Since earlier this month, Expedition Titanic has been using robots to take photos and video of the Titanic, which lies two-and-a-half miles below the ocean’s surface, along with sonar and other measurements to survey a “full inventory of the ship’s artifacts.” They recently had to come back to shore due to bad weather caused by Hurricane Danielle, but they’ve brought with them some fascinating footage of the sunken ship’s mouldering bow.

How could this movie possibly be entertaining? If you use the phrase “history is repeating itself” in a trailer for a movie about the Titanic, where does your suspense lie? What element of the plot of this film am I supposed to care about while I watch the film if I can already tell you the entire plot right now? Will there be some Shyamalan twist to make this actually a worthwhile concept? In what world would anyone think it was at all smart or tactful to name a ship Titanic II?

These questions and many, many more seem to have only the most painful of answers based on the trailer below. I mean, I don’t usually get outright angry at a movie for looking like it’ll be terrible, but this is just outrageous, with an emphasis on the outrage. You take a movie that’s been done to death, and is getting an undeserved 3D rerelease anyway, and you make a worse version of the exact same movie!

OK, well, there’s an interview you can listen to where director Shane Van Dyke explains his intentions with the sub-million-dollar budget film. And by “explains his intentions,” I mean he makes the movie sound even more terrible than it already looks. At least it’s straight-to-DVD.

Now that I’ve made this sound super appealing and worth watching, here’s the actual trailer:

Yes, James Cameron, Avatar did really happen and it was pretty cool. But that doesn’t mean you need to go back into your past and put everything into 3-D, no matter how much they celebrate the multiple-of-tenth anniversary of something. The Titanic is turning 100 in 2012, and what better way to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the tragic tale than by inundating theaters with crazed Titanic film fans again.

There are seriously people who went to see this film more times than its been years since the Titanic crashed. And 15 years later there will be an entire new generation of young DiCaprio enthusiasts to horde into the multiplex. There’s money to be made here for sure, but couldn’t we get a 3-D version of a movie that makes more sense in 3-D? You know, like anything else?

There were rumors that this (travesty) might happen, but they were confirmed at All Things Digital. Here’s a brief telling of said confirmation, courtesy of a Switched article with a distinctly Cameron-is-full-of-himeself tone:

Somewhere between talking about all things James Cameron, Hollywood, and James Cameron, the director was asked about the possibility of a 3-D Titanic re-release. Mincing no words, he responded, “We’re not thinking about doing that, we’re doing it. We’ll have it ready for the ship’s 100th anniversary.”

In 1998, Titanic topped Star Wars as the #1 box office movie of all time. In congratulations, George Lucas bought this full-page ad in Variety, in which the Star Wars crew jumps out of the sinking ship and into the ocean of second place. (Here’s the fully-sized ad.)

Apparently, it is a Hollywood tradition for directors who have their #1 records smashed to take out full page ads congratulating the new record-holders. The good people of Reddit have dug up two more such ads: