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Raise the Titanic Reviews

Question: Is it possible to raise the Titanic from its watery grave? Answer: Scientifically, probably. Artistically, no.

Full Review | Jul 13, 2020

The movie is a misconceived, anticlimactic, wooden, phlegmatically paced and waterlogged travelogue that devotes so much time to its nautical machinery that there's none left over for even an approximation of interaction among the actors.

Full Review | Apr 28, 2018

While the premise is certainly exciting, the action in Raise the Titanic is hardly unsinkable.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Jan 22, 2014

Unique plotline with Titanic being salvaged.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 24, 2008

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 4, 2005

Raise the Titanic is almost a good movie. It has some wonderful moments, but they're bogged down in two moronic subplots.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 23, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 5, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 26, 2003

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Raise the titanic.

1980 Directed by Jerry Jameson

They've found the Titanic. There's just one thing left to do...

To obtain a supply of a rare mineral, a ship raising operation is conducted for the only known source, the Titanic.

Jason Robards Richard Jordan David Selby Anne Archer Alec Guinness Bo Brundin M. Emmet Walsh J.D. Cannon Norman Bartold Elya Baskin Dirk Blocker Robert Broyles Paul Carr Michael C. Gwynne Harvey Lewis Charles Macaulay Stewart Moss Michael Pataki Marvin Silbersher Mark L. Taylor Maurice Kowalewski Nancy Nevinson Sander Vanocur Michael Ensign Hilly Hicks Clive Cussler

Director Director

Jerry Jameson

Producers Producers

Lew Grade William Frye

Writers Writers

Adam Kennedy Eric Hughes

Original Writer Original Writer

Clive Cussler

Casting Casting

Jane Feinberg Mike Fenton

Editors Editors

Robert F. Shugrue J. Terry Williams

Cinematography Cinematography

Matthew F. Leonetti

Additional Directing Add. Directing

Michael D. Moore

Executive Producer Exec. Producer

Martin Starger

Camera Operator Camera Operator

David Wynn-Jones

Production Design Production Design

John DeCuir

Art Direction Art Direction

John DeCuir Jr.

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Mickey S. Michaels

Composer Composer

ITC Entertainment

Releases by Date

01 aug 1980, 11 sep 1980, 24 oct 1980, releases by country.

• Theatrical PG

115 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by 🌸🏳️‍⚧️ Kira Nora Zinnecker 🏳️‍⚧️🌸 ★½ 4

The "gimme rent" guy from Spider-Man 3 is in this. He needed rent so bad he traveled back in time to salvage the Titanic.

Review by AnonymousAndy ★★★ 12

Somehow, Titanic returned.

It might be the end of the Cold War as we know it, and the USA feels fine. Americans are Russian to beat their enemies in a race to the bottom -- the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean, that is. As it turns out, the nuclear weapon to end all nuclear weapons is hidden somewhere on the ocean floor, stowed away in a watery graveyard and the first person to raise that lazy bitch The Titanic wins.

If ever a movie begged to be made by James Cameron, Raise the Titanic is most certainly it. Then again, given that he was still in his Piranha II: The Spawning phase at the time, it's probably for the…

Review by Dan Abel ★★★ 2

It's the late 1970s and the Cold War still looms high over the world. The Americans have invented a laser shield system that renders nuclear war obsolete. The only problem is that the system requires a self sustained power source that runs on an extremely rare mineral. A mineral that they once had a stockpile of but can no longer find at all. In the year 1912 they were transporting that stockpile on the infamous RMS Titanic. Now it's a race against time to Raise the Titanic and reclaim the mineral before the Russians do.

Today is the launch day of a video game that I've been waiting a long time for, Elden Ring. As a huge Dark Souls fan…

Review by Lebowskidoo 🇨🇦 🎬 🍿 ★★★½

Sleepy action adventure movie, perfect for nodding off to on the couch on a weekend afternoon. Not much happens but it's still a good movie, with a slow momentum.

No doubt seemed fantastic and far-fetched at the time, but now seems dated and silly because the ship arrives at the surface fully intact, even though witnesses described Titanic breaking in two before sinking. The actual discovery of the Titanic, five years after this movie came out, would prove those witnesses correct.

John Barry's beautiful score more than makes up for any flaws.

Review by matt lynch ★★★

not remotely exciting, but i have a thing for both bloated vintage studio spectacle and these tech-heavy procedurals with professionals just doing a job, so not at all unpleasant. features Alec Guinness picking up a paycheck, Richard Jordan acting like a cocky asshole, a John Barry score that's partially cribbed from MOONRAKER and would be later recycled into OCTOPUSSY, some of the worst miniature effects i've ever seen, and a shot of a rusted-out Titanic being towed up the East River past the Twin Towers.

Review by Geoffrey Broomer ★★★ 5

"It would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic!" -Producer Lew Grade

Joel Clark's review is both personal and refreshingly positive for Raise the Titanic, while Curtis' points about it not being half as bad as its reputation would have you believe and the inherent goodness of John Barry is in keeping with most of my perspective. I heartily recommend checking out both.

...With them taking care of the good vibrations, lets get into the negatives. Are you familiar with the character actor, Richard Jordan? He's awesome. After cutting an impressive reputation in films like The Friends of Eddie Coyle and Logan's Run, this 40 million dollar movie is his blockbuster starring vehicle. Based on a Clive Cussler adventure novel,…

Review by slim 4

Drifted into the fabled "so bad it's good" territory.

Honest to god felt like a parody movie script from Decker: scientists and the government need to raise the Titanic because it contains a valuable mineral that can stop nuclear war.

This has a pretty stacked cast floating about and each time they talk about raising the titanic everyone reacts like it's the most noble thing done in the history of man.

Review by RetroHound 2

I am not making this up: Visiting my grandparents in Wichita, KS in 1980 and we drive by a theater where the marquee says:

Raise the Titanic Help Wanted

Review by Michael501 📺 ★★★½

1980 In Review - August 

Based on the best-seller by author Clive Cussler, this ocean adventure starring Jason Robards follows a group of U.S. scientists on a historic mission to recover radioactive cargo from the sunken RMS Titanic. Meanwhile, as the scientists team with the U.S. Navy to raise the vessel in secret, a Russian salvage crew learns of their plan, and endeavors to reach the volatile cargo first.

Expectations, eh?

I had already seen some pretty scathing reviews of this before I sat down to watch it and I was fully aware of the films history. It was so expensive to make that Sir Lew Grade who financed it, proclaimed that “it would have been cheaper to lower the…

Review by Ian Kemper ★★★½ 2

With the threat of nuclear annihilation ever present, a Navy Admiral ( Robards ) and his scientist compatriot ( Selby ) come up with a plan to surround the US with freaking laser beams, thus eliminating any and all missile threats heading our way. One problem, these laser beams draw a lot of power and your plain old Uranium or Plutonium just ain't going to cut it. Enter brand new, never before heard of, extremely rare, radioactive macguffin material extraordinaire..... Byzanium ! The problem is, because of what is an actually pretty interesting espionage plot, all the Byzanium in the world was mined in 1912 and loaded onto the Titanic , which of course sunk, and at the time of this film, had yet to be…

Review by The Introvert ★★ 1

This really felt like it was a made-for-TV movie filmed with the intent of creating a MacGyver/Knight Rider-esque weekly series based around the Clive Cussler character Dirk Pitt. Yes, his name is Dirk Pitt.

