James Cameron blasts ‘Titanic’ critics: ‘Tried to make us a failure’

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Twenty-six years after it hit theatres, James Cameron still can recall the headlines leading up to the December 1997 release of his box office smash Titanic.

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“Glub, Glub, Glub,” read one in Time magazine. Variety hopped on the trend bashing the flick with something called “Titanic Watch.” At the time pegged as the most expensive film ever made, pundits eagerly turned their keyboards into weapons in a bid to try and torpedo Cameron’s big budgeted romance before it opened in theatres.

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“It was egregious what the media did. They went after us in a way they hadn’t with any other movie,” the 69-year-old filmmaker says, recalling the schadenfreude-charged press coverage of the romantic drama. “They tried to make us into Waterworld. They tried to make us into a dismal failure.”

But Cameron, who made a name for himself directing the first two Terminator films, True Lies, Aliens and The Abyss, was undeterred. He decided to use articles detracting from his film sight unseen as motivation.

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“I had a razor blade that I taped to the monitor of my Avid (video editor) with a note that said, ‘Use in case this film sucks.’ I wanted to be reminded every day when I sat down in the cutting room that we were playing for all the marbles,” he says.

As audiences get a chance to revisit the film in a new 4K Ultra HD edition that is now in stores, Cameron remembers the tension-filled shoot as possibly the last time he was ever going to direct a big budget movie. But the negative press, he now says, helped him psychologically.

“The least I could do is go down swinging with a good film,” he says with chuckle.

By the time Titanic opened, the negative headlines had run out of steam and audiences and critics embraced the film.

“It was, ‘OK, motherf—ers, now come up with a new story,’” Cameron says. “We were judged on the merits of the movie. But what they did was unprecedented and we haven’t seen that happen too many times since then.”

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“Jim said to me at one point during this, ‘Jon, everyone is betting against us, we have to work our asses off to prove them wrong,’” Titanic producer Jon Landau adds.

With a story taking place on the doomed luxury liner, Cameron’s tale followed the romance between aristocratic Rose (Kate Winslet) who falls for a penniless artist Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) just as disaster strikes aboard the ill-fated ship that sunk during its maiden voyage from England to America in 1912.

Cameron says that despite its box office success and accolades (the film is the fourth highest-grossing of all time and went on to win 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture), critics weren’t all the way done with Titanic. “The media tried to trivialize it by saying, ’14-year-old girls liked the movie because of Leonardo. ‘That’s part of it — we got lucky with Leonardo. But that’s not what was really happening with that film.”

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More than quarter of a century later, DiCaprio is no longer on the average 14-year-old’s radar. Yet, Titanic is still one of the most popular films with girls of that age for a reason.

“It’s about that sense of, ‘I can be what I want to be. I don’t have to be what everyone expects me to be.’ I think that’s an important and timeless message,” Cameron says. “I’m proud of the fact that the film prevails through time, a quarter of a century now, because of that, and the pop culture iconicity is kind of a thing of the past.”

But revisiting the film hasn’t made Cameron reconsider its heartbreaking ending. During an interview last year to promote Avatar: The Way of Water, I asked him whether he regretted his downbeat conclusion and his answer was an emphatic, “No.”

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“He needed to die. It’s like Romeo and Juliet. It’s a movie about love and sacrifice and mortality,” Cameron said. “The love is measured by the sacrifice,” he says. “Now, maybe I didn’t do it in a way that everybody agrees with. But Jack had to die. It’s that simple. If I had to make the raft a little bit smaller, I’ll make it smaller.”

He’s so passionate about the end that earlier this year he released a documentary with a hypothermia expert proving that “only one could survive.”

With the new 4K release of Titanic and five more of his classic films — including Aliens, The Abyss, True Lies and the first two Avatar movies — on the way, the Oscar-winning director and his producing partner spoke to Postmedia about the making of the disaster epic and casting Leo and Kate in the parts that turned them into global superstars.

