This film wanted to take advantage of the success of James Cameron's Titanic but it did everything wrong

It's not just anyone who can be James Cameron, and when an animated film claims to tell the true story of the sinking of the “Titanic”, we expect something other than what “The Legend of the Titanic” offers.

The year is 1999. Titanic came out two years ago, and was a total box office hit. An Italian studio, Mondo TV, is creating its own version of this story, “the true story”, by making it available to all audiences. To do this, it teams up with Spanish and American producers, hires the North Korean animation studio SEK and launches the project, which is called The Legend of the Titanic.

This movie begins when old mouse Top Connors, like Father Castordecides to tell his grandchildren about his crazy adventure when he was a cabin boy on the Titanic. There he met Ronnie, a Brazilian mouse who was very good at football and they quickly became friends.

At the same time, among the passengers on the boat is a young woman called Elizabeth, who we discover is going to be forcibly married to a whale hunter much older than her, while Elizabeth is more attracted to the elegant gypsy – called Don Juan! – who also comes on board.

The problems begin when we realize that the plot of the mice and that of the humans will remain parallel lines and never really intersect. There is also a bit of panic when the expected moment of the Titanic's collision with an iceberg arrives. Here, the block of ice is sent by a giant octopus manipulated by a gang of sharks in the pay of Elizabeth's neglected fiancé.

It could be specified that Elizabeth has the power to speak to dolphins, but at this point, that's incidental.

The shipwreck begins, but the giant octopus is convinced by a dolphin to glue the two pieces of the Titanic back together, saving time for the passengers, who all manage to board lifeboats, and no casualties are reported, among mice or humans. Everyone returns safely to New York, without anyone being upset that a giant octopus is apparently endowed with consciousness.

The film would have a sequel, titled In Search for Titanic (2004), and like James Cameron's documentary Ghosts of the Titanic, it explores the ocean floor, but with one huge difference: the Mondo TV feature film this time takes Elizabeth and Don Juan… to Atlantis!