Never an Absolution: 15 years later, a look at the 5 best films murdered during Titanic's 4-month reign of box office terror.

This winter will of course mark the fifteenth anniversary of the momentous box office run of Titanic.  For over three months, the James Cameron epic dominated the box office in a fashion unseen since E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial during its initial 1982 release.  The film sat atop the box office for an unprecedented fifteen weekends, a record for unbroken domination and the second most weekends at number one on history (E.T. had sixteen weekends atop, but only six of them were in a row).  From December 19th, 1997 until April 3rd, 1998, it caused crushed pretty much everything in its path.  Aside from a few offhand Fridays were a new film temporarily took the top spot (US Marshals, The Man With the Iron Mask and the re-release of Grease during its March run), but the first three months of 1998 were all about Titanic.  But while we must remember this astonishing run of utter and complete domination, which was the last of its kind, we must also take a moment to remember the many many films laid to waste in its path.  Oh there were a few survivors, such as the aforementioned Fugitive spin-off and the Three Musketeers sequel that happened to also star Leonardo DiCaprio, along with Adam Sandler's break-out smash The Wedding Singer (as well as um, Everest IMAX which slowly earned $87 million after opening on March 6th). But otherwise Winter 1998 was merely mass grave.  Ironically, there were actually at least several worthwhile films, now mostly forgotten in the dustbin of history, that bombed during those cold winter months.  So this is a place to remember five worthwhile pictures that were flattened by the mighty ship.  All deserved their moment in the spotlight, some have become cult favorites while others are barely remembered at all.    

Review: Battleship (2012) is 'Battlesh*t', representing the culmination of corporate-minded test-tube filmmaking.

Battleship

2012
130 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

Maybe it's all led up to this.  Ten years of big-budget spectacle film-making that seemed ever-more geared toward the theoretical fourteen-year old boy who doesn't necessarily know how to read his native language have brought us Peter Berg's Battleship. This is the very definition of empty spectacle, devoid of a single interesting character and (with one token exception) any interesting plot turns.  It is not so much a film as a prepackaged product, so intent on appealing to as many people as possible that it is completely devoid of any real appeal.  Battleship is the kind of movie that makes it so hard to defend the industry, and so hard to actually praise mainstream films when they do get it right.  If you're the kind of person who presumes that all movies stink and that the films being made today are by-nature inferior than the ones that were made in some by-gone era, Battleship is exactly the kind of alleged popcorn entertainment that you're probably thinking of.  If we often discuss big-budget franchise pictures in terms of food (The Dark Knight is a filet minion, Transformers 2 is a Big Mac, etc), then Battleship is basically a jar of baby food.  There is technically food inside the jar, but it is stripped of all sugar, all salt, and all taste beyond whatever natural flavors the jar might possess.

Weekend Box Office (04/15/12): Hunger Games fends off Three Stooges, Cabin in the Woods, and Lockout.

In the third-to-last weekend before summer, The Hunger Games fended off a trio of "B-movies" to retain the top spot this weekend for the fourth time in a row.  But the ranking is arbitrary and the real news is (as always) the numbers themselves. There were three new wide releases this weekend and none of them were expected to set the box office on fire.  None of them did, although Fox had a surprisingly solid debut for the Farrelly Bros' The Three Stooges.  Despite painful trailers and an initial batch of lousy reviews, the film played well to family audiences and reviews seemed to improve as reluctant critics took in a matinee show and came out surprised.  The picture opened with $17 million, which is good for the third-biggest debut for the Farrelly Bros, behind the $22 million debut of Shallow Hal in 2001 and the $24 million debut of Me, Myself, and Irene in 2000.  Since Shallow Hal, the comedic directing duo have not had a film gross over $45 million in the US, so this spry opening should help them pass that particular benchmark even if it collapses next weekend.  Although it scored a rare 3x weekend multiplier, so it's not hard to imagine the film having token legs until summer arrives.   The film earned a B- from Cinemascore, with a 'C' from audiences over 25 but an 'A' from audiences under 18.  This $30 million production should be quite profitable especially when you factor in the seemingly invincible 20th Century Fox foreign marketing machine (this could easily be another Fox film that earns $60 million here but $120 million overseas).  While the Farrelly Bros have probably peaked critically and commercially, as long as they can bring in comedies at $30-40 million, they can probably do what they want for the rest of their careers.