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I remember being obsessed with the Titanic as a child and giving a speech about it in Grade 5. What was it about the story of the sinking of the ship that intrigued you both?

Cameron: “It’s different for Jon and myself. I love deep ocean exploration and I’m a fan of it. I had worked with some deep ocean technology on The Abyss a few years earlier. For me, what got me interested was the opportunity to go dive that wreck and film it for a movie. Then I had to come up with a story so the studio would go along with it (laughs). So I thought I would do a love story.”

Landau: “I read what Jim calls a ‘scriptment’ — think of it as a short story with some scenes broken out with dialogue. I got to read his vision of what this movie was going to be. When you get to that end scene, with Jack and Rose in the water and that sense of loss … the movie goes on to show that Rose lived a full and rewarding life, that to me was such an important message to get out. No matter what our situation is today, like Rose I can get out of the frigid waters of the Atlantic and have a fulfilling and happy life.”

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Cameron: “I was kind of joking around when I was recounting the storytelling process there. But I really did some research before I wrote it. I read one book in particular called Reviving Ophelia, which is really about young females becoming young women … where they become socialized to a set of restrictive roles. When they’re younger, their imaginations run free and they feel like they can do anything. I wanted to tell a particular story of a young woman breaking out of that societal straitjacket … It was targeted at young women and trying to offer them a sense of empowerment.”

How did you settle on the casting of Leo and Kate?

Cameron: “We never got serious with anyone else. Names came up, I did a few meetings, but it didn’t come down to a foot race. When I tested with Kate, we did it as a full-on audition. We shot it in 35mm with a proper period set. She was so luminous. It was instantaneous. She was desperate to make the movie and she felt like she had something to say with that movie. That was the easy one.

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“Then we started asking young actors to come in and read with Kate. We came to Leo quite quickly. It’s not like I went through hundreds of people. (Director) Baz Luhrmann allowed me to look at some scenes from Romeo + Juliet. We were concerned that Leo had only played these afflicted characters — drug addicts, people with mental impairment. So I wanted to see, could he be a leading man. He didn’t want to test, but I talked him into doing a cold reading with Kate. He agreed and it came to life in front of my eyes. That was my guy.

“Then I had to sell Leo to 20th Century Fox … they didn’t want to spend the money. I was like, ‘Guys, trust me on this.’ They wanted to see his audition, but we didn’t shoot it. Leo only wanted to do it if I didn’t shoot it. It took some tap dancing to get that deal set. Then I had to talk Leonardo into it because he wanted more affliction. He knew that from all his other characters that had gotten [him] so much acclaim. But I told him, ‘Jack is not afflicted in any way. That’s the challenge!’ When he understood that was in fact one of the biggest acting challenges he would have done to date … then he leaned into it and he was ready to show up and do battle as an actor.”

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I was already a big fan of Jim’s from his directing work on True Lies, The Abyss, T2 and Aliens. So I was excited for Titanic. But I remember there was so much talk in entertainment magazines about the budget of this film. What was the biggest challenge of having that weight put on you guys going into this film?

Landau: “Going through the process of making the movie … The people who wrote all the negative articles never even visited the set. They never read the script or had seen any of the dailies. There were other people who came down and they held their stories. They saw the potential of what was there … It was about us keeping focused on what we knew was going to be a strong movie. We never could have predicted the box office.”

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Cameron: “We couldn’t have predicted that. I think there was a point where we knew we had a strong film that played well and was emotional, but that’s not a guarantee of box office … Yes, movies are bad and you can criticize them. But when you haven’t seen it and you’re waiting around sharpening your knives … The arrogance that they thought they could do that, sight unseen of the movie. But we stepped aside, like a matador steps aside and let the bull run by.

“If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing. All that negativity strangely made us into an underdog, and it allowed people to celebrate the film … It was sorted out into two piles. There was a pile of negativity and then there was a pile of positivity. I don’t think that will ever happen again.”

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X: @markhdaniell

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