I can see why it flopped (costing about $10 million more than The Empire Strikes Back the same year). The miniature is good, the music is good, the scenes of the ship being raised, Dirk entering the dining room, and the Titanic being towed into New York are all exceptionally well done. The Cold War story isn't as interesting as raising the ship, which ends up being mostly incidental to the search for their MacGuffin mineral. I have heard the scene of the Titanic rising described as "man triumphing over nature," and like I said, is very well done.

It should have just been a "what if?" salvage story and what it would mean to different people. I didn't care about the proposed laser defense system, I wanted to hear from the "it belongs in a museum camp" and the "leave it alone crowd." It's based on a novel and is relatively faithful from what I've heard (short of the ending), but I was surprised how raising the Titanic had so little impact to the story in a movie called Raise the Titanic. You could have skipped all the business with Titanic and still came to the same ending.