Titanic Extended Version

[Rodney Liuzzo]

Whatis the runtime of disaster epic Titanic and why was there never a director's cut? James Cameron assured his place in sci-fi cinema thanks to the first two Terminator movies and 1986's Aliens. The director is known for his richly fleshed out worlds and for pushing the limits of technology and effects with each of his movies. He also became an earlier adopter of the director's cut, with several of his movies later receiving extended versions on VHS or DVD.

While some director's cuts can be indulgent or restore scenes that weren't really necessary, on the whole, James Cameron's extended movies play better. Aliens flies like a rocket in its theatrical version but for fans, Aliens: Special Edition works better emotionally thanks to restoring subplots like Ripley's deceased daughter or the remote guns in the tunnel sequence. The Abyss: Special Edition is superior to its theatrical cut too, restoring key sequences like the original ending.

Titanic is Cameron's 1997 disaster epic/love story that made movie stars out of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, became the highest-grossing films of all time - though its since been overtaken - and swept the Oscars clean. The movie was predicted to be a huge bomb prior to release, with reports of a stressful shoot that went wildly overbudget and overschedule. The movie's length was also a concern to studio 20th Century Fox, and while Cameron had previously trimmed films to more theatre friendly lengths that didn't happen with Titanic, with movie's runtime being a heft 195 minutes, or three hours and 25 minutes.

Even with that length, Titanic has a wealth of deleted scenes. From an extended scene of the survivors boarding the Carpathia to Jack fighting Cal's right-hand man Spicer Lovejoy, a lot of scenes hit the cutting room floor. While they were later made available for special edition DVD and Blu-ray releases, James Cameron surprisingly didn't put together a director's cut or extended edition. This simply comes down to the fact he feels the released version represents his vision and he's has stated he has no intention of putting together a longer cut.

While Titanic has some great deleted scenes, the movie doesn't necessarily miss what was trimmed either. There were also some downright bad ones, including the original ending where old Rose throws the "Heart of the Ocean" diamond into the sea while Bill Paxton's Brock tries to talk her out of it. The deleted scenes are interesting when viewed on their own but the story works fine without them. Cameron later put together an extended cut of Avatar for its home video releases but didn't label it a director's cut either because he was satisfied with the original edit. Instead, this extended edition was put together for fans to enjoy.

In this article, I want to talk about a bunch of things pertaining to James Cameron. Among other things, I will discuss the multi-version theatrical release strategy of Avatar (2009) and make a case for why the best edition of a Cameron movie is actually the theatrical version. I will also share my review of the sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water (2022), and present a theory about why Cameron bowed out of making a third installment of the Terminator franchise in 1997.

One of the things that I find fascinating about the state of contemporary cinema is how standardized the presentation of a film in multiple theatrical versions has become over the past 20 years, as movie theaters transitioned from celluloid to digital projection. A given blockbuster might offer a plethora of viewing options upon release today, such as 2D, XD, 3D, Imax, Imax 3D, True Imax, and HFR among others. Each of these will have unique technical specifications and elements.

Alternate exhibition formats naturally tend to crop up during periods of technological change, and the digital transition has been a long, long process whose exact starting point is debatable. Imax and Digitally Projected versions date back to the beginning of the 21st century. But I do believe that Avatar (2009) was the trendsetter for multi-version exhibition in the digital era.

Did you know that there were at least 22 different versions of Avatar released in the US alone? 18 of them came out in theaters simultaneously back in 2009, with most being distinguishable largely in terms of how well they were adjusted towards the technical specifications of different theaters.

I discuss these and other issues pertaining to Avatar and/or James Cameron with my friend and colleague Elvis Dutan in a recent Unsourced Wall podcast episode, which we recorded in anticipation of Way of Water. You can listen to it here:

Where Cameron excels is in the technical construction and execution of a visual narrative. His stories tend to be well structured and composed on the page, and this plays well into his strengths as a visual perfectionist and a maestro of staging, action, shot composition, editing, sound, music, VFX, etc. Thus, when a Cameron movie is edited down to its barest essentials, when every scene is subordinate to advancing the plot, the resulting experience tends to be so beautiful, well-paced, exciting, and immersive that you hardly if ever notice or pay attention to the flaws of the writing.

Given that I find his theatrical cuts to be usually superior to the special editions, I would say that Cameron is an example of a filmmaker, whose work really is at its best when informed by the commercial demands and restrictions of theatrical exhibition.

Yes, much like the first picture, The Way of Water suffers from a monotone voiceover by Sam Worthington that the picture would be better off without (though it does help get a lot of expository setup out of the way quickly), but this is overall a bolder, more confident movie, one that improves on the first in almost every way.

*Thankfully, the film practically jettisons the boring human characters left over from its predecessor, with Parker (Giovanni Ribisi) and Norm Spellman (Joel David Moore) being relegated to what are essentially extended cameos.

In other words, is he free to do what he wants in this Navi form or is he a slave of the RDA? What awaits him once the mission is complete? I hope the future Avatar pictures delve into these issues and flesh out just what being a recombinant means.

Here then, I wish to offer an interpretation: reading between the lines, I believe Cameron withdrew because he felt personally betrayed. And he felt that way because he gave away the fact that he was working on T3 during his meal with Kassar/Vanjya.

There can be differences in screen size, aspect ratio (such as those pics composed for multi-ratio presentations and/or with Imax cameras), image brightness, and frame rate. And that\u2019s before we get to potential editorial revisions and technical adjustments for other platforms, such as home video, streaming, or television.

This was chronicled in a 2010 Hollywood Reporter article, which claimed that the movie could very well revolutionize the future of \u2018delivery versions.\u2019 This was at the behest of Cameron, who wanted to ensure that every given theater could show the film with the \u201Chighest presentation quality possible.\u201D

\u201CCreative decisions involving light levels also led to additional versions. 3D projection and glasses cut down the light the viewer sees, so \u201CAvatar\u201D also had separate color grades at different light levels, which are measured in foot lamberts.\u201D

I cannot say with absolute certainty that Avatar indeed revolutionized the future of delivery versions. But it does seem that it was only after the film\u2019s massive commercial success that studios began to show almost every other major theatrical film in 3D, Imax, and/or Imax 3D formats in addition to the \u2018standard\u2019 2D digital projection, to the point that numerous blockbusters never intended for 3D projection in the 2010s ended up receiving post-converted 3D versions. From this perspective, Avatar had considerable impact on theatrical exhibition.

3a8082e126