Titanic

T I T A N I C

a screenplay by James Cameron

BLACKNESS

Then two faint lights appear, close together... growing brighter. They resolve into two DEEP SUBMERSIBLES, free-falling toward us like express elevators.

One is ahead of the other, and passes close enough to FILL FRAME, looking like a spacecraft blazing with lights, bristling with insectile manipulators.

TILTING DOWN to followit as it descends away into the limitless blackness below. Soon they are fireflies, then stars. Then gone.

CUT TO:

EXT./ INT. MIR ONE / NORTH ATLANTIC DEEP

PUSHING IN on one of the falling submersibles, called MIR ONE, right up to its circular viewport to see the occupants.

INSIDE, it is a cramped seven foot sphere, crammed with equipment. ANATOLY MIKAILAVICH, the sub's pilot, sitshunched over his controls... singing softly in Russian.

Next to him on one side is BROCK LOVETT. He's in his late forties, deeply tanned, and likes to wear his Nomex suit unzipped to show the gold from famous shipwrecks covering his gray chest hair. He is a wiley, fast-talking treasure hunter, a salvage superstar who is part historian, part adventurer and part vacuum cleaner salesman. Right now, heis propped against the CO2 scrubber, fast asleep and snoring.

On the other side, crammed into the remaining space is a bearded wide-body named LEWIS BODINE, sho is also asleep. Lewis is an R.O.V. (REMOTELY OPERATED VEHICLE) pilot and is the resident Titanic expert.

Anatoly glances at the bottom sonar and makes a ballast adjustment.

CUT TO:

EXT. THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA

A pale,dead-flat lunar landscape. It gets brighter, lit from above, as MIR ONE enters FRAME and drops to the seafloor in a downblast from its thrusters. It hits bottom after its two hour free-fall with a loud BONK.

CUT TO:

INT. MIR ONE

Lovett and Bodine jerk awake at the landing.

ANATOLY

(heavy Russian accent)

We are here.

EXT. / INT. MIR ONE AND TWO

MINUTES LATER: THE TWO SUBS SKIM OVERTHE SEAFLOOR TO THE SOUND OF SIDESCAN SONAR AND THE THRUM OF BIG THRUSTERS.

THE FEATURELESS GRAY CLAY OF THE BOTTOM UNROLS IN THE LIGHTS OF THE SUBS.

Bodine is watching the sidescan sonar display, where the outline of a huge pointed object is visible. Anatoly lies prone, driving the sub, his face pressed to the center port.

BODINE

Come left a little. She's right in front of us,eighteen meters. Fifteen.

Thirteen... you should see it.

ANATOLY

Do you see it? I don't see it... there!

Out of the darkness, like a ghostly apparition, the bow of the ship appears. Its knife-edge prow is coming straight at us, seeming to plow the bottom sediment like ocean waves. It towers above the seafloor, standing just as it landed 84 years ago.

THE TITANIC. Or what is left of her.Mir One goes up and over the bow railing, intact except for an overgrowth of "rusticles" draping it like mutated Spanish moss.

TIGHT ON THE EYEPIECE MONITOR of a video camcorder. Brock Lovett's face fills the BLACK AND WHITE FRAME.

LOVETT

It still gets me every time.

The image pans to the front viewport, looking over Anatoly's shoulder, to the bow railing visible in the lights beyond.Anatoly turns.

ANATOLY

Is just your guilt because of estealing from the dead.

CUT WIDER, to show that Brock is operating the camera himself, turning it in his hand so it points at his own face.

LOVETT

Thanks, Tolya. Work with me, here.

Brock resumes his serious, pensive gaze out the front port, with the camera aimed at himself at arm's length.

LOVETT

It still gets me everytime... to see the sad ruin of the great ship sitting here, where she landed at 2:30 in the morning, April 15, 1912, after her long fall from the world above.

Anatoly rolls his eyes and mutters in Russian. Bodine chuckles and watches the sonar.

BODINE

You are so full of shit, boss.

MIR TWO DRIVES AFT DOWN THE STARBOARD SIDE, PAST THE HUGE ANCHOR WHILE MIR ONE PASSES OVER THE SEEMINGLY...