Given it’s the “most romantic time of the year” (according to advertising agencies and florists), you know what that means, talking about one of the most beloved romance movies of all time.
Or instead, talk about it’s “sequel”, because i can’t think of a more fit/unfit timing to scratch one more from my “sub-bucket list” of reviews.
Because even before the current state of the company, The Asylum was never one to back away from any semblance of shame, to tackle things that to others were mere jokes, snark meant to mock but never actually manifest itself as an actual thing.
There was (nor there is) no joke or niche the company wouldn’t dig into the ground, so unbound by moral burdens like shame and shit, they actually made Titanic 2.
As most of you already could guess, yep, this is a mockbuster, meaning the title is a lie.. or is it?
How much of a lie to legally avoid charges and how much actually fitting?
Hold on to your Minecraft raft, things are about to get even more disasterrific, cheaper and bullshittier, with The Asylum’s daring to make “boat 9/11” all over again, which is still less offensive and egregious than the Italian Titanic animated movies (and Tentacolino), i’d argue.
Titanic 2 isn’t about the “Titanic 2”.
I mean, it is, but kinda isn’t, you know the deal with The Asylum and their mockbusters.
It’s all a game of technicalities so they can’t properly get sued (when they got too cheeky, they did get sued, but that’s a story for another Asylum review), even if they’re implying this is the sequel to the James Cameron directed 1997 classic.
Because you see, this is “Titanic 2” in the sense the Titanic disaster did happen in real life, and this film takes place in the “future”, as in 100 years after the original Titanic disastrous maiden voyage, when a replica Titanic (simply christened as “Titanic II”, logically enough) sets off to travel on the reverse route of the original ship.
But the forces of nature, given a big ass buff by climate change, combine to make this voyage one to remember, and obviously even more disastrous (4 times the disaster, one passenger even said), as history repeats itself but on a bigger scale because “sequel”, brackets as big as needed.
Bigger scale meaning shit because this is a direct-to-video flick from The Asylum, and this is a film genre that does hinge a lot more than others on having top-of-the-line special effects, so it already start trying to ice-skate uphill the fuckin K2, to put it nicely.
I’m more surprised they remembered to put in romance in a Titanic movie, it’s The Asylum, after all, you never quite know the magnitude of crap they did cook up until you stepped on it.
The shitty effects are no worse than usual, but there’s a noticeable amount of obvious shitty composition and obvious usage of still images as the background replacement (or obvious green screen usage), i’ve seen worse, i would like to say, but even the cheap effects are worse than usual, even for the Asylum and their usual fair of disaster flicks.
Though don’t expect it to try imitate the 1997 film, it looks like it will, with the douche slick haired son of a rich man that owns the ship and his ex, a girl now a medical ship doctor, both on board of the Titanic 2… but then the douchebag looking womanizer that looked to be a fusion of Jack and Cal Hockley starts actually taking responsabilities when shit hits the fan, what gives?
But wait, we do have them copying the final death scene of Jack. Kinda.
It’s like they forgot halfway this is a Titanic mockbuster and just did another of their numerous disaster movies like Megafault, Apocalypse Pompeii, or their entire 2012 film series (as usual, not kidding), one that just happened to have a romantic subplot as the main draw, and then remembered that yeah, we called it “Titanic 2”, might as well.
Sure, at times even the extra don’t seem quite well instructed or look as bothered as they should during the repeating of a historical maritime tragedy, some of the actors are arguably worse, expecially Brooke Burns here is awful, love the scene when the ice caps start cracking and she can’t convince anyone of any urgency due to impending “death by crack in the ground” (a fear those who played the 2006 Alone In The Dark reboot known too well), not that the rest of the cast its better, it’s about what you’d expect, as in pretty subpar, borderline passable at best, with the exception being the usual old TV & film actor that’s obviously way too good for this shit, here being Bruce Davison.
Make no mistake, it’s pretty inept as expected, but it’s kind of vaguely entertaining, there’s some chuckles to be had at some incredibly cheap special effects, as the general incompetence we’d expect from an Asylum production, at least thing do happen and i didn’t fall asleep, waiting for something to happen until the 45 minutes mark, but in an ironic “twist”, Titanic 2 is suprisingly unremarkable even in terms of terrible, “so bad maybe they’re good?” films of theirs, as it lacks the spice, the memorable scenes that bedazzled and make people laugh in hindsight.
And yet it’s not unbearable to watch as one would surmise, but it’s still pretty, pretty dang bad, again, it’s pretty telling alone this wasn’t picked up even by SYFY, too subpar and shitty even for a TV broadcast slot, even the cheap effects are lackluster by the company’ own standards, the characters all are douches or barely register as such (one of the few that has any tridimensionality get offed fairly quick, of course), and of course it’s a generic disaster flick that tries to piggyback off the 1997 James Cameron film while also kinda forgetting it planned to do that, until the end.
If this ain’t the bottom of the barrel, its very, very close, pretty terrible, and honestly it’s not even that bad to be a curiosity for die hard made-for-TV cheap disaster flicks buffs.
When you can actually see shit, given how badly lit most of the scenes are, not Dracula VS Frankenstein level of “almost complete darkness” but it’s often hard way too darker than it should.
Even more incredible than this being the only thing named Titanic 2 to actually release/be made (as the actual Titanic 2 ship project went nowhere), is that they made a sequel.
Ok, that’s not really shocking, but i didn’t expect The Asylum to make a Titanic 2 sequel AND make it a supernatural horror flick, but they did with Titanic 666, the number of the… ship, as we all know thank to the classic Iron Maiden song.
More impressive or incredible than that is the director, Shan Van Dyke (here writing and directing), whom slummed after and before in other Asylum productions (like Paranormal Entity, the Transmorphers prequel, Battle Dogs), eventually was able to “escape” the company, landing roles as the writer for Netflix’s The Silence and lately Don’t Worry Darling.
So even if you directed Titanic 2, fate isn’t gonna necessarily shit down your throath forever, how’s that for an inspiring tale?
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