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Why do girls like Titanic so much?
The film made almost two billion dollars when it was released in 1997, making it the highest grossing movie in history at the time (the previous record was Jurassic Park at only $900 million).
Why? What made it special? It’s a perfectly fine movie I guess. The effects were well-done and innovative. But otherwise it seems like a pretty generic disaster/romance film. There’s an old /tv/ meme about “movies women will never understand”. Presumably there are also “movies men will never understand”. I know many women consider Titanic their favorite film of all time, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a man say that.
Take a second to think about it. This is actually quite surprising. Big machines, transportation technology, humanity fighting nature, honor, these are all male-oriented interests. I find that these themes make the film tolerable to watch, but why would adding them to a romance make the film so popular amongst women?
What am I missing here?
It's not that complicated. It's a classic tragic romance between a brilliant but stifled heiress and the handsome bohemian artist who promises to whisk her away from her gilded cage, with just enough big machine porn and dudes running around with guns to satisfy the women's boyfriends and husbands. There aren't a whole lot of movies that appeal to both tween girls and old men who like reading books about Napoleonic naval warfare.
James Cameron is far from the first director to recognize the money-making potential of combining historical epic with passionate romance (remember, the most successful film of all time when accounting for inflation and size of potential audience is Gone with the Wind), but his only real competition in this genre in recent decades has been paint-by-numbers YA love triangle garbage, so Titanic stands out as a conspicuous success. The only other notable example of an epic romance I can think of from the past 50 years that wasn't terrible is the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, which also happens to have been an outrageously successful crossover hit with both men and women.
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