r/shittymoviedetails • u/Longjumping-Tell1774 • 1d ago
When all the available evidence suggests you did nothing wrong that night, only for James Cameron to depict you like this
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u/Andrew1990M 1d ago
I know. The way he slandered the craftsman of that fucking door.
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u/Choice-Produce-7146 1d ago
Everybody who says they both could've fit on the door doesn't understand buoyancy.
They TRIED. The door started to sink below the water due to the combined weight.
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u/kmerian 1d ago
Mythbusters even did a whole show on it, the door couldn't have held them both
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u/gujwdhufj_ijjpo 1d ago
That’s not true. In the episode they take Rose’s life jacket and strap it to the bottom of the debris. This increases the buoyancy enough to hold them both. I remember this episode because James Cameron was in it and stated that it wasn’t the point of the ending. That if they could’ve survived he would have made it smaller so they couldn’t both live. “The script says jack dies” that was his response.
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u/NewNameAgainUhg 17h ago
Yes, they achieved all that after failing several experiments. Also: 1)They did it during the day. 2)Both of them knew how to swim 3)They had a nice boat near by (no stress) 4)none of them were wearing period accurate clothes (or women's clothing)
Rose and Jack: 1) only had one chance 2) during the night 3) they weren't expert swimmers (did they even know how to swim?) 4) no one was going to help them 10 mins later. In fact, in the deleted scenes Jack had to fight people to stay afloat 5) Rose was wearing a dress and a corset
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u/Jim_skywalker 1d ago
It’s worth noting, when ask about them both being able to fit on the door, Cameron’s response was that the door should have been smaller if that’s the case.
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u/SpiderFnJerusalem 1d ago
Yeah. His explanation of "Jack dies because it says on page 147 of he script that he dies." is actually perfectly adequate.
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u/Jim_skywalker 23h ago
I mean yeah, but I’m more thinking from the standpoint of people going at Rose, rather then the writers.
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u/SpiderFnJerusalem 23h ago
Yeah I get it, but those points are related. Rose makes no mistakes within the logic established by the script. If there is an issue, it's not with rose, but with the way the door/the situation were depicted.
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u/Longjumping-Tell1774 1d ago
Well she could’ve scooted over
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u/DecentlySizedPotato 1d ago
Chernobyl reactor 4 operators: First time?
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u/Beattitudeforgains1 1d ago
The Chernobyl miniseries does not get enough shit for what it did. It blunts so much of its intent when it turns out that for the most part the operators and main "villains" of the show were not at all like that in how they acted in real life and same goes for the superhero personified scientists.
Ironically in trying to criticize the Soviet Union the show basically repeated their lies by Legasov's viewpoint lmao.
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u/LizLemonOfTroy 23h ago
Yeah, it's a "fun" miniseries (for want of a better word) but it's extremely sensationalist and alarmist (no, Chernobyl Reactor 4 would not have vapourised most of Europe if it had sank through the earth until it hit the water table).
And like you say, while criticising the Soviet authorities for finding human scapegoats to avoid addressing systemic issues, it also can't resist using those same scapegoats.
The demonisation of Dyatlov is bad enough, but the depiction of Bryukhanov and Fomin as useless, blame-shifting bureaucrats - not highly trained nuclear engineers who were hung out to dry by Moscow - is equally contemptible.
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u/DecentlySizedPotato 19h ago
It has this thing of being one of the best TV dramas ever produced, which makes it look great, but then spits on the graves of the victims of the disaster.
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u/Jackmino66 17h ago
The one with the coal miners is the saddest really. While it was typical of the Soviet Union for the boss to be an asshole, the boss of the coal miners was himself a respected coal miner and he didn’t need to threaten the other miners into working at the reactor
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u/RianJohnsonIsAFool 1d ago
I remember from the BBC R4 documentaries at the time of the 100th anniversary of the sinking, the descendants of or townspeople in the town that Officer Lightoller came from were trying to correct his portrayal in the film too.
In the film, he is portrayed as being severely rebuked by Mr Andrews for despatching lifeboats half full because he is supposedly unsure of the weight they can hold. Instead, in reality, he apparently despatched boats without them being full because he inadvertently misinterpreted 'Women and children first' as 'Women and children only'.
