Filming the famous kiss scene aboard the Titanic was so challenging that James Cameron reflected on how different it would look had it been made today. In a conversation with Empire Online ahead of the re-release of Avatar: The Way of Water, the filmmaker said today's advanced technology has made it possible to "create anything we can imagine."
“We can create the most beautiful sunset, we can create the most beautiful sky, we can create the ship. It's all very straightforward," he added. "Now, back then, we had to build the damn thing, and we had to have a real sunset, and we had to catch that moment. I often ask myself, there's a kind of brooding nature to that sunset. It's got these kinds of glowering purple clouds, but then there's this bright band of golden orange at the horizon. If I were designing that shot from scratch, would I have chosen that sky? Probably not. I would've chosen something more splendid, something we would all agree on as a gorgeous sunset, as opposed to something that was what nature served us in that moment.”
Cameron recalls using two takes for the scene that gave Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet “only four minutes” to prepare. However, they couldn't do it as perfectly as they'd hoped. But the audiences, of course, weren't too nitpicky with it. “We got two takes, one of which is completely out of focus and one of which is partially out of focus. And that's the one that's in the movie. And if you watch, it's out of focus as the camera moves in, and then it comes into focus, and the majority of it is in focus. It’s just this beautifully acted moment and confluence of events.”
Released in 1997, Titanic won 11 Academy Awards, including one for cinematographer Russell Carpenter, and Cameron won for directing. Carpenter, who also shot Avatar: The Way of Water and the upcoming Avatar: Fire and Ash, previously worked with Cameron on True Lies. The first Avatar was shot by Mauro Fiore.
Meanwhile, The Way of Water — the 2023 sequel to the stunning space epic that dethroned Titanic as the most successful film of all time — will get a re-release on October 3, 2025. The screening will be accompanied by previously unseen footage from Fire and Ash, before it hits theatres on Dec. 19, 2025.
