Folks, today I’d like to talk about hubris. Hubris, as defined by Webster, is “exaggerated pride or self-confidence”. Some examples of this include boasting that a ship is unsinkable, or laughing in the face of safety regulations, dismissing them as getting in the way of innovation.

Inspired by recent events, I decided to watch a film by the name of ‘Raise The Titanic’. I have memories of wanting to check it out after seeing it in the discount section of various stores as a child, however, my mother -surely knowing already that the movie was a waste of two or three bucks- would always decline to purchase it for me. Given that was thirty years ago, and now the movie is free to stream on a variety of digital platforms. Now free to recklessly watch whatever I want, and with the hopes of finding a movie so bad that it’s secretly good, I watched ‘Raise The Titanic’. Thus began my flirtation with hubris.

‘Raise The Titanic’ is a 1980 action/adventure/cold-war thriller, staring Richard Jordan (‘Logan’s Run’, ‘The Hunt For Red October’), David Selby (TV’s ‘Falcon Crest’, ‘White Squall’), and Jason Robards (‘Julius Caesar’, ‘Tora! Tora! Tora!’). The plot centers around an attempt by the US government to locate and recover the wreckage of The Titanic, due to there being a precious mineral of military value stored in the cargo hold.

First and foremost, ‘Raise The Titanic’ is dull. It’s monotonous. It’s full of itself. Movies are a visual art, wherein the rule is show, don’t tell. However, several times throughout the movie, whenever the opportunity arose for an action sequence, our main characters would instead talk about it, describing the possibilities of what could have been. A frustrating example of this: it is known that there is a Soviet spy on board the main ship that our protagonists are on, leaking information to the bad guys. In any ordinary thriller, this would be addressed by our heroes concocting a plan to catch said spy. There would be tension, mood, suspense. A fight could ensue, or perhaps a chase, as the spy desperately tries to evade capture. In this movie, though, our protagonists discuss their knowledge of the spy, and then read personnel files of the ships’ crew, until at last determining who it is. Afterwards, the spy thread is dropped completely. How exciting.

The way in which the set-up to the whole movie is explained is another point of frustration for me. About fifteen minutes into the movie, our main character, played by Jordan, is filling Selby and Robards in on the backstory of the movie. Jordan’s character explains how in 1911, the US government mined an ore on a contested island, and the agent in charge of securing the ore was pursued all the way to Southampton by Soviet agents (bearing in mind of course that the Soviet Union didn’t exist until 1922, and that The Cold War wouldn’t start until 1947). By the time said agent makes it to Southampton, the year is now 1912, and he lowers the precious minerals into the cargo hold of The Titanic, which would sink just a few days later. This information, albeit laughable, is crucial to the plot of the movie, yet it was delivered in the dullest way possible: no flashbacks, no action sequence, nothing but dry dialogue. Here’s how I would have done it: open with the European chase sequence, and the subsequent delivery to The Titanic, then flash forward to modern day.

The pacing of ‘Raise The Titanic’ is excruciatingly slow, with every scene dragging on. Pretty much every scene could use one to three minutes trimmed off, with maybe the exception of the scene where a very drunk Alec Guiness recounts his experience surviving the sinking of The Titanic. Honestly, if the whole movie was about Alec Guiness’ character going about his day to day life, it would have been much more interesting.

I’d now like to address the submersible in the room.

The underwater sequences featuring multiple submersible crews searching for the shipwreck really showcased the poor pacing as well. These scenes suffered from being abysmally dull, with very little tension or suspense to keep the audience’s attention. Even a scene where one of the submersibles loses power while the crew frantically try to regain control before sinking and imploding was done so blandly that I felt myself getting bored and looking at takeout options on my phone. These scenes should have conveyed a sense of just how dangerous deep-sea exploration can be, or how cramped and claustrophobic it can get in a submersible. Instead, I was just left with a sense of bored apathy. I cannot stress enough how much ‘Raise The Titanic’ fails to make the audience care about anything.

Eventually our heroes (heroes? Main characters? Guys the cameras were pointed at?) manage to successfully locate the wreck of The Titanic and through a bunch of made-up science, float it to the surface. In real life, The Titanic would be discovered by Dr. Robert Ballard in 1985, and his discovery confirmed what many survivors had reported; chiefly, that the ship had split in two as she sank, thus dashing any hopes that she would one day float again.

I set out looking for a movie that would be campy and fun, perhaps even one that could set me up with a bunch of submersible themed jokes. Instead, I found a movie that your grandpa would put on for his afternoon nap. The cinematography was competent, but uninteresting. The musical score, by famed James Bond composer John Barry, was gloomy and monotonous. The actors were top-notch, but the script they had to work with was not. In my arrogance to cash in on a relevant joke, I was stuck watching one of the most horrendously boring movies I’ve ever seen.

If you’re in need of a good nap, ‘Raise The Titanic’ is available for free on a variety of streaming platforms, including YouTube and Amazon. If you want to watch a good film about The Titanic, ‘A Night To Remember’ (1958) is available for free on YouTube and Plex. The Criterion Collection also has a very nice edition of it on DVD and Blu-Ray.