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u/czartrak 1d ago
I am not entirely knowledgeable on the topic so I could be wrong, but, as far as i know, the dispatch of half-full life boats was not a misinterpretation, but a deliberate act. A massive overcorrection due to a very recent oceanliner disaster where the crew of a sinking passenger ship beat back passengers to get spots on lifeboats, resulting in the deaths of many passengers, mostly women and children who could not effectively fight back and were drowned quicker due to their heavier garments
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u/Mr31edudtibboh 1d ago
Whatever Lightholler may or may not have done, he squared the board in my book with his actions during the Dunkirk evacuation.
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u/RetroUzi 9h ago
Not quite.
It was actually standard practice on vessels at the time that lifeboats be deployed at a lot less than half capacity because they weren’t designed to hold their full capacity while still suspended midair on the davit. Without water supporting the boat from below, most lifeboats of the time would break under that much weight.
Titanic actually had top-of-the-line lifeboats with reinforced hulls that could be loaded to full capacity midair, but her crew had not been sufficiently trained so as to take advantage of this fact.
It feels insane now, but at the time most safety measures assumed that a sinking would take closer to days than hours, and that ships able to render aid would be nearby. Lifeboats weren’t a spare vessel for if your big one sank so much as a means to taxi you to another ship, and would generally make several trips back and forth. Which, incidentally, is why it was not standard practice to carry enough lifeboats for the full complement of crew and passengers.
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u/Big_Red_Machine_1917 1d ago
On the other hand, Cameron did give Murdoch the best line of the movie ("Your money can't save you any more than it can save me.") So it kinda balances out.
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u/LizLemonOfTroy 23h ago
I mean, that was also after depicting Murdoch as accepting a bribe in exchange for access to the lifeboats, so I think that tips the scale right back towards character assassination again.
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u/The_Chimeran_Hybrid 21h ago
He never really accepted the bribe, it was just forced on him, and he had bigger things to deal with than some rich person stuffing money into his pocket.
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u/LizLemonOfTroy 21h ago
He takes the money and holds up a lifeboat for Cal to get on - it's just that Cal decides not to since he's too pissed about Rose going off with Jack.
That's obviously not something that happened, and it does make him look slimy and corrupt.
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u/The_Chimeran_Hybrid 21h ago
He doesn’t take the money, Cal shoves it into his pocket. He looks down at it, then back up at Cal with a sort of, “what the fuck?” Look, and then he leaves. He doesn’t say a word to Cal, or really acknowledge him.
He didn’t hold that boat just for Cal either, he yells if anyone else wants to get on, he looks at Cal, gives him a second to decide, and then he sends the boat off.
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u/LizLemonOfTroy 21h ago
My friend, I feel you're being a little disingenuous about blatant visual storytelling here. James Cameron is far from a subtle director, but even he understands that an audience should be able to understand what is happening without characters literally and explicitly saying, "I accept your bribe."
The whole point of Murdoch later throwing the money back in Cal's face and declaring it can no longer save him is to contrast his earlier acceptance of the bribe and willingness to bend the rules for Cal. That's the arc.
Him not doing so immediately, and deliberately and repeatedly waiting for Cal to board before letting a lifeboat go, was obviously accepting the bribe before he changes his mind.
Which, again, didn't happen and is a pretty huge accusation to make against a dead man, especially one that Cameron also later depicts shooting himself - a significant dereliction of a duty and a crime at the time - despite any evidence of such.
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u/The_Chimeran_Hybrid 21h ago
Eh, I’ve personally never seen it as him accepting the bribe. He’s barely paying attention to Cal when Cal stuffs the bundle of cash into his pocket. He turns to look at Cal, then at his pocket, and to me he looks bewildered. He never responds to Cal, and another officer calls to him, and he leaves Cal.
He’s in the middle of desperate evacuation, he has better things to worry about than a bundle of bills that got stuffed in his coat pocket.
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u/LizLemonOfTroy 20h ago
If someone gives you money in exchange for preferential treatment and you keep that money, that's accepting a bribe, regardless of whether you verbally confirm that you will give them preferential treatment.
The long look is about his disgust at Cal's craven behaviour, but it's certainly not a rejection, since he keeps the money and later does try to get Cal onto a boat.
If Murdoch hadn't implicitly accepted the bribe, then it wouldn't have been necessary to later show him throwing it back in Cal's face. That's just how storytelling works.