But nope, it was a studio film released in theaters.

To no one's surprise I'm sure, Raise The Titanic bombed and was nominated for a few Razzie awards. The plot is REE-DONK-YOU-LUS , but I will admit, I enjoyed some of it as a novelty of the times. There's a useless Russian Cold War subplot that does nothing and goes nowhere.

I heard Cussler hated this film and I was like, 1980 film, hated by the author has The Shining vibes, but yeah, the critics, the audience, and the author were right about this one.

Review by Brendan Carr ★ 1

A top contender for one of the dullest films I've ever seen. It's not offensive, but it is not entertaining, interesting, or exciting either. And a capable cast is left playing characters more wooden than cardboard. A typically wonderful score by John Barry, some striking cinematography, and an impressive sequence showing the ship rising from the deep [in 1980, it was still assumed that the boat was in one piece] is all that this film has. Otherwise its terminal boredom. What is most shocking is that this film cost $36 million dollars at the time [over $125 million today], more expensive than such ambitious contemporary films of the era as Apocalypse Now, Ragtime, Blade Runner, and The Right Stuff. And for what in the end? The world's first $36 million dollar sleeping pill.

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Raise The Titanic Review

31 Jul 1980

115 minutes

Raise The Titanic

It’s easy to see why this adaptation of Clive Cussler’s popular if dim-witted novel became a celebrated flop. Indeed, such was its expense, and paucity of the result, that producer Lord Grade was legendarily said to have commented on its failure: “Raise the Titanic? It would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic?” that might have made a much better movie than this irredeemably daft and wooden action-thriller, optimistically aiming to turn Richard Jordan into the novel’s action hero (later portrayed by Matthew Maconaughey in Sahara), that lost going on $23 million.

Time has not helped either. The film was made back when the whereabouts of the wreck was still unknown, but now science and James Cameron have seen to it that its proposals of a complete ship on the sea floor are nonsense — it split into two halves! But isn’t just its naivety that hamstrings it, the execution is so bland it makes even the ludicrous stretches of the plot seem airless and unexciting. To conjure suspense there is a baffling mess of a plot involving secret stashes of mineral in the hold of the famous ship,, and various American government agents trying to get their hands on it. An espionage element that requires us to skirt back to the days of the Cold War to feels its urgency. When we finally get to the disaster movie in reverse section of the film, any potential thrill is lost in swathes of boring exposition and in undistinguished special effects (where did the money go?). It feels as tethered and limp as a TV movie,

So, what can you say for it? Well, John Barry as usual delivers a sturdy rather haunting score,  Jason Robards is reliably stern as a retired admiral thrown into the midst of events, and the underwater photography is not half bad as the submersibles search the ocean floor for the fabled wreck. But, so po-faced and turgid is its delivery, it can’t even muster the necessary silliness to be a guilty pleasure.

Raise the Titanic (1980) – Review

Clive Cussler is an author of over 50 books, many of which have made it on the New York Times bestsellers list, but when it comes to translating them to the big screen things have not gone so well. Dirk Pitt, the hero of most of Cussler’s sea adventures, seems a natural candidate for a film franchise but to date, there have been only two films, and both of those flopped. But why hasn’t this popular book series turned into an ocean-going Bond franchise? Well, today we will look at Raise the Titanic the first attempt at bringing a Clive Cussler book to the big screen, and see where things went wrong.

“Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink, ” This quote from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” sums up the first problem with the movie Raise the Titanic which would be that any movie that deals with water, especially saltwater would be rather hard to swallow. Movies set on the sea or in and about the sea have always been notoriously hard to make, the elements are just not all that kind to movie makers and when you compound that with shooting things underwater you are just asking for trouble, case in point The Abyss and Waterworld as the filmmakers behind those watery epics certainly learned all there is to know about sea problems. The trick, of course, is in having a good story to make the journey worth the effort, unfortunately, with Raise the Titanic that journey resulted in a rather dull movie.

Jason Robards lectures us on The Titanic.

The very name of the ship Titanic captures the imaginations of people all over the world, so right off the bat you have a hook into your audience, and then you tell them you are not only going to find this most famous of all wrecks but are going to raise her as well. How awesome is that? You’d pretty much have to go out of your way to muck up a great premise like that, well, producer Lew Grade and director Jerry Jameson did just that.

“ Don’t worry guys I’ll make enough money for all of us. “

The story centers around the United States government developing a defence program called “ The Sicilian Project ” which had one small problem which was the fact that it needed a powerful fuel source that could only be provided by an extremely rare mineral called byzanium. When government agents discovered that the only place on Earth that has this mineral was located happened to be on an island off the coast of the Soviet Union they sent a mineralogist to find it. Unfortunately, he discovered that it had already been mined way back in 1912 but we soon find out that half a ton of it was loaded aboard the RMS Titanic and thus our hopes for world peace lay at the bottom of the ocean.

I think someone left the tub running.

The head of “ The Sicilian Project ” was Dr. Gene Seagram ( David Selby ) who with the aid of Admiral Sandecker ( Jason Robards ) and Dirk Pitt ( Richard Jordan ) would try their damnedest to get the byzanium before the Russians do. The strangest decision the filmmakers decide on here is that of making Gene Seagram the nominal lead in this movie and not Dirk Pitt, which is just odd considering the book Raise the Titanic was a “Dirk Pitt Adventure” so sidelining your hero for the bulk of the movie your is a strange and stupid choice.

This is not my idea of Dirk Pitt.

Instead of following action-hero Dirk Pitt, while he is off uncovering nefarious plots and spies, we get scenes of Dr. Seagram with his reporter girlfriend, Dana Archibald ( Anne Archer ), and dealing with his jealousy over the fact that she lived with Pitt years ago. yawn In the book Dana is a marine archeologist and is integral to finding and raising the Titanic, while in the movie, she is a love interest that disappears halfway through the film, never to be seen again.  Now, there is one actor who stands out as being just perfect for his part and that would be Sir Alec Guinness who plays a survivor of the sinking and is the one who gives our heroes a vital clue, his performance adds warmth and gravitas to the movie and once he is off-screen he is greatly missed.

“Have you tried using The Force to raise it? “

Now comes the next big problem with this movie and that would be the underwater action, which is greatly due to the fact that it is incredibly difficult to make action underwater realistic and or exciting. It’s possible you can do one or the other but doing both is a bit of a trick. If you find scenes of submersible slowly combing the seafloor looking for a sunken ship fascinating then this could be the film for you but the rest of us watching this thing will be left bored out of our collective bloody minds. I would bet a mathematician could come up with a formula showing the percentage of underwater footage in a movie is in direct comparison to how successful it is, I bet an extra half hour of Bill Paxton puttering around in his sub in James Cameron’s Titanic could have resulted in a flop instead of a mega-hit, but hey, that’s just my theory.

Slow and murky wins the race.

Well, eventually our “heroes” find the Titanic and a plan to raise it goes into action; they will fill the hull with foam thus forcing the water out of the ship, then they would attach buoyancy tanks and then with a few well-placed explosive charges they’d rock the ship free and float it to the surface. Sadly, accidents will happen and one of the submersibles is trapped on the deck of the Titanic and the only way to save them is to raise the ship in a matter of hours instead of the weeks that were scheduled. That they accomplish this with almost no problem tells me their schedule was for shit.

