Titanic II

Titanic II is not a sequel to Titanic, but a movie about a second ship with that name. That's just asking for trouble. It's like being pope and calling oneself John Paul II (considering that John Paul I died on the thirty-third day of his papacy under mysterious circumstances. What? Too esoteric?). How many people would board a ship called Titanic II? Not many, despite the fact that a ship by that name would be no more or less likely to be in an accident than any ship by any other name – in real life, that is. In a movie, on the other hand, it's another story – or rather, it's the same story. We already know exactly what is going to happen. We know with a certainty approaching dread that the titular ship is going to hit an iceberg sooner or later – and the sooner the better, because until that point we'll just be waiting for the other shoe to drop. For some inexplicable reason, however, writer-director Shane Van Dyke waits 40 minutes to finally get to where we all knew he was headed all along. Actually, there are several inexplicable moments in this movie. For example, Captain James Maine (Bruce Davison in yet another thankless role), a US Coast Guard helicopter commander, warns the captain of the Titanic II about a tsunami that will sweep huge blocks of ice in its wake. Soon after, Maine calls her daughter Amy (Marie Westbrook), a nurse on the ship, on her cellphone, and gets the answering machine; he then leaves a message about a “second wave” of the tsunami. This sounds like too important information to be entrusted to voicemail. Why didn't Maine tell the captain this when they spoke earlier? (another head-scratching scene involves a wound being bandaged with a credit card. Really). Speaking of the Captain, he has the following exchange with one of his men: “Water reading at 31 degrees. Ironic, right?;” “Why?;” “The same reading as 100 years ago.” That the temperature of the water through which the Titanic II sails is the same as during The Voyage of the Original Titanic (that’s the name, by the way, of the book a character is seen reading, which must have been written and published to coincide with Titanic II’s maiden voyage, since that would be the only way the title would make sense) is a huge coincidence, but it’s not ironic. Who knows? They say history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce; perhaps Van Dyke wants to repeat history as “irony”. What’s more, maybe Titanic II is so un-ironic it’s actually ultra-ironic – like an Alanis Morissette song. You know, like rain on your wedding day, or an iceberg in your transatlantic cruise.