Titanic...weirdness


Jamie123
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The film makers have generally speaking done the Titanic story justice. Who can forget A Night to Remember (it would be a contradiction in terms if you didn't) and the Kate Winslet/Leonardo DiCaprio version of the 1990s - especially with Celine Dion's haunting song.

But don't lets forget the less well known adaptations. First of all there's this:

The Legend of Titanic is told in flashback by a mouse who was on board, and who helped the hero and heroine to get together, despite a dastardly villain who hired sharks (I'm not joking)...actual sharks...in prison uniforms to sink the ship at exactly midnight. (If it's ever explained why it had to be exactly midnight, I missed it). There are whales in the story too, not to mention a giant octopus who saves the day. And NOBODY DIES!! (Or did they? The old device of the "unreliable narrator" is at work here.) I'm not making any of this up...watch it yourself and see!

(Well actually I suggest you don't waste time watching it all - it's time you'll never see again. But if you can see the head shark in his prison togs at 56:37 and some giant octopus heroism at 1:08:42.)

Having said all that, it is just about possible to get through this entire movie without gnawing your arms and legs off. So kudos to the makers there!

(Or so I suppose: I'll shame the devil by admitting I did skip over some of it.) 

As for this one though...

It starts out with a blatant and badly-made rip-off of Cinderella - complete with ugly sisters and cute anthropomorphic mice - until 10 minutes in when a bunch of rapping animals deliver the all-important message that "it's party time". At this point I had to stop. I couldn't face any more. I'd have been of little use to my family in a straitjacket, confined to a padded cell.

If you do manage to get through it, please tell me how it ends! 🤡

Edited by Jamie123
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1 hour ago, Jamie123 said:

The film makers have generally speaking done the Titanic story justice. Who can forget A Night to Remember (it would be a contradiction in terms if you didn't) and the Kate Winslet/Leonardo DiCaprio version of the 1990s - especially with Celine Dion's haunting song.

But don't lets forget the less well known adaptations. First of all there's this:

The Legend of Titanic is told in flashback by a mouse who was on board, and who helped the hero and heroine to get together, despite a dastardly villain who hired sharks (I'm not joking)...actual sharks...in prison uniforms to sink the ship at exactly midnight. (If it's ever explained why it had to be exactly midnight, I missed it). There are whales in the story too, not to mention a giant octopus who saves the day. And NOBODY DIES!! (Or did they? The old device of the "unreliable narrator" is at work here.) I'm not making any of this up...watch it yourself and see!

(Well actually I suggest you don't waste time watching it all - it's time you'll never see again. But if you can see the head shark in his prison togs at 56:37 and some giant octopus heroism at 1:08:42.)

Having said all that, it is just about possible to get through this entire movie without gnawing your arms and legs off. So kudos to the makers there!

(Or so I suppose: I'll shame the devil by admitting I did skip over some of it.) 

As for this one though...

It starts out with a blatant and badly-made rip-off of Cinderella - complete with ugly sisters and cute anthropomorphic mice - until 10 minutes in when a bunch of rapping animals deliver the all-important message that "it's party time". At this point I had to stop. I couldn't face any more. I'd have been of little use to my family in a straitjacket, confined to a padded cell.

If you do manage to get through it, please tell me how it ends! 🤡

Titanic?

OK, you have my attention. 

Random factoid:  the actor who played Colonel Gracie in the Cameron film, played Lookout Fleet in ANTR.

But I’m surprised you didn’t mention the 1953 film of the same name.  Or the Nazi version, filmed on the Cap Arcona, which two years later would be sunk with a loss of life three times as great as Titanic’s (most of the victims being Scandinavian concentration camp survivors who were machine-gunned in the water by Allied pilots who didn’t know their identities).

Edited by Just_A_Guy
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I watched the '90's version with my wife at a drive-in theater.  Dutifully averting our eyes at the nude scene, we noticed all the cars' windows had fogged up at that scene, as all the ladies distracted their men from what was on the screen.

All the women cried when whatsername said goodbye to the Jacksicle and pushed it into the water. 

All the men cried when ancient wrinkley whatsername climbed up onto the railing and tossed the gem into the ocean. 

I pretty much cry whenever I hear Nearer, My God, To Thee.  

