Dramatic Flashback

Titanic doesn't do anything super funky or exciting in terms of narrative. The film tells the story of the ship's sinking mostly via Rose's flashbacks.

There's a "present day" storyline (in the 1990s), but the 1912 storyline takes up most of the film's airtime. There's some switching back and forth between the two time periods, of course (and a very cool visual transition from young Rose's eye to her older counterpart's), but it's largely told in a linear way.

There's one thing that's pretty interesting about the film from a storytelling perspective, though: the fact that we know the story is going to end badly. The fact that the Titanic sank is really well-known and, even if you had somehow missed that memo before entering the theater, Cameron puts it right out there from the very beginning of the film, with Brock Lovett and his crew taking us through the wreckage.

Lewis Bodine, a member of Lovett's crew, even takes Rose (and the audience) through a detailed forensic analysis of when and how the ship went down, just so there's zero mystery about what exactly is going to happen on that front.

Why do that? Well, if your audience already largely knows what's going to happen, you kind of have to lean into it—and you could say that emphasizing the physical scale of what happened to the Titanic creates anticipation for seeing it portrayed on-screen.

It also means that you pin your hopes for a happy ending on the love story—your call on whether that ends up being satisfying.