Wednesday, April 04, 2012

Previewing Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron


James Cameron heads back to the Titanic

Spoiler Alert! If you have yet to see Titanic and are waiting for the upcoming 3D release to finally see the movie, be warned that I will be giving away major spoilers about the movie. You have been warned. Of course if you do not know how the movie ends, you need to get yourself to a library and start reading everything in the history section.

It is pretty clear that most people went to Titanic to see the Romeo and Juliet love story of Jack and Rose. Not me. I wanted to see the boat sink. I was even quite disappointed that I have to sit through two hours of love story before the boat even hit the iceberg. Now that we are reaching the boat’s centennial (the Titanic was complete 100 years ago two days ago, embarked on its maiden voyage on the 10th and sank on the 15th) director James Cameron is revisiting the most famous ship wreck this time with Céline Dion songs to be heard.

Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron premieres at 8:00 this Sunday (yes, Easter) and follows the Oscar winner almost twenty years after he started he research on the movie for one last look of just how the famed ship sank and just how accurate was his film with the new information and better computer models that have come to light in the fifteen years since his film was released. And the computer models did not provide the most interesting theories posed in the special, that actually goes to a banana that illustrates just how the ship may have sank. No, seriously, a banana.

Cameron and his crack team of Titanic histories sift through piles of information to come up with new theories that they debate, many times the experts disagree humorously shooting James down in private confessionals. The group treats the boat sinking as murder mystery trying to piece the events together and try to reverse engineer the breakup of the ship from the fragments final resting places at the bottom of the ocean and one scientists even refers to the whole thing as an autopsy and a couple are almost brought to tears talking about. Every moment of the two hour special are truly engrossing.

If that is not enough Titanic for you, the following night, the guy who actually discovered the final resting place on the ocean floor back in 1985 will have his own special with Save the Titanic with Bob Ballard starting at 10:00. With technology getting more advanced, anyone with enough money can get their own tour of the Titanic wreckage, severely disturbing the underwater museum and taking priceless artifacts without any recourse without any international treaties in place and Ballard is doing what he can to preserve the site. More interesting is Bob where he heads to Belfast wear the ship was built to get insight into just how men without calculators, computers, or other modern tool built such a massive ship.

Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron airs Sunday at 8:00 and Save the Titanic with Bob Ballard airs Monday at 10:00, both on the National Geographic Channel. And if the special leave you wanting more Titanic, there is a 21-page cover story in the latest issue of National Geographic the magazine including a four page pullout that maps the wreckage on one side and details just how the ship sank on the other. Check out a preview of the James Cameron special below:





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