Since when has striking a chord been a bad thing?

Rating: 8/10 (18 September 2003)

If Titanic had been any different; say if it hadn't included Jack and Rose's romance and just been a straight docudrama, or if it had been set on a fictional modern ship, or even if it hadn't been told in the "flashback" style, history would have been different. It would probably have simply made four or five hundred million dollars, people would have shrugged it off as simply a more than usually expensive mainstream blockbuster, it would still have taken home several technical Oscars, L.A. Confidential would have won Best Picture, and life would have gone on.
But it didn't happen like that. Instead, James Cameron made an monumental commercial gamble in putting together a story of love and tragedy across the decades the likes and scale of which audiences had never seen before, and likely never will again. He was rewarded with a mountain of Oscars and the distinction of having made the first movie to a cap one billion dollars in worldwide gross.
Naturally, a huge wave of people sprung up swearing up and down that the film was unworthy of this level of success. I'm sure you know the sort; they lay into Titanic, calling it the lowest of dreck and that there's not a single redeeming point in it and that its success came solely from 14-year old girls. And to them I say -- fine, leave Titanic to the 14-year old girls and go watch Aliens or a Terminator movie and get your testosterone rush. James Cameron gets the last laugh either way. And how many directors can claim that?