Even James Cameron had his doubts that the film would work, fearing that blending an intimate-scale teenage romance with an epic-scale disaster movie would be like "chocolate syrup on a cheeseburger."

You know how the story ends, though. "Titanic" became the biggest hit in Hollywood history (until Cameron's own "Avatar" surpassed it 12 years later), won a record number of Oscars (including Best Picture), turned Leonardo DiCaprio into a box office titan, made Kate Winslet a globally-beloved actress, and crowned writer/director Cameron as King of the World.