Why those 'dumb kids who thought Titanic wasn't real' stories don't mean a damn thing other than serve as an example of our own generational snobbery.

"Oh no!", shouts America.  There are kids on Facebook and/or Twitter who didn't realize that James Cameron's Titanic was based on a true story!  Obviously this is a prime example of the dumbing-down of America and proof that educational standards in America have hit rock-bottom, and that kids today just don't have an appreciation for history.  All of those things may be true, but what I see is less an example of dumbed-down kids than an older generation once again shocked... SHOCKED that today's kids don't care about the same things we care about.  First of all, let's presume for a moment that someone didn't extensively surf Facebook or Twitter and find a dozen or so messages that had kids expressing astonishment that Titanic was a real ship that really sank in 1912.  Assuming that the examples in question are enough of a sampling to imply that a decent number of kids don't know about early 20th-century passenger vessel sinkings, so what?  I'm sure every single one of you who are up-in-arms about this can deliver a five-minute historical report about the sinking of the Lusitania way back in May of 1915.

Weekend Box Office (04/08/12): Hunger Games tops $300m, American Reunion and Titanic 3D open slightly soft.

Whatever my issues with The Hunger Games in terms of its quality as a film, its continued box office might can only be a good thing.  Considering the current trend of studios basically remaking/rebooting/rehashing every remotely popular property over the last thirty years, the fact that this NEW adaptation from a NEW novel is going to be among the top three grossing films of the year by a healthy margin can only be a good lesson.  Anyway, The Hunger Games topped the box office for the third time in a row this weekend, dropping a perfectly reasonable 43% in weekend three, for a weekend haul of $33.5 million.  This gives the film a massive $302 million in seventeen days, which is the second-largest such haul for a film outside of summer in history.  That's the fifth-biggest seventeen-day total in history, and 11 days ahead of Alice In Wonderland, the closest non-summer competitor and just two days behind Avatar.  Forget Twilight comparisons, it's already passed Eclipse, which is the highest-grossing entry in the series.  And forget the majority of the Harry Potter series, as it's $14 million away from surpassing Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and it's already tied with the $303 million 17-day total of  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II with significantly larger second and third weekends to boot.  At this point, it's playing like Spider-Man 2 and the last Harry Potter film, with stronger weekends but lighter weekday grosses.  The second Spidey pick ended its third weekend with $302 million and ended its domestic haul with $373 million, while Harry Potter 7.2 ended with $381 million.  Factoring a rather busy April and the coming summer onslaught, that's as good a place to predict as to where the first The Hunger Games ends up.

Titanic 3D opens with $4.3 million, sails towards likely $20-$25m 5-day total.

The much-hyped 3D-release of James Cameron's Titanic debuted yesterday with a solid $4.3 million.  What's left to do now is merely play with the numbers to estimate where the five-day opening weekend for this 3D release will end come Sunday.  The wild-card for the weekend is that tomorrow is Good Friday, which means that many kids will be out of school for at least part of the day.  On the other hand, Easter Sunday means that families will be spending the day together, and even if a trip to the movies is in order, I can't imagine the entire family agreeing to a 3.5-hour emotionally-draining tragedy that most people own on DVD being the likely pick, especially as families with small children are less likely to shell out for the 3D upgrade.  Anyway, let's presume that Easter Sunday cancels out Good Friday and call it even.

A masterpiece then and now: Why James Cameron's Titanic needs no defense.

This is an expanded and updated version of an essay I wrote on November 11th, 2007.  