“ Did anyone pack a caulking gun? “

Science Note : When the submersible develops a leak at a depth of 12,000 feet we are told they have only six hours to live before running out of air, but in reality, they should have died instantly. The pressure at that depth would have caused the sub to implode immediately upon springing a leak.

The sequence of the great ocean liner rising out of the depths and bursting to the surfaces is damn impressive. A beautiful fifty-foot model was built to achieve this and it does look like money well spent. Sadly it was too long of a slog with uninteresting characters for this payoff to be worth it.

There is very little action in this film and at almost two hours it could certainly have used a bit of action injection to help keep us awake. Sure, at one point we are told a hurricane is on the way, which is apparently supposed to add tension, but then it never shows up so that was a wash. When the Navy ships that were providing support for the operation were called away on a distress call, which allows the Russians to pop aboard the Titanic and demand that they hand the ship over to them or else they’d see it sunk to the bottom with all hands on deck. Pitt in full smug mode makes one quick call and we see a nuclear attack submarine surface and a couple of F-16 fighter jets fly over.

“ Take that, Ruskies! ”

So now that any chance of action has been thwarted it’s time to go into the cargo hold and find us some byzanium, but gasp, the safe in the hold is full of boxes of gravel. This depresses Seagram to no end but Sandecker says it may be for the best because the byzanium may have ended up being used not for defence but to make a bigger bomb. This enrages Seagram and he asks, “ Then  why in god’s name did you okay this mission ?” A very valid question that is answered in the stupidest way possible “ If someone was going to make a byzanium bomb I wanted it to be us .” Yeah, that sounds about right.  Later Pitt informs Seagram that the last words of the agent who went down with the ship lead him to believe that the byzanium is actually buried in a cemetery in Sotheby England , and this turns out to be the case but because of the threat of a byzanium bomb is too much for Seagram he decides to leave the stuff buried where it is and thus making this whole movie pointless.

Do you think anybody in the audience is still awake?

The Book’s Ending : Seagram has a mental breakdown after it’s discovered that the byzanium was not aboard the Titanic , but once Pitt figures out where it’s buried he and Sandecker retrieve it and do a successful test of the Sicilian Project.  Why the filmmakers decided on a depressing “ Fuck it, let’s just leave it there ” ending is beyond me, especially when the book’s ending was much more palatable.

“He’s the king of the world!”

Producer Lew Grade is famously quoted as saying, “ It would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic than raise the Titanic ” but as it cost over $40 million dollars to make the film and took in only $7 million at the box office I think he was screwed either way. It’s simply not that good of a movie and an even worse adaptation.

So what I’m saying here is, go read the book.

Raise the titanic.

• 4.5/10 Movie Rank - 4.5/10

Based on an excellent Clive Cussler novels the producers of this film fail to add action or adventure into their movie. A listless cast along with a slogging pace does this movie no favors

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Raise the Titanic

Movie information.

It’s easy today to make fun of Raise the Titanic (1980) and its now quaint notion that the Titanic went down in one piece, but that was the prevalent belief at the time the film was made (and the book was written). Anyway, there’s so much more to make fun of about this misbegotten mess, why bother with that ? Just look at the preposterous plot. The idea is to raise the ship from the bottom of the ocean by patching the hull, floatation devices, and what amounts to blowing up some really balloons — all of which has to be done via slow-moving, murkily photographed deep-sea diving vessels. Besides being improbable, it’s also the antithesis of exciting to watch. And why are we doing this in the first place? Well, it seems that the ship went down with a load of some mystery element called “byzanium,” which, we’re told, can put an end to the Cold War. Naturally, this means those pesky commies are interested, too, since they know what most of the good guys fail to perceive — this is the source of a super weapon. (The forces of good are none too bright.)

While all this foolishness sounds like it might be entertaining, it isn’t. Why? Well, first of all, it’s so damned slow and the characters are uninteresting. But worse, apart from raising the ship, nothing much happens . Any excitement such a screwy scenario might generate never materializes. Even the showdown with those Russkies fizzles without a shot fired. Dull, dull, dull. On the plus side, Alec Guinness gets one rather charming scene as a steward who survived the sinking in 1912. Plus, yes, the effects work, the models, and the ship itself are all impressive — in a way that CGI so rarely is. But whether this makes it worth slogging through the movie…well, I certainly won’t be revisiting it.

The Hendersonville Film Society will show Raise the Titanic Sunday, March 29, at 2 p.m. in the Smoky Mountain Theater at Lake Pointe Landing Retirement Community (behind Epic Cinemas), 333 Thompson St., Hendersonville.

About Ken Hanke

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11 thoughts on “ Raise the Titanic ”

I’ve always heard bad things about this one…..Ive got to see it.

It’s your two hours.

Just imagine what it would have been like if the original director, Stanley Kramer, had stayed on the picture

Pompous and boring.

Considering what we did not know at the time, like the fact that the Titanic broke in two when it sank and could not be raised whole, the concept and the novel were not too bad. The movie was just plain boring.

Arthur C. Clarke included the movie “Raise the Titanic” in one of his novels about the 21st century, although all references to smoking were edited out, a prediction of how art really would mirror reality, and Clarke’s novel also had the Titanic raised in one piece, so Cussler could be forgiven this error.

I found most of Cussler’s novels entertaining until “Shock Wave”, when he demonstrated a total ignorance of technical knowledge related to the subject of the ship Glomar Explorer, and “Sahara” where he predicted a military force deployed by the U.N. Fortunately this idea, both outrageous and offensive, was excluded from the movie, which I found to be just good enough to watch ONCE.

the world’s first inaction hero.

Ha! You really come up with some good ones sometimes. I’ll have to remember that the next time one of these geriatric “action hero” movies gets released. Speaking of which, I haven’t seen Ahnold, Sly or Brucie lately. And it’ll be another 5 months for the next Neeson inactioner, right?

Well, since the attempt to make Sean Penn the next Liam Neeson was such a critical and commercial fiasco, they may have to trot ol’ Liam out sooner.

Was Gunmen really that bad??

I didn’t see it — Justin reviewed it — but apparently so. It sure crashed and burned. Nothing Justin said made me even slightly interested in seeing it. Gotta admit I just don’t see Sean Penn, action star. And I have zero interest in seeing the latest film from the director of Taken .

>>>>Lew Grade — or Sir Lew Grade or Lord Grade (depending on where you are in his career)<<<< You left out Low Grade…

What a zany I am!

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Classic Movie Review: Remembering Richard Jordan in ‘Raise the Titanic’

Few ships, if any, have had the staying power in the cultural lexicon than that of the RMS Titanic . From the moment news hit that it had sunk, it became a sensation, an undying public fascination that has lasted for more than a century. It is the very symbol of hubris with its ironic name and claims, leaving in legacy a trail of romance , scientific exploration , vibrant history, and more than anything else, fodder for fiction.

If you don’t know the name  Clive Cussler , let’s get that out of the way quickly. An author of prodigious efforts, he is responsible for a plethora of deep sea adventure novels that center around sunken vessels that house great and terrible secrets, often with world-change cataclysm at stake. Of close to it. Arguably his most famous work is the foundation for this film, Raise the Titanic! a colorful, complicated but greatly enjoyable bit of fantasy that I read far too many times in my youth ( and wrote about ).

The film, released in 1980, which hacks off the “!” in the title, is directed by  Jerry Jameson , and is for the most part fairly faithful to the book, though leaves out a few crucial characters (No Giordino?!?) and turns in the plot, concentrating most of the runtime on the discovery and recovery of the great ocean liner. Is that a spoiler? I guess the name of the movie gives that part away.

