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Notes -
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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