On one podcast I host, we were just discussing Titanic, what is by any standard one of the most successful movies in the history of the medium. Sometimes we ask ourselves, in the vein of my other podcast, what the 2020s remake of a movie would be like. We didn’t in this case, because it’s my co-host Erin‘s very favourite movie ever, because we had talked about it for nearly the runtime of The Mummy (1999) as is, and because even without all of that, how do you pitch a remake of one of the biggest hits since the invention of film? What do you improve?
Is someone going to be able to out-do James Cameron where the spectacle of the crash and sinking is concerned? Whinge about the star-crossed romance at the heart of the movie if you really must, but making the mixed-class star-crossed romance of Rose and Jack our central characters gave the film several huge advantages: being fictional, they could have three-act character arcs, something real lives tend to lack; Rose’s status on board gave her access to most of the key players like White Star executive J. Bruce Ismay, ship designer Thomas Andrews, and Molly Brown; they could be in place to experience all the most dramatic moments of the sinking, while nearly all survivors were some distance from the frigid end; Rose surviving to the present day gives the ending a bright spot amongst the tragedy of 1,500 deaths.
I mean you could center it on actress Dorothy Gibson, who was on the first lifeboat, then upon reaching New York immediately co-wrote and starred in a short film about the disaster that hit theatres 29 days after the sinking, only to have a mental breakdown and never act again. You could cut between the making of the movie and the flashbacks to the ship that filming is giving Dorothy, watching her mental heath deteriorate from reliving a trauma she lacked the time or tools to process…
You could do that, and it might be pretty okay, but it would definitely be at best the Shark Tale to Titanic’s Finding Nemo. Or, given that our POV character was historically first off the boat, and may not have known any crew members, it would lack “I’m flying, Jack” and “I’m sorry I didn’t build you a stronger ship, Miss Rose” and “You jump, I jump,” and it could end up the 2024 version of The Crow… different to be sure, but worse in just about every conceivable metric save for safety of the set.
But what would be even weirder than trying to remake one of the most successful films in the history of western cinema is the notion of trying to remake the ship itself, but that, dear readers, that has been given shockingly serious consideration. Sure there were a few changes to the design (eg. no coal-fired engines and an entire extra deck for lifeboat storage), based on modern safety and efficiency standards that didn’t exist in 1912 (some of which may have been made the week after the Titanic sunk), but big picture, near-exact replica.
The Blue Star Line of Australia, named presumably in homage to the White Star Line company behind the original Titanic, certainly claims that they intend to build the Titanic II, a near-identical replica of the ship famous for completing zero voyages successfully. Now, they have been claiming this since 2012, and have not placed rivet one in the last 13 years, but as recently as March 2024 Blue Line founder, Australian mining magnate, and rightwing single-term parliamentarian Clive Palmer claimed progress was being made towards a 2027 sailing date, but he also claimed his novelty boat would be a “beacon of hope for Ukraine” and “an antidote to woke politics,” so maybe that’s an indicator of how seriously he should be taken. Clive Palmer would appear to be, in all the worst ways, the Australian Elon Musk, an absolute parasite of a billionaire with too much money, no attachment to our shared reality, and somehow not enough attention.
But putting aside his deplorable politics, the fact that nobody who uses “woke” as a pejorative has ever said something worth hearing, the initial announcement being tied to his entrance into politics, and the fact that he tried to build a Jurassic Park on his golf course, the mere idea of building a Titanic replica and expecting it to earn money baffles me. Because yes, at the time, the Titanic was the most luxurious ship of its kind, but at the time, airplanes were nine years old, the sun never set on the British Empire, the idea of films having spoken dialogue was the fever dream of a madman, and if one of your kids had a fever you started digging the grave right away. Things are different.
I’m no big city ship captain, I may not know about steering a vessel through the North Atlantic, but I know a thing or two about a thing or two about hospitality, and in today’s market, the Titanic gets clobbered.
I would like, at this time, to invite you into the demented rabbit hole I’ve fallen into looking into this bonkers proposal and how it could possibly be expected to compete not just with luxury cruises like Viking or the Orient Express’ planned luxury yachts, but with very basic cruise brand Royal Caribbean.
This is not a dig at Royal Caribbean, they just happen to be the only cruise line I’ve been on since high school (don’t know what company that was with) so I can speak to that specific experience with some level of familiarity, which cannot be said about Disney Cruises or Princess or the more lux cruise lines. So I’ll be using them as a basis for comparison a lot.
Allons-y.
Next page: it’s about the destination(s)