The story sees the charismatic and intrepid Dirk Pitt ( Richard Jordan ), who is renowned for his work in underwater search and salvage, leading a team to find the lost Titanic when it is believed that the ship brought with it to the bottom of the sea, a valuable and ultra rare mineral that might be used in modern times for defense. Set in the Cold War frenzy, it’s a race against the Russians to obtain from the sealed hold of the vessel what could be the turning point – or perhaps something far worse – in the rising conflict between the super-powered nations.

Keeping in mind the timeframe of the production of Raise the Titanic ,  there is a lot that won’t work for audiences used to ultra-realistic CGI effects in their favorite movies. This does not have that, the film relying entirely on miniatures and practical effects to bring to the screen what amounts to the central promise of the story, bringing the ship back to he surface. Surprisingly though, if you let your CGI-addicted brain let loose a little, what is presented proves itself a pretty remarkable achievement for what it is. It suffers only now from comparison to other bigger budgeted films and as such, even as it is spectacular, loses some but not all of its impact.

Still, the larger problem with the film is its absence of characters, the presence of Pitt weakened by the story’s lack of time to pad him out properly. In the book, and so many other novels he is featured in, he is always far more compelling than the projects he undertakes, and while Jordan is a curious choice for the role and is fun to watch, the character is ultimately washed out by the production need to film the film with the ship in the title.

Let’s talk more about him. Jordan, who is perhaps best known for  Logan’s Run  and a fun part in  The Hunt for Red October , to name just a few memorable titles from his abundant acting career (cut off far too early when died at 56 from cancer), seems not right at first for the dashing Dirk Pitt, but soon makes it is own. Tall, bearded, and commanding, Jordan is the pivot point for the film, despite his character’s lack of depth. Pitt is relegated to the sidelines, as is everyone in the movie, to make room for Titanic, but you get to the point where when you see Jordon, you give a little cheer, knowing he’s definitely going to punch things up a bit with some flavor. But the finale, I was actually ready to see more of him, wishing the movie had been more of a success and allowing for the production to go on with its plans to put Pitt in a series of stories. Cussler himself put an end to that 1 .

It’s too bad because Pitt is a great movie character, even when Matthew McConaughey gives it a tackle , and while he may never make it to the big screen again, at least here with Raise the Titanic , there is some bright spots.  As for the film itself, the main thread of the story is a clever one, and with a smart start and a smarter twist in the end, this might have been a more tense thriller, but is instead bogged down by a script that wedges in fluff that is simply unnecessary.

Leading that charge is the misused and unneeded casting of the great Anne Archer as Dana Archibald, a love interest between two men in the story who is then fed information that makes no sense in the context of the plot, making for a tributary that is not much more than a whimper as it tries to be a wham. If the film had more interest in the people rather than the ship, it could have been a superior spy flick, but the last half of this is mostly people silent in undersea subs searching in the dark, then doing what the title demands.

Okay, so that sounds like I’m steering this out of the recommendation column, and I will say that his won’t be for everyone. Critics were not fans on its release and being a fan of the book, I was somewhat disappointed, but I have to say, I really liked the exchanges between the larger characters, with meaty bits from  Jason Robards , and Alec Guinness . I also like the sets and the authentic locations, the feel of the film, and a great score from James Bond alumnus John Barry . There were a few quality rousing moments, and by the credits, I was really thinking this wasn’t so bad.

If anything, it’s a curious misfire. However, there’s a lot about that movie that makes for a fun afternoon rental, and if you’re any kind of film fan who appreciates the history of cinema in any form, this is a quality watch with a lot of effort behind it in making it look the part (so much so, they show it again at the end). Give it a try.

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Raise the Titanic Blu-ray review

Raise the Titanic is one of those movies best-remembered for its infamy rather than for its merits. Justifiably? Well, we’ll come on to that, but the big budget spectacular is a rare misfire from producer Lew Grade and his ITC company, who gave us most of the great and memorable television in the 60s and 70s. A rare misfire, but an extremely costly one, since the expensive movie sank without trace at the box office.

Raise the Titanic (and the Clive Cussler novel upon which it is based) was made before the actual discovery of the wreck, so it can’t be blamed for the inaccurate intactness of the ruin as depicted in the film (the actual Titanic broke apart on hitting the ocean floor). Whilst finding the ill-fated ship ought to be excitement enough, Raise the Titanic injects Cold War paranoia and espionage into a muddled  and far-fetched plot that sees an American agent apparently stowing a rare and valuable mineral on board the Titanic shortly before it sank in 1912. The only known place on earth that has the mineral is Russia, yet the Americans need it for a new defence system. This sees a race between the West and the USSR to locate the remains of the Titanic, bring it to the surface and salvage the stowed rare mineral. However there are many dangers underwater and huge risks to those involved before they can successfully complete the enterprise.

Relating the plot’s MacGuffin highlights the many problems with the movie. The absurdity of the narrative leaves the film unengaging, and the only real hope of keeping the audience on board is some magical performances by charismatic actors. Alas, Richard Jordan is passable as the heroic Dirk Pitt, charged with finding the Titanic, but he never shines. It’s sad to talk of the limitations of an actor who died far too young, yet Jordan never had star quality and is a weak leading man. Even so, and not to the movie’s credit, he still outshines David Selby as his troublesome colleague. A few veterans give the audience something worth their time. There’s a lovely cameo by Alec Guinness as the last remaining survivor of the Titanic crew. With a warm performance, his Ealing Comedies’ wry smile dusted down to good use and a twinkle firmly in his eyes, his all-too-brief appearance is undoubtedly a highlight. Jason Robards, utilising his familiar hard-man, austere repertoire, is equally fine as the no-nonsense Admiral James Sandecker, in charge of the operation.

Another element in favour of the film is the visual spectacle of the enormous model of the Titanic that was constructed for the movie, as well as the incredible sets achieved by redressing an out-of-service vessel. Pioneering for the time, it’s the underwater sequences that remain the most convincing, since the actual raising of the Titanic suffers from exactly the same problem that water-based model work always does – and the movement of the water betrays the illusion. (Nevertheless, it still beats CGI.) The film, running to two hours, feels long, and perhaps a bit of judicious editing of the ponderous model sequences might have been called for. As a viewer we’re asked to be constantly impressed by the same model work, whilst characterisation and plot take a back seat.

Undoubtedly, the film is a mess. The greatest thing about it by a long way is the incredible musical score by John Barry, who seemed to be able to turn in phenomenal work even when faced with uninspiring raw material. The late composer, best-remembered for his Bond and Harry Palmer themes, achieves a lot of suspense, tension and excitement that the film would otherwise be lacking. It’s partly down to his sumptuous melodies that the payoff of seeing Dirk Pitt standing aboard the remains of the Titanic is a great cinematic moment – a beacon of brilliance surrounded by mediocrity.

Despite the many failures of the film, taken as a whole, it remains an entertaining yarn; just so long as you don’t think too hard about the plot and you have the patience to endure wooden characterisations.

Extras on the disc include a musical suite of John Barry’s score (highly recommended), a trailer, and image galleries that document the sad decay of the Titanic model used in the movie over time.

