Raise the Titanic

A folly worthy of its namesake, Lord Grade, its liner sized producer famously remarked that it would have "been cheaper to lower the Atlantic", a feat he could have accomplished simply by jumping into it.

Raise the Titanic(!)is an adaptation of the novel by Clive Cussler. In its transition to the big screen however, most of the intricate cold war plotting didn't make it to the lifeboats. In its stead you have the basic story and of course the bank breaking poster promise of the doomed liner rising from her watery grave. It might have worked too had the source material been handled a little better. The screenplay is pretty talky and never really succeeds in building the necessary tension but what really sinks (sorry) the whole enterprise is direction from Jerry Jameson so moribund and lifeless, you'd think he was helming a movie for cable television. Its a mark of this that although it doesn't take very long to find the ship itself on screen you could be forgiven for thinking that you began watching the movie in 1912. Also RTT! has, for the most part a cut price look that undermines the epic scale of the story and its subject matter. When the ship does eventually see the light of day its via some model work and camera over-cranking that fails in producing that all important wow factor. To be fair though there are some very good shots of the ship entering New York harbour that do pack a punch, aided enormously by one of John Barry's best ever scores - a wonderful bombastic orchestral suite that is as good as hes ever produced. Were this a better film, and had anyone gone to see it Barry may have been in line for an Oscar (which he got when he plagiarised parts of the score for Out of Africa). In fact, its fair to say that Barry is the only person behind the camera who does the story any justice.

Richard Jordan gives a good performance as Cussler's hero Dirk Pitt and there's a nice Cornish Cameo for Alec Guinness but everyone else is really just waiting to die here. The twist is a good one but is handled poorly and you're left wondering what a director like John McTernian who did such good work with Clancy's Hunt for Red October may have made of the same material. Sadly the discovery of the real ship in two pieces has scuppered any remake possibilities so this is it. Raise the Bismarck anyone?

I saw this movie in the theatre, and I remember enjoying it. I knew it was a financial failure, but over the years since I've been surprise by the hatred it has generated. Long before Robert Ballard, finding the Titanic and possibly raising it was a dream I shared with a lot of Titanic fans. Clive Cussler wrote a pulpy but entertaining book on the subject, and I thought the story was made into a pulpy, but entertaining movie. I liked the cast: Richard Jordan, David Selby (I'm a Dark Shadows fan also...hoots of derision), Jason Robards and Anne Archer. Now, however, I have to watch a fading print under cover of darkness to avoid more hoots of derision! I've read that there is excised footage that might help the storyline. I'd buy a directors cut DVD, and have a "Raise the Titanic" party. It's only an entertainment, not a work of art.

Ok, so Raise the Titanic isn't the greatest film ever made, but it's not the worst. Cussler was having Dirk Pitt raise the Titanic and save the world when Tom Clancy was still selling insurance. I wish the film makers had stuck closer to the book, which is part Titanic, part James Bond. It's as if they decided to take the (very) basic plot of the novel and spend about $50 million on a film that looked like about $1.99. The acting is fair considering the script Robards and Jordan had to work with. From an appearance stand point Richard Jordan is Dirk Pitt for me. I can see him in the part. It was just that the part wasn't written for one of Jordan's talent. Read the novel, rent the movie and compare the hatchet job Hollywood did on it. At least they would do better on the next major Titanic movie. Not much consolation to Clive Cussler I'm afraid, but hey that's show biz!

Inexplicably bad adaption of Clive Cussler's novel, the failure of this movie may be in its focus on an actual historical event. Most of Cussler's novels revolve around odd sinkings and lost-at-sea type events: perhaps this movie couldn't stand up to the scrutiny that accompanies any Titanic -based project. Richard Jordan is badly miscast (as is Jason Robards). Cussler's novels would make excellent Bond-type big budget movies in the right hands, but here Jerry Jameson and the writers managed to suck anything interesting out of Cussler's entertaining original work.

It was when I read the excellent novel, my mind changed. I used to think this was a wonderful film, when I read the book however, it was clear that so much excellent plotline and dialogue had been missed out that the film story was ruined. Plot lines about the Russians, spies, espionage, tracing the history of the miners and their efforts, what happened after the Titanic was raised but before it reached New York, all this would have made for a more in depth and excellent adaptation, instead the producers went for the big bucks spectacle and just concentrated on the Titanic itself which really is only a small part of the original novel.

It would have been better being properly done as a three part mini series or similar instead of this badly edited rushed nonsense.

There are good points about the film, some of the model work for the wrecked Titanic is excellent, especially when you consider when it was made but then again considering how much they spent on it, it should have been, however the seemingly cardboard cut out super imposed on the New York skyline at the end is terrible beyond description and oddly seems to be worse in the DVD version over the VHS version.

Thankfully saving this film from sinking completely was probably one of John Barry's finest non-Bond soundtracks, without that, this really would have become unbearable.

Sadly fact (the discovery of the Titanic for real) precludes any possibility of a decent remake which with good CGI could have been spectacular.