That sinking feeling: "Titanic 3D"

After the colossal success of Avatar in 2009, James Cameron exercised droit de seigneur and had his previous #1 movie of all time retrofitted as Titanic 3D. This version was first floated in 2012 to tie in with the 100th anniversary of the events the film described, and now returns to us - not long after the box-office triumph of Avatar 2 - to mark the film's 25th anniversary. (Constitutionally unable to miss a commercial beat, Cameron ensured the UK reissue also coincided with Valentine's Day.) I first saw the 2D Titanic the day before it opened in 1998, in a packed preview screening at what was the Apollo cinema in Leamington, with my immediate family, my best friend, and the then Coventry City manager Gordon Strachan and his wife. (We arrived separately, I should point out.) None of us knew going in whether the film would hold water, but even those snot-nosed brats among us who spent the entire second half cheering on the dastardly Billy Zane - myself, best friend, younger brother - were forced to admit the film wasn't a disaster, and in fact sort of worked as a night out. In 3D, Titanic still works, although that 3D has nothing very much to do with why it still works; it's all just slightly dimmer than you remember it being, because what was bolted onto it was Avatar-era 3D rather than shiny new Avatar 2-era 3D. 

Strangely, though, the movie itself - conceived in that late 20th century moment of anything's-possible studio optimism - may have assumed an even greater resonance for 21st century audiences as a cautionary parable about failing structures: it's a film in which people learn the hard way that capitalism can carry them but so far, and can only offer so much shelter from the elements when the shit/ice hits the fan/ship. You could claim it as a rare Marxist blockbuster, were it not also premised on a working-class lad sacrificing himself so a posh girl can go on to lead a full life. (Cameron, to this day, contains multitudes, which may be one reason his films appeal to such a broad spectrum of viewers.) Either way, these aren't ghosts from the past, but vibrant-seeming avatars - more vibrant, I'd argue, than the state-of-the-art creations in Avatar itself. The whole film's an act of cinematic necromancy. Cameron shows us the corpse of the ship in that prologue everybody forgets about, and then raises it from the dead; the image is first blue and chilly, then suddenly golden and warm. As transitions go, it's up there with the monochrome-to-colour movement in The Wizard of Oz; for a while, this Titanic appears so alive you could convince yourself it will make it to New York on sheer razzle-dazzle, moxie and chutzpah alone. Thus can Cameron break our hearts all over again with that hard, brilliant final hour - a still staggering logistical feat, and one far less reliant on CG trickery than my teenage self had remembered.

The trouble remains that this is a film with a perilously soft centre, stuck with marshmallow where the dramatic ballast should go. That initial transition not only eases our passage from the late 1990s to the 1910s, but from a gleaming late 20th century superproduction to a form of melodrama that might even have struck 19th century onlookers as dusty or thin. The film has almost everything at its disposal - and much of that it puts on screen for us to marvel at - but it never quite matches that magic combo of spectacle and intimacy Spielberg hits upon in his best crowdpleasers. Cameron knows what folks want (the figures bear him out on this), but he retains a far shakier grasp on how they act, think and talk. (Is this why he wound up filming giant Smurfs a thousand light years away from planet Earth? I'd pegged the Avatars as an ongoing demonstration video for cinema, such as they once put on in showrooms for electrical goods. Revisiting Titanic made me wonder whether the later franchise isn't also a resignation letter of sorts - its maker's final leavetaking from reality and gravity.) Titanic is good on construction: it's alert to the class system and its strictures, beautifully dressed and appointed, with a smashing guest list. (Hello, David Warner! Hello, Bernard Hill! Hello, Hornblower Gruffudd!) Yet, even 25 years on, I'm still not sure it launches the interpersonal fireworks required to make it a keeper.

It made stout business sense to cast Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, the hottest young stars in the world at that moment (and the hottest young stars in the world prepared to spend long nights clinging to a door in a freezing water tank). Yet they're here almost as investments, part of the film's portfolio - the shiniest stars aboard the biggest ship in the number one film in the world! - and any fool can see there's a mismatch between them: she's a young woman, while he's still a kid, and a kid, one might add, who resembles an American Apparel model far more than he does a penniless bohemian. (I grant you the enduring novelty of watching Leonardo DiCaprio courting someone who appears ten years older than him.) The one scene where everyone looks to be aiming for something deeper, funnily enough, is the now-infamous "draw me like one of your French girls" interlude. Here, Cameron pauses his action, melodrama and conspicuous wealth-flaunting in favour of close-ups, stilled faces and bodies, a stripped-down piano circling theme songs to come. In context, however, it's James Cameron Attempts High Art Before the Big Ship Goes Smashy-Crashy: sweetly intentioned, but also a little clunky and naff, not least as artist and sitter seem more like siblings than they do nailed-on life partners.

The drawing, of course, is what survives - a glowing portrait of youth that Cameron enlarged with his own artistic project, thereby changing the course of the entire American film business going into the 21st century. Everything in Titanic is secondary to these kids: the actual deaths of 1500 passengers over April 14-15, 1912 are afforded far less narrative significance that the passing of the entirely fictional Jack. 25 years on, the tragedy appears more than ever the grown-ups' fault. The ship is largely populated with Bad Grown-Ups (Zane, Warner, Frances Fisher as Rose's mum) who keep getting in the kids' way or reducing their chances of happiness; at the very last, the action stops again for an oddly fanciful scene in which one of the few Good Grown-Ups (Victor Garber, as the ship's architect Thomas Andrews) personally apologises to Rose and Jack for not building them a stronger vessel for romance. (For not building The Love Boat, basically.) You can see why the teenagers of 1998 went so wild for it, but one thing Cameron remains broadly uninterested in is what Rose Dawson was doing in the seventy years that separated Kate Winslet from Gloria Stuart. The movies, sniffing a profitable formula, followed suit in turning their back on this fuller range of life experience, leaving American movies in particular where they are a quarter-century later: with tiny-seeming people rattling round inside crashingly hollow superstructures. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is in cinemas this weekend.

Titanic 3D is now playing in cinemas nationwide.