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2 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

I pretty much cry whenever I hear Nearer, My God, To Thee.  

I’m still waiting for a Titanic movie that uses the right tune.  (Brits and Americans have each historically used their own settings to the hymn.  Titanic’s band leader was a Methodist, and they use a third tune; which is most likely what was played that night.  All Titanic films except A Night to Remember have used the American setting.)

Edited by Just_A_Guy
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15 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

But I’m surprised you didn’t mention the 1953 film of the same name.  Or the Nazi version, filmed on the Cap Arcona, which two years later would be sunk with a loss of life three times as great as Titanic’s (most of the victims being Scandinavian concentration camp survivors who were machine-gunned in the water by Allied pilots who didn’t know their identities).

You're absolutely right - there was a Nazi version of Titanic, and YouTube has it complete with subtitles!

It's very interesting: the nasty British owners want the ship to make the shortest ever Atlantic crossing in order to manipulate stock prices - so they order the captain to go full steam. The hero - a German crew member - tries to make them see reason, but their greed has blinded them. In the aftermath they all blame the conveniently drownded captain and walk away scot free. Germans good, British and Americans bad.

But its more interesting even than this: the director was arrested during filming for criticizing the Nazis, and was later found hanged in his prison cell (a la Epstein). The movie was never actually shown in Germany by order of Joseph Goebbels, who eventually banned the movie entirely.

Perhaps if they'd included a giant octopus, things would have gone differently...

The idea that Titanic was attempting to break some speed record seems to have stuck in our collective consciousness - if I remember rightly, there's even some mention of it in the Cameron movie. But the White Star ships were never designed for speed. They were luxury liners. If the ship arrived to soon, you missed out on some of the luxury.

One theory that's gained traction recently is that a fire had broken out in one of the coal storage bunkers. This may sound alarming, but it wasn't. Coal fires were always happening in steam ships. The way to put out such a fire out was not to douse it with water, but to shovel the burning coal as fast as you could into the furnace. This of course makes more steam, which in turn makes the propellers go round faster, which is why Titanic was travelling so fast, and wasn't able to avoid the iceberg.

Edited by Jamie123
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5 hours ago, Jamie123 said:

You're absolutely right - there was a Nazi version of Titanic, and YouTube has it complete with subtitles!

It's very interesting: the nasty British owners want the ship to make the shortest ever Atlantic crossing in order to manipulate stock prices - so they order the captain to go full steam. The hero - a German crew member - tries to make them see reason, but their greed has blinded them. In the aftermath they all blame the conveniently drownded captain and walk away scot free. Germans good, British and Americans bad.

But its more interesting even than this: the director was arrested during filming for criticizing the Nazis, and was later found hanged in his prison cell (a la Epstein). The movie was never actually shown in Germany by order of Joseph Goebbels, who eventually banned the movie entirely.

Perhaps if they'd included a giant octopus, things would have gone differently...

The idea that Titanic was attempting to break some speed record seems to have stuck in our collective consciousness - if I remember rightly, there's even some mention of it in the Cameron movie. But the White Star ships were never designed for speed. They were luxury liners. If the ship arrived to soon, you missed out on some of the luxury.

One theory that's gained traction recently is that a fire had broken out in one of the coal storage bunkers. This may sound alarming, but it wasn't. Coal fires were always happening in steam ships. The way to put out such a fire out was not to douse it with water, but to shovel the burning coal as fast as you could into the furnace. This of course makes more steam, which in turn makes the propellers go round faster, which is why Titanic was travelling so fast, and wasn't able to avoid the iceberg.

Thanks for the link!  I was aware of the film but haven’t seen it in its entirety.  I believe I’ve read that William Macquitty recycled a few of the shots/footage in ANTR.

And yeah, there’s been a lot of speciation about damage from the fire supposedly being responsible for the collapse of the bulkhead between boiler rooms 6 and 5 partway into the sinking.  I believe the fire had itself actually been extinguished, sometime around the day before the ship sank.  Titanic certainly wasn’t going to beat the speed record set by Cunard’s greyhounds; but if Elizabeth Lines was telling the truth, Captain Smith and line President Bruce Ismay did discuss beating the time set by the older sister ship’s (Olympic’s) maiden crossing from the year before. 

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