Raise the Titanic

​Just watched James Cameron's Titanic for the thousandth time?

Are you thinking, "I could use less of the romance and more of the boat, and an intricate plot about the possibility of nuclear war on the side?"

Do I have the movie for you. 

In 1980, a spy movie was released based on a Clive Cussler novel that took $40 million to make. Adjusted for inflation, that is $143,823,300.97.

It was a box office flop. It also hasn't aged well.

Like, it really hasn't aged well.

The plot is simple, via IMDB: "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."
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This movie made Clive Cussler swear off any movie adaptions of his work - until apparently, Sahara, But after seeing Matthew McConaughey's portrayal, he changed his mind again and thought something like: "I didn't write a thousand novels just to see the 'Be real cool if you did' fella mess up my favorite spy." 

Apparently the novel of Raise the Titanic is much better. I don't know. But I can receive this movie as it is: a concentrated big budgeted effort where we see a big ol' boat come outta the ocean, and some angry Russian spies thinking, "Wow, I bet it has that one thing we were looking for a while back."

It's fun. It's full of cheese. Accept this gift. Don't think about it.  Just receive lines like, "I'm a dynamite fisher-person. I just can't put the wormy on the hooky," with a quiet grace. If we can have five Die Hard films without blinking an eye or endless Minions sequels, we can entertain this possibility.

Don't yuck people's yum, folks. 

When I was a kid this was absolutely one of my favorite movies. I wore out the VHS copy at home and I haven't been able to find it on DVD for the longest time. And then Tubi was invented... and alas, I could watch this. 

Five years after this movie was released, they found the actual Titanic - which made this movie even more irrelevant. In the writer's eye, he believed that the Titanic sunk in one piece. Even though the survivors all said that the ship had split in two as it sunk, there was no concrete evidence of it. Even the most historically accurate depiction of the Titanic, 1958's A Night to Remember, featured the ship sinking in one piece. 

Also, when the ship was actually found, there was literally no way to safely raise it - and the ruins will no longer be there in fifty to a hundred years due to erosion.  

On top of this unfortunate discovery for the film-makers, this was also nominated in the first ever Golden Raspberry Awards as one of the worst movies of the year. 

If you're looking for an actual masterpiece about the disaster, I would highly recommend A Night to Remember. That movie is haunting, and actually does a great job in respecting the survivors' stories. But Raise the Titanic is not that quality by any stretch of the imagination.

So scientific inaccuracies, cheese, and horrible reception and box office numbers, this is a pretty watchable, fun movie. If you're into into 70's, 80's era cheese, this is your thing. 

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