3. Raise The Titanic Is So Dumb It Becomes The (Then) Biggest Flop Of All Time
The Titanic wreck was discovered in 1985. Before that we knew very little about what state the ship was in, leading to many outlandish methods being suggested how to save it from the sea floor (my favourite is filling it with ping pong balls). Amidst the hysteria of all these (sadly serious) ideas, things reached fever pitch with the release of Raise The Titanic. Coming amidst Cold War paranoia, the film retcons history to have the Titanic be carrying a Macguffin essential to blah...blah...blah...nuclear weapons, leading to a desperate race to bring the ship back to the surface and plunder her depths. Yeah, its
really dumb. Based off the adventure book (part of an ongoing series, rather than a standalone Titanic story) of the same name, albeit lacking the novels out of place exclamation mark (and sense of fun), dont be fooled into thinking its only stupid in hindsight. Critics hated the film, which made back only a fraction of its $40,000,000 budget, making it then one of the biggest flops of all time. Funnily enough, the Cold War did play a part in the discovery of the wreck; the submersibles used to discover it were funded by the US Navy on the condition they could be used on highly classified missions.