Titanic 3D Preview Report

Happy New Year everyone - hope you had a good festive season! Today I went along to a screening room in Soho to watch twenty minutes of Titanic 3D followed by a Q&A with Jon Landau, the film’s producer and long term collaborator with James Cameron.

Now you may be wondering, and I can’t blame you, if re-releasing Titanic in 3D is just a cynical bit of money-grubbing act by a studio in need of a hit. Well, yes, it probably is to some extent. But at the same time, listening to Landau (‘just John’) explain the process that he and Cameron are going through to convert the film showed that this is far from easy money. With 450 technicians working for 60 weeks, this is a commitment of time and money equal to that of shooting a new feature.

So there was no doubting the very real enthusiasm for the project, but did it work?

Titanic is exactly the kind of spectacular film that was made for 3D, and Landau gave a very good explanation of how 3D works best. We see in 3D; watching 2D films requires us to suspend disbelief on so many levels, watching films in 3D makes that suspension of disbelief easier, and the cinematic experience that bit more immersive. It’s no longer about things popping out of the screen and making you jump, it’s all about depth of field. And this is where the scenes we saw really worked.

Its exactly the same film, the filmmakers resisted the temptation to tweak effects shots (and sadly seem to have kept in the insane repetition of entire scenes where the only dialogue is ‘Jack’ ‘Rose’ repeat as needed. Also everyone still calls the great ship ‘Titanic’ whereas of course she should be called The Titanic. This annoyed me at the time and continues to bug me.) but just given a new dramatic intensity by the stereoscopic effect.

Worth seeing in the cinema? I reckon so.