• Alec Guinness
• Anne Archer
• David Selby
• Jason Robards
• M. Emmet Walsh
• Network Distributing
• Raise The Titanic
• Richard Jordan

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Raise the Titanic

• Once they said God himself couldn't sink her. Then they said no man on Earth could reach her. But an underwater research agency, headed by Admiral James Sandecker, is assigned the job of finding the doomed ship in her North Atlantic grave.
• A group of Americans are interested in raising the ill-fated ocean liner Titanic from its watery grave. One of them finds out the Russians also have plans to do so. Why all the interest? A rare mineral on board could be used to power a sound beam that will knock any missile out of the air while entering US airspace. — Colin Tinto <[email protected]>
• Join the underwater race to salvage the Titanic and its vital defense cargo. Adapted from Clive Cussler 's international bestseller, the story follows the exploits of American special agent Dirk Pitt as he sets out to recover a vital, rare material from the Titanic which could make the US impregnable to atomic attack. The ship is down too deep for divers and the only solution is to raise it. The incredible project must be managed in absolute secrecy because of deadly interference from a rival nation. The Titanic is finally, and majestically, brought to the surface, but the mineral is missing.
• The American military has a experimental defense system that requires an extremely rare mineral in order to work. Investigations prove that the only known source of it is in the Soviet Union, but it is known that around the turn of the century a miner exported some of it. Hopes are dashed when it is learned that he transported it aboard the Titanic. But perhaps the ship can be salvaged. — Murray Chapman <[email protected]>
• The film opens on the fictional island of Svardlov in the far North Sea above the Soviet Union in the year 1982 where an American spy breaks into an old mine where he discovers the frozen body of a US Army sergeant and mining expert, named Jake Hobart. Next to the frozen corpse is a newspaper from 1912, as well as some mining tools from the early part of the 20th century. Using a radiation meter, the spy discovers that what he seeks: an extremely rare mineral named byzanium, was there in the mine but had been mined out leaving only radioactive traces. He is then chased and shot by Soviet forces but rescued at the last moment by Dirk Pitt (Richard Jordan), a former U.S. Navy officer and a clandestine CIA operator. Back in Washington DC, it is explained by government scientist Gene Seagram (David Selby) and the head of The National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA, a NASA-like agency for sea exploration) Admiral James Sandecker (Jason Robards) that the mineral their man was trying to find is needed to fuel a powerful new defense system, code-named "The Sicilian Project". This system, using laser technology, would be able to destroy any incoming nuclear missiles during an attack and "make nuclear war obsolete". The CIA and Pitt soon find out that boxes of the raw mineral were loaded onto the Belfast-built RMS Titanic by an American, named Brewster, in April 1912. A search is then conducted in the North Atlantic to locate the sunken ocean liner. The search team is aided by one of the Titanic's last survivors John Bigalow (Alec Guinness), who was a teenage seaman on board, who explains he was also the last person to see Brewster alive. Just minutes before the Titanic foundered, Bigalow said he locked the man inside the ship's vault containing the boxes of mineral, his last words being "thank God for Southby!" At this point it is decided that the only way to get a hold of the byzanium is to literally "raise the Titanic" from the ocean floor. Pitt comes up with a salvage plan that Sandecker presents to the president. The President signs off on the plan and Pitt is put in charge of the operation. At this time the Soviet KGB station chief in Washington D.C., Andre Prevlov (Bo Brundin), is receiving bits of information on the project and leaks them to a reporter, Dana Archibald (Anne Archer), who is also Seagram's lover as well as a former girlfriend of Pitt's. The story blows the project's secret cover and Sandecker must hold a press conference to explain why the ship is being raised. Questions are raised about byzanium, but are not answered. After a lengthy search, the Titanic is located and the search team, with help from the U.S. Navy, begins the dangerous job of raising the ship from the seabed. One of the submersibles, Starfish, experiences a cabin flood and implodes. Another submersible, the Deep Quest, is attempting to clear debris from one of the upper decks when it suddenly tears free of its supports, crashes through the skylight above the main staircase and becomes jammed. Pitt decides they must attempt to raise the ship before the Deep Quest crew suffocates. Eventually, the rusting Titanic is brought to the surface by using explosives to break the hull loose from the bottom suction and compressed air tanks to fill buoyancy aids. During the ascent, the Deep Quest safely breaks away from the ship. When Prevlov, who has been aboard a nearby Soviet spy ship, sees the Titanic, he arranges a fake distress call to draw the American naval escorts away from the operation. He then meets with Sandecker, Pitt and Seagram aboard their vessel. He tells them that his government knows all about the mineral and challenges them for both salvage of the Titanic as well as ownership of ore, claiming it was illegally taken from Russian soil. Prevlov says that if there is to be a "superior weapon" made from the mineral, then "Russia must have it!" Sandecker tells Prevlov they knew he was coming and what he would threaten them with. Pitt then escorts him to the deck where U.S. fighter jets and a nuclear attack submarine have arrived to protect the Titanic from their attempted piracy. Prevlov leaves in defeat. The ship is then towed into New York City harbor and moored at the old White Star Line dock, its original intended destination. The arrival is greeted with much fanfare including huge cheering crowds, the international media, escorting ships, and aircraft. On entering the watertight vault, the salvage team discovers the mummified remains of the American, Mr. Brewster, but no mineral. Instead, they find only boxes of gravel. As they contemplate their probable failure, Sandecker tells Pitt and Seagram that in addition to powering the defensive system, they were actually thinking of a way to weaponize the byzanium and create a super bomb, which went against everything the scientist believed in. As Pitt listens, he goes through the belongings of the dead Brewster found in the vault and finds an un-mailed postcard. He then realizes that there was a clue in those final words, "Thank God for Southby". The postcard shows a church and graveyard in the small village of Southby on the English coast, the place Brewster had arranged a fake burial for the frozen miner Jake Hobart prior to sailing back to the United States on the Titanic. In the final scene, Pitt and Seagram travel to England and go alone to the small graveyard just three miles from Southampton and find the grave of Jake Hobart. Through their radiation detectors, they discover that the byzanium had indeed been buried there after all... and has been there for the past 70 years by Brewster while apparently evading Russian spies that killed off his entire team. Aparently Brewster buried the byzanium ore in an empty coffin and used the late Jake Hobart's name as a cover. After thinking about it, Seagram and Pitt decide to leave the mineral in the grave because they agree its existence would destabilize the status quo that maintains the peace between the West and the Soviet Union.

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Titanic Universe

A Review of Raise the Titanic – “God Himself they said couldn’t sink her…”

Basic Plot for Raise the Titanic

From the beginning of the movie, Titanic historians get to see pictures from the construction of the majestic  ship, and seeing pictures of the Titanic the size of the movie screen is amazing, but then images fade away and the movie begins. The film spends the next 20 minutes  setting up the fact that the Defense Department is trying to find a way to protect the United States from the Russians. The viewer is introduced to Dirk Pitt, a gun-wielding James Bond type that  one character describes as a “pirate” who only works when he feels like it.   Viewers need to remember that when Raise the Titanic came out, America was neck-deep in the Cold War, and Russia was still a superpower nation with nuclear weapons that posed a formidable threat.  The United States government is trying to protect the country, and they feel that a small mineral named byzanium is the answer to everything. With byzanium, energy waves are emitted from it that will span from the coast of the United States out into infinity and can effectively prevent nuclear missiles from striking, so it is understandable why everyone wants to get their hands on it. Dirk Pitt rescues a man in Russian territory, and then it is through this man that Pitt discovers all about a group of Colorado miners that were sent to Russian territory to get the byzanium.  In order to get the byzanium home, the miners went from Russian territory to England, and then put the mineral in the deck of a very famous ship that left Southampton on April 10, 1912. The byzanium went down with the RMS Titanic , which means that there is only one thing to do…

Dr. Robert Ballard did not find the Titanic until 1985, and when he held a press conference, he reported that the ship was two and a half miles down at the bottom of the ocean. However, back in 1980, when Raise the Titanic was released, there is one part of the movie that does imitate real life, and that is the part when Pitt, and a few Navy admirals, discuss where the Titanic is lying, “you’re talking about 12,500 feet underwater, more than 2 miles down.” Little did those men know that the Titanic really does lie that far down deep, and the only way they could reach it is with small submerisible submarines that are almost identical to the ones that Dr. Ballard used to explore the rusticle covered remains of the world’s most famous ship.

