you believed it. You felt like you were watching people jump off a sinking ship .

Titanic the movie was re-released in 2012, 2017 to coincide with the centennial of the sinking of the ship, and it was re-released again here in 2023. The film version that’s in theaters now is only in 3-D. 3-D is not my preferred way to see a movie; I would have liked the opportunity to see it remastered , but in a format close to the original.

Some movies don’t age well ; the world changes too much for them to still be relevant years later. Not so for Titanic. There are lessons in the movie that are just as relevant today as then.

Here’s one I didn’t notice the first time around. The businessmen , the marketers , the aristocrats , and the first-class passengers were the ones that called the Titanic an “unsinkable” ship. But the ship’s architect told them, “it’s made of iron and steel . It absolutely can sink.”

Does that remind you of anything ? How about , this or that crypto coin can’t collapse or can’t lose value?

Another tension that feels just as relevant today as then: the struggle many people feel between taking the safe, expected route in life , versus taking a risk and living a more freewheeling life . There are a lot of Jacks today, as then: I think a lot of us admire them from afar . It’s a romantic notion, to always be on the move, to never set down roots , but most of us are looking to build a life in between the extremes of Jack’s total freedom and the stability of following in the footsteps of family members, which Rose’s family wanted her to do.

Titanic may still be in theaters, but if you missed it, that’s okay. Find it on streaming and you’ll get almost the full experience . If it’s been a while, I recommend watching it again: it’s the kind of movie you can watch every decade and experience it differently every time. And if you really do want to see it in theaters, don’t worry: they’ll probably re-release it again in a few years.

A cultural sensation

I saw it when it came out; it was a sensation . It was a sensation in a way that a movie can’t really be a sensation today. Yes, Avatar made more money . And there are movies that are a big deal today. Avatar 2, also directed by James Cameron, is a big deal today.

But Titanic came out before people carried cell phones —I mean, they existed, but this was before they dominated our lives. This was before streaming. This was before video gaming became so popular.

So a big movie had the opportunity to just capture the imagination of the whole culture, in a way that movies really can’t anymore.

And I tried to find the date that the multiplex theater opened in my town—actually, in the city next door, Danbury, Connecticut. It was called Sony Theaters, and I think it had ten screens. When it opened, I was probably 14 or 15 at the time, prime moviegoing age . And it felt like an amusement park . It was enormous. We hadn’t seen anything like it.

All of a sudden , there was something to do in our town. Imagine that. Going to the movies, it was fun—you could hang out there before the movie. You ran into friends in the lobby. You got unlimited refills on your 32-ounce Coke. The whole place smelled like fresh popcorn . You could buy one ticket and see two movies if you wanted to.

And I laugh now, but this was new, this was big. And it was into that atmosphere that Titanic came out, just a few years later.

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Expression: Root for