It's a disaster of a movie

Titanic II (2010)

Starring: Shane Van Dyke, Marie Westbrook, Bruce Davison, Brooke Burns, Michelle Glavan, Carey Van Dyke, and D. C. Douglas

Writer: Shane Van Dyke

Director: Shane Van Dyke

Rating: 1 of 5 Stars

In 2012, the U.S.S. Titanic II sets sail from NYC to Europe.  When it collides with an iceberg, the passengers and crew try to fight against fate.

Yes, Titanic II is a sequel to the ship.  No, no one who boards it is familiar with what happened to the original.  The 1912 sinking is not only the worst sealine disaster in human history, it is probably the most famous.  The statement, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it," has been exemplified through many disastrous situations, including the League of Nations and the U.S.-Iraq War.  If Titanic II was based on real life, it would rank right up there with those events.

Sunday's experiment was the definition of a zero-star movie; and if Titanic II's script is not a Cinematic Titanic (referring to the new DVDs from the MST3K folks), I don't know what is.  In addition to the idiotic premise, we also have a girl at the beginning who seriously says she would rather let passengers drown than perform CPR.  Yet very few bad films got that way on purpose, and with all this comes a kind of epic ambition.  It's plain to see when Titanic II sets off that Shane Van Dyke was aiming for the same triumphant mood (albeit in an ironic way) as in the most famous Titanic film when the same thing happens with its predecessor.  Likewise, the score is under-inspired, but you can tell the composers understood that a score makes or breaks a film.

So even though Titanic II is an epic failure—in its attempts to build suspense about the inevitable, in its character development, in its conventionality in regards to plot logic, and in its non-conformity to the reboot/remake trend that's reaching crisis levels in Hollywood—it might be a good candidate for a book someday about the event it takes after: The Little Ocean Liner That Thought It Could, But Couldn't.