With the White Star flag in hand, it is time to actually find the Titanic , which means groups of guys in submarines trying to find the ship. At  first, the men in these little submarines have no idea what they are looking for, but eventually get told.  Clues around found in the vacintiy of where the Titanic was thought to go down, but no sign of a ship that’s one –sixth of a mile long. After one submersible full of men, including Gene Seagram, gets attached to one of broken Titanic funnel, then the operation gets pushed forward by a couple of weeks because the men only have about six hours to live. With the aide of dynamite charges, the explosion is supposed to free the Titanic from her watery grave and bring her to the surface.

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Raise the titanic blu-ray review.

Genre(s): Adventure, Thriller Shout Factory | PG – 114 min. – $19.97 | January 21, 2014

MOVIE INFO: Directed by: Jerry Jameson Writer(s): Clive Cussler (novel); Adam Kennedy (screenplay) Cast: Jason Robards, Richard Jordan, David Selby, Anne Archer, Alec Guinness, M. Emmet Walsh

Theatrical Release Date: August 1, 1980

DISC INFO: Features: Featurette, Theatrical Trailer, DVD Copy Number of Discs: 2

Audio: English (DTS-HD MA 5.1), English (DTS-HD MA 2.0) Video: 1080p/Widescreen 2.35 Subtitles: None Disc Size: 33.2 GB Codec: MPEG-4 AVC Region(s): A

Plot Outline: Raise the Titanic is adapted from Clive Cussler’s best-seller following the exploits of American special agent Dirk Pitt (RICHARD JORDAN) as he sets out to recover vital material from the Titanic which could make the US impregnable to atomic attack. The ship is down too deep for divers and the only solution is to raise it! The project must be managed in absolute secrecy because of deadly interference from a rival nation.

SPECIAL FEATURES – 2.25/5

This release does come with a DVD Copy but on the Blu-ray disc itself, there’s not even a scene selection sub-menu.

Features-wise there is a new featurette called A Look at the Making of Raise the Titanic (23:17; HD) with a few crew members including DP Matthew F. Leonetti talking about their respective jobs on the film and the challenges presented; and there’s also the Theatrical Trailer (3:09; HD) .

VIDEO – 3.5/5

Shout Factory raises Raise the Titanic onto Blu-ray presented in its original 2.35 widescreen aspect ratio and given a 1080p high-definition transfer. Most of the movie actually doesn’t look back especially for its age and what I suspect is little restoration as there are a couple brief moments of dust marks. Details aren’t bad though certain close-ups are heavy with noise and colors aren’t the most vibrant I’ve come across but I suspect that’s how it was shot.

AUDIO – 3.75/5

The disc comes with both a 2.0 and 5.1 channel DTS-HD Master Audio tracks. The 5.1 track is quite good showcasing the cheesy 1980s score (non-synthesized thankfully however) and dialogue levels are nice and clear making use of the center speaker while any of the action elements help encompass the front and rear channels. It’s nothing noteworthy yet more than gets the job done.

OVERALL – 2.5/5

Overall, costing an astounding $36 million back in 1978/79 (equivalent of over $100 million today), Raise the Titanic is an obscure film that maybe found some form of an audience today but back then was one of the biggest box office flops of all time. And frankly, despite some OK underwater effects and model work, the movie is kind of dull and not terribly well acted. Add in an unnecessary appearance by Anne Archer, and you have something that could’ve been trimmed. Still, for fans, Shout has released a nice Blu-ray with good audio/video transfers and a well made new featurette.

Published: 01/16/2014

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Den of Geek

Raise The Titanic and Its $5 Million Replica Liner

The thriller Raise The Titanic was a $40 million flop, with its model Titanic alone costing millions. We chart the replica's sad history...

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By autumn 1977, author Clive Cussler was the toast of the publishing world. Following a decade of writing and two moderately successful novels, his third book, Raise The Titanic! was a runaway bestseller. Its popularity was a contrast to Cussler’s earlier books, which had earned him a relatively meagre $5,000. But those earlier adventures – The Mediterranean Caper and Iceberg – helped establish the daring hero Dirk Pitt, a practical, earthy hero designed as a counterpoint to the suave, refined James Bond.

For Raise The Titanic! , Cussler dreamed up a scenario in which Pitt headed up a multi-billion-dollar operation to find and recover the doomed luxury liner, which sank in 1912. Their goal: to recover a mysterious, incredibly rare substance called byzantium from the ship’s belly – a substance capable of “rendering nuclear war obsolete.”

Cussler didn’t necessarily expect Raise The Titanic! to do much better than his earlier novels, but the book was so successful that, by 1977, the publisher Bantam stepped in to hatch an $840,000 deal for the paperback rights. 

“I was dumbfounded” Cussler told a newspaper in 1977. “It was such a far-out idea that I thought nobody would buy it. I didn’t realize so many people have with that grand old ship.”

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Indeed, one person attracted by the book’s allure (after a bit of coaxing) was Britain’s Lord Grade, a film and television producer who had plans to turn Raise The Titanic! into the kind of starry, glamorous adventure movie that had was all the rage in the 1970s. The deal Grade signed with Cussler wasn’t quite as lucrative as the Bantam proposal – the Titanic movie rights were snapped up for $450,000 – but the author was nevertheless a legitimately wealthy man.

“We did buy a new refrigerator,” Cussler said of the life changes his new fortune brought. “We still eat out only once a week, usually at McDonald’s.”

Despite his simple culinary tastes, Cussler recognised that Raise TheTitanic! would be hard to adapt, particularly given the expensive special effects required to realise the book’s pivotal sequence.

“The film is supposed to cost between $12 and $15 million, which is difficult for me to believe,” Cussler told the Associated Press. “The special effects will be enormous, especially in two scenes; when the ship comes up to the surface, and when it is towed into New York harbor.” 

Nevertheless, production on Raise The Titanic ploughed on. Grade brought in American producer William Frye to help guide the project; Frye’s most recent hits at that point were the disaster sequels Airport ‘75 and Airport ‘77 – the latter film, curiously enough, about a rescue team’s efforts to dredge a sunken passenger jet off the ocean floor.

Stanley Kramer ( The Defiant Ones, On The Beach, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World ) was originally going to direct, but he was soon ousted due to a dispute over the movie’s scale miniature effects. Kramer was replaced by Jerry Jameson, a veteran of TV ( Six Million Dollar Man, McCloud, Ironside, Hawaii Five-O ) who’d just directed the Frye-produced Airport ‘77 .

