Everyone knows about the fabled and miraculous box office run of James Cameron’s “Titanic.” The film rode a wave of rave reviews, following months of bad press related to cost overruns, release date delays and behind-the-scenes melodrama, to a record-setting $600 million domestic and $1.8 billion worldwide total. Opening with just $28 million, it spent its first 15 weekends atop the domestic box office, still a record for consecutive Fri-Sun frames.
What of the films that perished in the first months of 1998? For three straight months, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet’s Oscar-winning romance/disaster feature sunk most of the competition. This was 1998, when big movies were not expected to open before the May-to-August summer movie season. The film that dethroned “Titanic,” an expensive, grimdark adaptation of “Lost in Space,” was itself a surprisingly “big” movie for its early April opening weekend.
That’s not to say the films were all bad, or that some of them – like “Wild Things,” “The Wedding Singer,” “U.S. Marshals,” and ironically DiCaprio’s “The Man with the Iron Mask,” didn’t put up a fight. The biggest-grossing domestic earner from this period was the IMAX-only release of the documentary “Everest” which earned $87 million.
So, to mark the occasion of the theatrical rerelease of “Titanic,” let us run down the five best films that bombed in the wake of its first record-breaking voyage.
“Fallen” (01/16/1998)
Released over the Martin Luther King Day holiday weekend, Gregory Hoblit’s grim and ponderous supernatural thriller is one of Denzel Washington’s best non-prestige pulp thrillers. Washington stars as an agnostic, jaded police officer who ends up chasing a supernatural demon who leaps from body to body to kill repeatedly. While the pitch could lend itself to sleazy thrills and grindhouse gore, “Fallen” played in a quieter, more contemplative sandbox. It was a weighty spiritual drama where the mere loss of life is itself tragic. With terrific supporting work from John Goodman and Donald Sutherland, “Fallen” also had the best use of voiceover narration in any modern motion picture.
“Deep Rising” (01/30/1998)
Stephen Sommers’ campy, cheesy and gleefully trashy horror comedy was intended to be another post- “Jurassic Park” attempt to use cutting-edge effects technology to justify a newfangled monster movie. (See also: “The Relic,” “Lake Placid” and “Species.”) Treat Williams and Famke Janssen led a pack of good-hearted, ship-plundering pirates who stumbled upon a deserted cruise ship with the walls painted in blood. Spoiler: Most of the passengers are dead and they didn’t die of natural causes. This unapologetically R-rated comedic monster thriller was as much of a trendsetter in its own way as “Die Hard.” It established the template for an entire sub-genre of “rogues run into and must defeat giant monsters/Syfy Channel original movies.”
“Dark City” (02/27/1998)
Alex Proyas’ mind-bending sci-fi thriller died only to watch “The Matrix” strike gold 13 months later. Rufus Sewell starred as a man who wakes up with no memory but much evidence that he may be a murderer. What developed was a visually dazzling fantasy, with a jaw-dropping third act reveal and a thousand fascinating ideas. It’s probably the best of the post-”Total Recall” films to play in the “your life is not your real life” sandbox. The nature versus nurture parable examined how the absence of consequence affected our choices. Consider it an early example of how excitement and buzz among the film nerd community, even with a dazzling teaser attached to theatrical prints of “Scream 2,” didn’t always translate to general audience interest.
“Twilight” (03/06/1998)
Paul Newman’s second-to-last leading role was an ahead-of-its-time example of a star vehicle with a fabled movie star confronting the ravages of age and mortality head-on. Co-starring Susan Sarandon, Gene Hackman and James Garner, the film noir mystery drama was enhanced by its end-of-life pathos and its position as a “one last quest for an aging warrior” for Newman, not unlike John Wayne’s “The Shootist.” The aging vets and their decades are contrasted by a handful of up-and-comers, including Reese Witherspoon, Jason Clarke and Liev Schreiber. Like several films that opened in the wake of “Titanic,” “Twilight” would never exist today as a mainstream multiplex release. At best, it might be a drawn-out, eight-part streaming miniseries.
“Primary Colors” (03/20/1998)
One of three terrific and of-the-moment mainstream Hollywood political dramedies to open between December of 1997 and May of 1998, “Primary Colors” was sandwiched between “Wag the Dog” and “Bulworth.” Mike Nichols’ film version of Joe Klein’s controversial novel, a loosely fictionalized version of the Democratic primary campaign of Bill Clinton in the run-up to the 1992 general election, featured John Travolta and Emma Thompson as the eventual President and First Lady.
The empathetic, nuanced and morally complex political dramedy never condescended or added melodramatic thriller tropes. It was a terrific fable about the constant struggle between winning political office “the right way” versus just winning by any means necessary, especially when, if your opponents are clear and present dangers, victory is unto itself a morally superior outcome.
One big reason “Titanic” dominated the box office is because it was the best movie in the marketplace. To paraphrase the guy whom “Primary Colors” was inspired by, sometimes “It’s the movie, stupid.”
