Many aspects of the 1996 Titanic are of course familiar to those, who like me, enjoy do a little a 'compare and contrast'. Like SOS Titanic it focuses on three couples, the ill-fated rekindling of romance between a first class lady, Isabella Paradine (Zeeta Jones) and her former lover Wynn Park (Peter Gallagher), the new romance between two steerage passangers, and the Allisons and their troubled nurse (whose behaviour, as well as that of Mrs Allison, is depicted as being responsible for the death of the only first class child lost, Lorraine Allison). Like in Cameron's film, the main romance (Paradine and Park) is doomed, steerage passengers are locked below (for which there is no evidence). There are also most of the 'ten things every Titanic film has to include'.
There seemed to be, however, a shortage of staff. Not only does Thomas Andrews not make his traditional appearance in this film (his part of announcing the ship's death sentence is taken over by Captain Smith) there is also no sign of Chief Officer Henry Wilde or Third Officer Herbert Pitman.
Perhaps it is only nitpicky people like myself (who are also up to their eyeballs - as I once was - in histories of the Titanic's officers) who will notice that another officer is actually the amalgamation of two men, fourth officer Joseph Boxhall and sixth officer James P. Moody. He is billed as Boxhall, but since he is on the bridge when the ship hits the iceberg, he is taking over Moody's role as well: therefore a friend of mine and I decided the person in the film was actually Officer Boxy.
Combining several people into one is not unknown in movie history, and can help those of the viewers who have no in-depth knowledge of the subject to understand the story better. One example that springs to mind is the amalgamation of Ned Broy and David Neligan, the original 'Spy in the Castle', to Ned Broy the film's spy in the Castle in Michael Collins. (Though from hat I vaguely remember to have heard, the Neligan side was not too happy about this. Perhaps they should have renamed the character?) An example where the uneducated viewer loses all sight of who the hell is who in the multitude of characters is Kevin Costner's Wyatt Earp. However, since the officers play only a very small part in the film, it would have hardly mattered whether there had been two of them standing about in the background instead of one.
While the reduction of the number of officers from seven to four is surprising, the absence of Thomas Andrews, who usually has a quite large part in the tale, is decidedly odd. Were the makers of this film trying to keep the number of characters (somewhat) lower or were they just trying to save money by employing fewer actors?
Whatever the reason, a new fictional officers has been created: Officer Boxy.
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