The reason for the very specific runtime of ‘Titanic’
The making of James Cameron’s Titanic is every bit as famous as the movie itself, which is quite the accomplishment considering it became the highest-grossing movie ever released in cinemas and the industry’s first-ever feature to earn $1 billion at the box office, with countless re-releases bringing its lifetime haul well past $2 billion.
As unthinkable as it sounds now, there were many within the industry prognosticating disaster when Cameron’s painstaking recreation of the titular vessel’s notorious voyage saw its budget balloon to well beyond $200million, with stories of harsh working conditions for the cast and crew being widely circulated. Of course, hindsight is always 20/20, and Titanic remains as prominent now as it ever has.
Carrying a lengthy 195-minute running time, Cameron was afforded plenty of time as a filmmaker to luxuriate in the stunning production design, cutting-edge visual effects, and star-crossed romance that defined his magnum opus, but there’s a very good and highly specific reason why Titanic lasts for exactly as long as it does.
Showcasing both Cameron’s attention to detail and his perfectionism, CBC revealed that when you remove the modern-day narrative bookends and the credits, Titanic unfolds in exactly two hours and 40 minutes. That just so happens to be the exact amount of time it took for the ship itself to sink following its fateful collision with the iceberg that claimed the lives of the majority on board.
Not only that, but the initial collision with the iceberg itself occupies 37 seconds of screentime, which identically echoes how long the exterior of the Titanic scraped against the unforgiving ice prior to going down. These are facts that many viewers would be completely unaware of before, during, and after watching the film, which merely serves to underline Cameron’s commitment to authenticity.
Even Cameron’s hobby of deep sea exploration has seen him become inextricably linked with the Titanic, and he’s spent more time aboard the ship than the passengers themselves. Informing NBC of his achievement, the director’s 12 dives have made him one of its longest-tenured residents, past or present: “I actually calculated that I’ve spent more time on the ship than the captain did, back in the day.”
Cameron may have offered that he has “no way of saying that is in fact what happened” when addressing the dramatic events in a National Geographic special, but his pursuit of mirroring what happened to the minute nonetheless underscores his drive to achieve unwavering technical accuracy.
