1. The Background Of Titanic Basically Remakes A Night To Remember
The Iconic Moment: Because of the minor detail that Rose and Jack, the characters we spend all of the three hour runtime with, are totally fictitious, many people tend to assume that Titanic is a highly inaccurate representation of that fateful night in April 1912. Well, you'd be wrong. Not only did James Cameron rebuild a damn-near scale model of the ship, filling it with all sorts of period-authentic paraphernalia, but the background of the sinking itself is chock full of winks and nods for the Titanic buff - Lightoller climbs onto Collapsible B and begins rallying men; Andrews stands in the first-class smoking room grasping the fireplace; Guggenheim strolls about in his best suit in sheer acceptance of the whole thing; Ismay cowers in his lifeboat, back to the ship. The Film It's Taken From: Pretty much all of those true life events are recreations of scenes from A Night To Remember (albeit with the occasional insertion of Rose and Jack), itself based on Walter Lord's meticulously researched account of the sinking built from real testimony from survivors. You can't get more accurate than that. Interestingly, Titanic actually trumps A Night To Remember in one key area - the ship's split. Back in 1958, the notion that Titanic broke in two as she went down was treated as some mad theory, only proven when they actually found the wreck in 1985. So, if anything, Cameron's film was more accurate (sort of). What other iconic moments were lifted from other films? Share any more down in the comments.