The change in directors seemed to be the symptom of a production struggling to come to terms with itself. Before shooting had even began, the budget had grown to a reported $20 million according to Alexander Walker’s book, National Heroes . The script had gone through numerous rewrites and passed through the hands of multiple screenwriters; some reports suggest that 10 writers had made a pass at writing Raise The Titanic . Others tell us that as many as 17 writers were involved.

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There also appeared to be a bit of disagreement over who would star in the film. Cussler had originally imagined James Gardner or Steve McQueen in the lead as Dirk Pitt; McQueen apparently turned the role down, so in the end, the producers settled for the slightly less famous Richard Jordan, whose films at the time included Logan’s Run and A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square .

As Cussler predicted, though, it was the special effects that wound up costing Raise The Titanic ’ s makers a fortune. Headed up by model and mechanical effects supervisor John Richardson, who’d created the effects for Moonraker , Raise The Titanic ‘ s VFX cost millions. For the triumphant sequence where the Titanic is raised from the deep, $5 million was spent on building a scale replica of the ship that was a shade over 55 feet long and weighed 10 tonnes. Artist and Titanic expert Ken Marschall was hired to ensure the accuracy of the model’s every aspect; after all, if the Titanic didn’t look convincing on the big screen, the efforts would all be for nought.

There was, however, a problem: the Titanic replica was so gargantuan that the film’s makers were forced to build an equally huge tank capable of housing it.

A tank was duly built on the lot of Mediterranean Film Studios in Malta at a cost of $3.3 million; that princely sum resulted in a vat approximately 350 feet long by 250 feet wide and 35 feet deep. With it, Richardson and his team could submerge and raise the Titanic model as many times as they liked – which was just as well; it apparently took 50 takes before a satisfactory shot of the re-emerging Titanic was finally captured.

Raise The Titanic ’ s makers also had to find a full-scale ship which could pass for the real Titanic – one that hero Dirk Pitt (Richard Jordan) and his team could explore in the movie’s eventful final third. Eventually, the filmmakers hit on an old scrapped vessel called the SS Athinai, which they found languishing in a ship graveyard in Athens. Unfortunately, certain details on the Athinai didn’t quite match those on the Titanic model already built, so the model was altered to fit the full-scale ship – much to the chagrin of Ken Marschall, who’d spent all those hours ensuring the miniature looked as close to the real Titanic as possible. (Just to rub salt in the wound, an expensive effects sequence, which showed the once pristine Titanic sinking beneath the ocean waves, was cut from the final print.) 

By the time Raise The Titanic was ready for release in 1980, the budget had ballooned to what was then reported as something in the region of $30-32 million – an extraordinary sum for the time. More recent estimates place the final figure even higher – somewhere closer to $36 million or even $40 million. To put that budget into perspective, consider the Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back , also released in 1980 – even that film, with all its Tauntauns, At-Ats and Lightsaber battles, cost somewhere in the region of $18 million to $33 million.

Nevertheless, William Frye remained upbeat as Raise The Titanic ’ s release approached. The film got a bit of free publicity when it emerged that a real-life expedition was being undertaken to find the Titanic (bear in mind that, at this point in time, the ship still hadn’t been precisely located). Besides, Frye reasoned, the money was all there on the silver screen.

“I think that deep-water tank was worth it,” Frye told journalist Dick Kleiner in the summer of 1980. “That sequence where the Titanic is raised is so exciting that, in our sneak previews, the audience actually cheered.”

While Frye was chipper, Kleiner sounded a note of caution in that August article. The public’s appetite for expensive disaster-adventure movies was already on the wane, as expensive flops The Swarm (1978), Meteor (1979) and the soggy sequel  Beyond The Poseidon Adventure (1979) had proved. The advent of Star Wars had ushered in a new kind of effects blockbuster, with The Empire Strikes Back making millions in the first half of 1980. But if Frye had an inkling of how Raise The Titanic would be received, he didn’t show it in that interview, published just as his movie was released.

After all, he said, critics never liked these kinds of big, lavish movies.

“They [the critics] like to criticise pictures that cost a lot,” Frye said. “Just like people like to criticise women who wear expensive jewels and expensive clothes.”

The critics promptly did their worst. 

“It’s a titanic dud,” one review read. “ Raise The Titanic sinks into boredom,” tutted the NY Times’ Janet Maslin. And as for that multi-million-dollar scale Titanic, and those effects that made preview audiences cheer?

“The glistening, quivering air bubbles that burst out of the ship should be readily familiar to anyone who’s ever broken a thermometer,” Maslin continued. “They look just like globs of mercury, and there’s no mistaking the miniature Titanic for anything truly ship-sized. Nor will anyone imagine, in the process shots near the film’s ending, that a real, rusted ocean liner actually made its appearance in New York harbor.”

Ouch. The stinging reviews were matched by a dismal turn at the US box-office, where it made just $7 million – which didn’t even cover the cost of building the 55-foot replica Titanic and its accompanying water tank. As has been pointed out repeatedly since, the original Titanic cost $7.5 million to build in unadjusted dollars. Raise The Titanic’ s revenues on its home release boosted the coffers, but not by much; as the film’s failure brought ITC Entertainment to the brink of ruin, Lord Grade famously joked that “it would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic.”

Clive Cussler was so stung by Raise The Titanic ‘ s failure – and the liberties its writers took with his book – that he refused to allow Hollywood to adapt any more of his work. That is, until the 21st century’s Sahara , which is a whole labyrinthine story by itself. 

But while critics poured scorn on Raise The Titanic ‘ s effects, these were, at least to modern eyes, the least of the movie’s problems. Cut to the strains of John Barry’s lush score, the raising of the titanic is still an effective moment, and that replica Titanic is superbly detailed – even if a few poorly-chosen camera angles really give away its true scale. (On a semi-related note, it’s worth pointing out that Christopher Nolan’s superb use of large models in Interstellar is an example of how effective practical effects can still be when they’re shot correctly.)

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In many ways, the removal of the source novel’s melodramatic exclamation mark hints at what really hampered this $40 million confection: it’s all so slow and deathly serious. The book’s pulpy tall tale is flattened out in the film as a terse Cold War thriller. The supporting cast, which includes Sir Alec Guinness, Jason Robards and M Emmet Walsh, all talk with furrowed brows and aching sincerity – even when saying things like, “We’re on a ship that never learned to do anything but sink, that’s distress!”

At one point, Dirk Pitt yells at a graphic of the Titanic on a computer screen, “It’s just sitting there. Move, you bastard, move!”

By the 100 minute mark, you’d be forgiven for shouting the same thing.

The spectre of Raise The Titanic ‘ s failure hung over Hollywood, yet our collective interest in White Star Line’s “unsinkable” ship never quite went away. This might explain why, despite persistent suggestions that it would a disaster of similarly epic proportions, James Cameron’s 1997 film became a $2 billion phenomenon. Indeed, Cameron may have been subconsciously influenced by Raise The Titanic when he made one of his earlier films; The Abyss is a sci-fi thriller set against the backdrop of the Cold War. It has submersibles scurrying about at the bottom of the sea, a dramatic storm, and, in scenes curiously reminiscent of Raise The Titanic , a third-act scene where a vessel is triumphantly raised to the ocean surface as extras wave and cheer… 

Raise The Titanic was far from the summer extravaganza that was expected of it, and it’s fair to say that its ponderous thriller plot and macho posturing all look comical to modern eyes. But while the film lingers as a footnote in history, there’s a more tragic victim of its initial failure: that 10-tonne scale model, which probably belonged in a museum somewhere, was instead left on the grounds of Mediterranean Film Studios in Malta. The replica ship was severely damaged by a storm in 2003, and has now rusted beyond repair.

