Search - Titanic: Mystery & Legacy on DVD

Largely uninformative and filled with a lot of useless info

Daniel Jolley | Shelby, North Carolina USA | 04/08/2003

(2 out of 5 stars)

"This Titanic documentary has its good points and its bad points. It begins rather badly, in my opinion. For some reason, the makers of the show feel compelled to explain the entire history of shipbuilding, going all the way back to the first prehistoric man who figured out a log would float on the water; a significant amount of time is spent talking to shipbuilders, showing us how a traditional builder is still constructing wooden vessels and taking us into the test labs of the U.S. Navy. Then, it's science lesson time as the scientific principle of buoyancy is explained to us (complete with silly cartoon animation of a naked Archimedes jumping out of his bathtub). Finally, we actually get to hear about the Titanic. After some talk about superstition and luck, we get a computer-animated tour of parts of the ship, after which the same computer animation recreates the ship hitting the iceberg and eventually going under. You won't find any reference to personal stories of victims or survivors, just the facts of the collision and catastrophe; the issue of blame is addressed, and a number of Titanic scholars weigh in with their opinions on the subject. Toward the very end, we finally get to see some video of the Titanic as it lies at the bottom of the ocean. I can say that the sound quality here is much better than that of the first three DVDs in this Titanic: The Mystery & and the Legacy series; unfortunately, in this case the visual display is quite bad at times, featuring such bright light that you can hardly see what is being shown. If you are a Titanic fan, you really won't learn anything you don't already know from this documentary, and you will have to sit through a truly frustrating first 15 minutes of interesting but rather immaterial information. There are much better Titanic documentaries available than this one."

Top notch production! Very informative!

Daniel Jolley | 03/30/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"A wonderful display of production value and content! I learned more about Shipbuilding, icebergs and the Titanic by watching this spectacular production. Well done! Keep them coming!!!"

Worst DVD I have purchased to date

Joseph A. Hasko | Sacramento, CA | 02/13/2000

(1 out of 5 stars)

"I found this 50 minute documentary to be the worst that I have ever seen. There is actually a point on the DVD that there is an audio problem (no audio) for about 7 seconds. At least 10 minutes of it focuses on a shipbuilder that produces small boats today. Do not recommend!"