Can someone explain how this movie became such a hit?

[Darth Macho]

Short answer: Girls.

Okay, a little more: Girls saw it alone, then saw it again with friends, then dragged their dates to see it.

Long answer: Some movies don't need exceptional quality to make money because their cultural mass exerts a gravitational field. Everyone had to see Titanic just to keep themselves current with popular society. And there's a large segment of the population that is simply incapable of saving their money; they demand that every week there's something in the theaters for them to buy a ticket, regardless of craft. Factor in the single-issue viewers (1997: 'Man, Titanic sucks.' "Don't care; Leonardo DiCaprio is hot." 2009: 'Man, Transformers 2 sucks.' "Don't care; Megan Fox is hot.") and you've got an incentive for Hollywood to be lazy.

But mostly it's the girls.

[Russell]

I didn't know Carrot Top was in Titanic.

Doot-doot-doodle-oodle oot doot do do...

Thank you.
Now give me some tie straightening music please.

Carrot Top?! I thought that was Bram Stoker's Dracula!

[Doctor Who?]

Zane's character is easily the worst thing about the film.  What is he really loved Rose and wasn't evil incarnate?  If he had any nuance at all, it might have made an interesting choice for the audience:

Was Rose a repressed girl finally breaking free?  Or was she a cheating skank who bones a prepubescent little kid because she's bored?

Zane being Beelzebub in this movie made everything way too simplistic.

 

Well said.