This year marks the 20th anniversary of the release of the movie: Titanic.

I LOVED this movie when it came out. (It debuted in US theatres on this exact date twenty years ago).

Granted, I was only seven years old, but for some reason, I just loved it. Whether that reason be the fact that I had never before seen a movie of that magnitude, the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio was a dream, or Kate Winslet would continue to be my idol for years to come, I couldn't say.

The year was 1997 and while there was plenty going on without the buzz of what would come to be the first movie to ever reach a billion dollars, I don't think anyone ever expected much from it to begin with, let alone for it to pave its way through the Oscars, but it did. It exceeded all expectations and gave us people to identify with (Jack Dawson, Ruth Dewitt Bukater, and Molly Brown) and love (or hate.... I'm looking at you Ruth, Cal, and Lovejoy).

Side note: Watch the official trailer and the extended Carpathia scene.

[[ Events from 1997: Princess Diana's funeral, Heaven's Gate Cult mass suicide, Scientists cloned Dolly the sheep, Timothy McVeigh is found guilty of the Oklahoma City Bombing, Harry Potter was published, Mmmbop debuted on the charts, the Packers beat the Patriots to win the Super Bowl, Biggie Smalls was murdered in a driveby shooting, Madeleine Albright was sworn in as Secretary of State becoming the first woman to ever head the State Department. ]]

I remember the first time that I ever watched Titanic and it was amazing.... and I cried. At seven years old even I knew that it wasn't fair that Jack had to go, but that it was his love that made him save Rose. And Rose save him in her own way.

To find out that it was a true story (I knew that before watching it) was insane and made it that much more tragic in the end. Sure, some of the characters may have been made up, but the fact that they were either based on real people or served in the place of an actual person was heartbreaking. 

It most definitely made you (or at least, me) start to see the world as unfair and realize that some people are treated different, sometimes in horrible ways, just because of their class, race, gender, or any number of other things. I learned that lesson at seven years old, thanks to this movie.

Most people might think that this movie is ridiculous. They may think that it is outdated, and they may break down and pick at the mistakes made, but one thing is for sure.... it definitely carved its place out in cinematic history.