Beyond Titanic (1998)
*** (out of 4)
This is an interesting documentary that was released a year after the James Cameron film and while it was clearly produced to capture the craze with that film, it still remains fairly good on its own. We start off with a bit of quick history on the events that led up to the sinking from from here on we basically view the sinking in terms of the movies and TV shows that followed the tragedy. SAVED FROM THE TITANIC (1912), NIGHT AND ICE (1912), ATLANTIS (1913), Atlantic (1929), CAVALCADE (1933), TITANIC (1943, 53, 96, 97), A NIGHT TO REMEMBER (1958), THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN (1964), THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972) and RAISE THE TITANIC (1980) are the films that we get to see clips from and we also see clips from the television shows One Step Beyond and The Time Tunnel. We get interviews with authors such as Steven Biel, Paul Heyer, Daniel Allen Butler and Bernard Fox who all comment on the actual films, talk about the errors they might have in facts and they also discuss why just about every generation have been introduced to the story of the sinking ship. We also get to hear about the discovery of the ship in 1985 as well as hear from survivor Millvina Dean who would turn out to be the last person on the ship to die (in 2009). The Dean stuff is without question the most interesting and while there are plenty of documentaries that talk about her story, this one here allows her to talk about watching A NIGHT TO REMEMBER and having to walk out knowing that this was how her father died. She also talks about the various ways James Cameron tried to talk her into seeing his version but she refused. BEYOND TITANIC is a good look at the movies that have been made since the sinking but it's best that people actually search those movies out and view them on their own. All of them, except for the first one SAVED FROM THE TITANIC, are available to view and all of them have their reasons to watch.