It was right at the opening credit sequence. That haunting footage of the various passengers embarking on the ship, with a sorrowful version of the theme playing in the background (a version that inexplicably was never been included on the soundtrack CDs back in 1997/1998) As the cheering crowds gave way to the ship's watery grave and the title unfurled on screen, I leaned over to a friend and whispered "I already love this movie". It was a symbol right there of what made Titanic great and what separated it from the likes of Pearl Harbor or The Day After Tomorrow: the film openly acknowledged that every single life lost on that ship was every bit as tragic and unfair as the eventual fates of our leads. And, as the film played over the next six months, when you asked people what part they cried at, it wasn't anything to do with Jack or Rose. It was the mother reading to her children so that they might be asleep as they drowned in her arms. It was Victor Garber setting the clock just right before the water came pouring in. It was the ship's band leaving and then returning to play it out. For those primal moments, for the brilliant first-act demonstration of exactly how the ship sank so that we understood what was happening two hours later, for James Horner's achingly powerful score, and for any number of reasons that I shouldn't have to reiterate fifteen years later, Titanic is still a splendidly powerful bit of moviemaking, one of the best films of the 1990s, and one of the best pure blockbusters of our time.

Weekend Box Office (04/01/12): The Hunger Games powers on, Wrath of the Titans falls into the "Tomb Raider trap", Mirror Mirror underwhelms.

As expected, The Hunger Games (review/trailer) again topped the box office this weekend, but its relatively strong hold suggests that it may be a bit mightier than a conventional Twilight/Harry Potter sequel.  With $58 million in weekend two (the ninth-biggest non-opening weekend ever, ahead of all the respective Harry Potter and Twilight Saga films), the film dropped 61% and ended day ten with a whopping $248 million.  That's the biggest ten-day total for a non-sequel ever, and the fifth-biggest ever.  It came in above the $240 million ten-day total of Spider-Man 3, and it is that film which its performance most resembles.  Spider-Man 3 opened with $151 million in May of 2007 before dropping 61% for a $58 million weekend.  Spidey took a drop on weekend two despite having no new releases to compete against because it wasn't exclaimed critically-acclaimed among the fanbase.  The Hunger Games had two big releases this weekend, plus the loss of its IMAX screens which represented about 7% of its theaters and 10% of its gross last weekend.  No other mega-opener on this level that benefited from IMAX has had to deal with the immediate loss of those premium screens, so it bares mention when comparing it to the respective second weekends of The Dark Knight ($75 million off a $158 million debut) or Alice In Wonderland ($62 million off a $116 million debut).  Spider-Man 3 ended its domestic run with $336 million, and its ten day total represented 71% of the gross.  Giving The Hunger Games a similar pattern would give this franchise-starter a final domestic cume of $349 million.  We'll see how it weathers the 3D reissue of Titanic next weekend.  Oh, and it's up to $362 million worldwide, all on a mere $90 million budget.

Titanic 3D gets a somewhat obnoxious trailer.

I loved Titanic in 1997. I still think the film is an unqualified masterpiece. I can and will defend its artistic reputation any chance I get. But this trailer, with its obnoxious onscreen text ("Take the Journey! Fall In Love! Drown and/or Freeze to Death in the Icy Waters!") and its use of the Celine Deon song over the painfully moving James Horner score, actually makes me not want to revisit the movie.  Oh well.

Scott Mendelson

A masterpiece then and now: Why James Cameron's Titanic needs no defense.

It was right at the opening credit sequence. That haunting footage of the various passengers embarking on the ship, with a sorrowful version of the theme playing in the background. As the cheering crowds gave way to the ship's watery grave and the title unfurled on screen, I leaned over to a friend and whispered "I already love this movie". It was a symbol right there of what made Titanic great and what separated it from the likes of Pearl Harbor or The Day After Tomorrow: the film openly acknowledged that every single life lost on that ship was every bit as tragic and unfair as the eventual fates of our leads. And, as the film played over the next six months, when you asked people what part they cried at, it wasn't anything to do with Jack or Rose. It was the mother reading to her children so that they might be asleep as they drowned in her arms. It was Victor Garber setting the clock just right before the water came pouring in. It was the ship's band leaving and then returning to play it out. But rare is the movie that lets you know that it's going to be an all-time classic within the first sixty seconds.

Scott Mendelson