Just like the real Titanic at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean, this relic from a bygone film languishes in isolation, its hull slowly succumbing to the elements.

The website RaiseTheTitanic  was an invaluable source of information for this article, and well worth a visit.

Ryan Lambie

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Review for Raise the Titanic

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Like a great iron Sphinx on the ocean floor, the Titanic faces still toward the West, interrupted forever on its only voyage. We see it in the opening shots of “Titanic,” encrusted with the silt of 85 years; a remote-controlled TV camera snakes its way inside, down corridors and through doorways, showing us staterooms built for millionaires and inherited by crustaceans.

These shots strike precisely the right note; the ship calls from its grave for its story to be told, and if the story is made of showbiz and hype, smoke and mirrors--well, so was the Titanic. She was “the largest moving work of man in all history,” a character boasts, neatly dismissing the Pyramids and the Great Wall. There is a shot of her, early in the film, sweeping majestically beneath the camera from bow to stern, nearly 900 feet long and “unsinkable,” it was claimed, until an iceberg made an irrefutable reply.

James Cameron's 194-minute, $200 million film of the tragic voyage is in the tradition of the great Hollywood epics. It is flawlessly crafted, intelligently constructed, strongly acted and spellbinding. If its story stays well within the traditional formulas for such pictures, well, you don't choose the most expensive film ever made as your opportunity to reinvent the wheel.

We know before the movie begins that certain things must happen. We must see the Titanic sail and sink, and be convinced we are looking at a real ship. There must be a human story--probably a romance--involving a few of the passengers. There must be vignettes involving some of the rest and a subplot involving the arrogance and pride of the ship's builders--and perhaps also their courage and dignity. And there must be a reenactment of the ship's terrible death throes; it took two and a half hours to sink, so that everyone aboard had time to know what was happening, and to consider their actions.

All of those elements are present in Cameron's “Titanic,” weighted and balanced like ballast, so that the film always seems in proportion. The ship was made out of models (large and small), visual effects and computer animation. You know intellectually that you're not looking at a real ocean liner--but the illusion is convincing and seamless. The special effects don't call inappropriate attention to themselves but get the job done.

The human story involves an 17-year-old woman named Rose DeWitt Bukater ( Kate Winslet ) who is sailing to what she sees as her own personal doom: She has been forced by her penniless mother to become engaged to marry a rich, supercilious snob named Cal Hockley ( Billy Zane ), and so bitterly does she hate this prospect that she tries to kill herself by jumping from the ship. She is saved by Jack Dawson ( Leonardo DiCaprio ), a brash kid from steerage, and of course they will fall in love during the brief time left to them.

The screenplay tells their story in a way that unobtrusively shows off the ship. Jack is invited to join Rose's party at dinner in the first class dining room, and later, fleeing from Cal's manservant, Lovejoy ( David Warner ), they find themselves first in the awesome engine room, with pistons as tall as churches, and then at a rousing Irish dance in the crowded steerage. (At one point Rose gives Lovejoy the finger; did young ladies do that in 1912?) Their exploration is intercut with scenes from the command deck, where the captain ( Bernard Hill ) consults with Andrews ( Victor Garber ), the ship's designer and Ismay ( Jonathan Hyde ), the White Star Line's managing director.

Ismay wants the ship to break the trans-Atlantic speed record. He is warned that icebergs may have floated into the hazardous northern crossing but is scornful of danger. The Titanic can easily break the speed record but is too massive to turn quickly at high speed; there is an agonizing sequence that almost seems to play in slow motion, as the ship strains and shudders to turn away from an iceberg in its path--and fails.

We understand exactly what is happening at that moment because of an ingenious story technique by Cameron, who frames and explains the entire voyage in a modern story. The opening shots of the real Titanic, we are told, are obtained during an expedition led by Brock Lovett ( Bill Paxton ), an undersea explorer. He seeks precious jewels but finds a nude drawing of a young girl. Meanwhile, an ancient woman sees the drawing on TV and recognizes herself. This is Rose (Gloria Stuart), still alive at 101. She visits Paxton and shares her memories (“I can still smell the fresh paint”). And he shows her video scenes from his explorations, including a computer simulation of the Titanic's last hours--which doubles as a briefing for the audience. By the time the ship sinks, we already know what is happening and why, and the story can focus on the characters while we effortlessly follow the stages of the Titanic's sinking.

Movies like this are not merely difficult to make at all, but almost impossible to make well. The technical difficulties are so daunting that it's a wonder when the filmmakers are also able to bring the drama and history into proportion. I found myself convinced by both the story and the saga. The setup of the love story is fairly routine, but the payoff--how everyone behaves as the ship is sinking--is wonderfully written, as passengers are forced to make impossible choices. Even the villain, played by Zane, reveals a human element at a crucial moment (despite everything, damn it all, he does love the girl).

The image from the Titanic that has haunted me, ever since I first read the story of the great ship, involves the moments right after it sank. The night sea was quiet enough so that cries for help carried easily across the water to the lifeboats, which drew prudently away. Still dressed up in the latest fashions, hundreds froze and drowned. What an extraordinary position to find yourself in after spending all that money for a ticket on an unsinkable ship.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

Titanic (1997)

Rated PG-13 For Shipwreck Scenes, Mild Language and Sexuality

194 minutes

Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson

Kate Winslet as Rose Dewitt Bukater

Billy Zane as Cal Hockley

Kathy Bates as Molly Brown

Bill Paxton as Brock Lovett

Written and Directed by

• James Cameron

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Unsinkable: Titanic Untold review – story of disaster told through government inquiry

Reconstructing the US senate investigation that followed the disaster, this was made with a tiny fraction of James Cameron’s budget but has an authentic feel

I t’s been over a century since the RMS Titanic disaster, and while all manner of catastrophes have happened since, somehow this one haunts the imagination of storytellers and historians. You could blame James Cameron for making the blockbuster Titanic in 1997, but clearly that film was a symptom not a cause. Maybe it’s the scale of tragedy, the huge numbers of dead, or the adjacent fact that so many of them died senselessly because there weren’t enough lifeboats and the upper-class passengers were packed on to what boats there were before the tired, huddled masses travelling below deck could even get close.

Made on a limited budget that probably wouldn’t have covered the cost of supplying the crew with biscuits for Cameron’s epic, this dramatised feature tries to explore what was so significant, shocking and singular about the disaster. Instead of centring the action on the ship, Unsinkable revolves around a government inquiry hastily set in motion afterwards to find out if this was a simple act of God or the product of human error. Senator William Alden Smith (Cotter Smith) chairs the inquiry, calling on various crew members and survivors to testify. Some of the dialogue, adapted from the stage play Titanic to All Ships by Eileen Enwright Hodgetts on which this is based, sounds as if it was lifted straight from the congressional record, which is curiously pleasing to the ear and adds a tang of authenticity.

Elsewhere, a journalist named Alaine Richard (Fiona Dourif) digs into the story on her own, her path eventually crossing with Senator Smith, who occasionally pauses to talk to his wife, played by the great and all-too-rarely seen Karen Allen. There are flashbacks to what happened on the fateful night in question, and the film-makers must have been grateful that the tragedy happened in the dark because it covers up the fact that it looks like the lifeboats are being lowered into a swimming pool while a giant cutout ship capsizes in the background.

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