Near, far, wherever you are, you can be sure that everyone around you has seen Titanic a million times already. Having originally released in 1997, James Cameron’s love story of Jack and Rose on the doomed Titanic passenger ship in 1912 is one of the most loved films in history. Now, I know some will instantly start hating on it, but it’s still ranked in the top five highest grossing films of all time…so clearly many people loved it enough to get it ranked up there.
But now it’s been 25 years since we joined Leonardo DiCaprio and the ship first set sail on screen and the film is back, remastered and in 3D. I saw the showing of the film at a 4DX cinema, which if you don’t know what that means, its not only in 3D, but it’s 4D! And by 4D they mean that it’s like watching a movie whilst at a theme park and the seats shake about, you get sprayed with water, poked in the back and occasionally have a snake like rubber stick wag between your legs…
In terms of the film, it’s as good as it ever was. If you somehow have never seen it, it’s a fictional love story set within the tragic real life events of the Titanic ship hitting an iceberg and sinking. That may be a spoiler for some, but if you didn’t know that the Titanic hit an iceberg and sunk I don’t know what to tell you…it did.
Jack is a poor man who manages to gamble his way onto the Titanic with his friend Fabrizio and whilst on there, Jack sees and instantly falls for Rose, played by Kate Winslet. Rose is a rich woman on the ship with her mother and he intended husband Cal, played by Billy Zane. Hating the life of a rich person surrounded by fake snobby people, Rose intends to kill herself by jumping overboard, but Jack intervenes and saves her.
They have a romance and then the ship hits the iceberg. After this point the film really ups the action stakes and is quite a thrill ride. Not only for the sinking ship aspect, but with the battle over Rose between Cal and Jack.
The film does a good job of showing the horror of the events of the sinking, and manages to balance the disaster movie aspect with the love story, action and some humour. It shows how most rich people are horrible with the exception of Kathy Bates character Molly Brown, who is said to be ‘new money’ which means she wasn’t born rich.
As a film it’s one that I’ve seen many times. I haven’t seen it for a few years, but it was such a big deal back in the day and a huge achievement in how it was made to show the disaster and I can say that as a film it still holds up as much as it did back then. From my understanding this 25th Anniversary version doesn’t change anything in terms of the edit, so there are no new scenes or anything like that.
4DX Experience
What the film does do that is new is that the film is in 3D and whilst this is present throughout, for much of the film the effect is not huge in its impact. The sights of the ship when the characters first approach it are cool in 3D, and you do get some nice shots of the characters at the front of the ship which work well the 3D effect for the ‘I’m the king of the world’ and ‘I’m flying Jack’ scenes.
The 4DX aspects are fairly subtle and few and far between until the ship starts to sink. You do get moments where you get splashed by water early in the film, and the cinema seats do kinda glide to the soundtrack to give the sense of movement. Fortunately, they don’t tip you about with the waves as you’d soon feel seasick.
Once the ship starts to sink you do get tons more force feedback from the chairs and there’s lots of ways in which you may be surprised by the 4DX experience. It does lessen in the more emotional parts of the film even when the ship is sinking and this is understandable as you wouldn’t want jolts and sprays of water to distract from the story being told.
It was interesting seeing this in 4DX just a few weeks after seeing James Cameron’s Avatar sequel also in 4DX. That was designed with 3D in mind where as this wasn’t and as a much more action focussed film which wasn’t centred on a real life tragedy they make much more use of the shaky seats and water splashes.
Conclusion
This is a great film to see on the big screen after all these years. The film holds up really well and is still a rollercoaster of action, history, love and tragedy. It’s not going to set your world alike as either a 3D or 4DX film, but these do both enhance the experience to offer a new way to experience what is now a quarter of a century old classic.
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