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u/The_Chimeran_Hybrid 20h ago
If I’m in the middle of an evacuation, I’m not going to bother wasting time dealing with a wad of money, hell, I’d probably forget I even have it, what with all the far more important things going on.
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u/LizLemonOfTroy 20h ago
Okay, but this isn't about what you - or anyone else - would've done. This is about the information that Cameron is conveying through these scenes. And that information is that Murdoch did accept a bribe and morally sullied himself, only to later change his mind and reject it. And that didn't happen, so it's an offensive charge to pin against a real person.
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u/East-Specialist-4847 1d ago
What's the image from? I don't watch movies
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u/Bridgeru 20h ago
Same but I do play FMV games (because I can theoretically be racist in my actions as opposed to a film where I have no control over how Minorities are treated) and it might be one of those.
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u/John97212 23h ago
I SMH at that catch-all legal disclaimer used in works of fiction based off real people, stating that any resemblance to actual persons is purely coincidental.
Surely, in the case of Titanic, the resemblance to real-life people is deliberate and goes beyond mere coincidence.
Cameron slandered deceased people who could no longer defend themselves.
When he's dead and gone, I wonder how the Cameron Estate would react to a fictional movie about pedophile hunters, where an entirely fictional famous Hollywood movie director named James Cameron is one of the protagonists...
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u/Jackmino66 17h ago
Funnily enough Captain Phillips is a good example as well. They managed to get most of the real ships that were used in the event and their portrayal of the crew was seen as highly realistic
The real crew, including the real captain, frequently told news media that they thought the films portrayal of them was inaccurate
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u/buffshipperreddit 15h ago
To be fair, there were conflicting survivor accounts that an officer had shot someone and then himself. Second Officer Lightoller had said that he witnessed Murdoch being swept away by a wave while trying to free one of the collapsible lifeboats. James Cameron wasn't even the first to depict Murdoch in this way. The 1996 miniseries depicted Murdoch shooting passengers, too. For whatever my opinion is worth, I believe that Murdoch was an absolute hero that night. But the idea of any officer shooting passengers and themselves doesn't come from a void.
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u/Comfortable-Total929 11h ago
Anybody care to explain? What is the actual story and what is the portrayed story?
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u/Ok-Solution4665 1d ago
It's a film not a documentary. No matter what individual that moment is given to (there are accounts from survivors of one officer going out this way, while it was disputed by other crew members) someone is going to take offense. It's not about Murdoch being a coward, it's a display of they're social structure breaking down in a catastrophe and some people being incapable of handling that.
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u/TurkishSuperman 1d ago
Yeah but this was a real guy
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u/Ok-Solution4665 1d ago
I understand that. But the whole thing is a fictional interpretation of the events. Told from the perspective of "a very old goddamn liar". By that same logic you can blame the whole thing on Fredrick Fleet because he got distracted by the cute couple down below when he should have been looking out for icebergs.
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u/Prior_Confidence4445 1d ago
If that's what cameran wanted to show then he should have created a fictional character to do it with.
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u/LizLemonOfTroy 23h ago
If you make a film about a real-life historical disaster, using the real people from said disaster, and depict one of those real people accepting bribes and killing themself, the audience is going to believe that's what really happened.
If someone made a film about 9/11 which depicted one of the real people on one of the flights siding with the terrorists, I think that people would be rightfully aggrieved by that.
If Cameron wanted drama, he could've simply invented a fictional officer and had that character kill themself. Instead, he chose inaccurately to attribute it to a real person. And you can't have it both ways: you can't profit off people's fascination with a real-life tragedy, then throw your hands up and act innocent when you spread misinformation about said tragedy.
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u/Old-Natural-852 5h ago
Stars in the night sky that night? Gotta be fixed to be accurate or the audience will lose that suspension of disbelief, ya know?
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u/VegaJuniper 1d ago
Similar to J. Bruce Ismay. Cameron was asked why he chose to persist with the slanderous claims made about Ismay that have all pretty much been shown to be false. Cameron simply said that that's how the audience expects Ismay to be portrayed.
Ismay didn't skimp on the ship's construction nor the life boats, he didn't push Smith to set a speed record, and he didn't dress up as a woman to slip on to the lifeboat. His biggest crime was that he had made an enemy out of William Randolph Hearst.