http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH9Yv7TOH20 -2:22

All good points. It’s true that when Harvey says the line, it’s kind of cute, and when Cal says it, you want him to drown. Certainly, I can’t claim that Cal and Harvey are two of a kind. Harvey’s a legitimately good man. Cal is a douche. (I’m a fan of Titanic, but subtlety is not one of its strong points – Cal is the bad guy, and James Cameron is not interested in making him remotely sympathetic.)

- Matt

“But after they lose their fiancés, they become the primary antagonists, trying to kill the people who once trusted them.” Anyhoo, I think you’re a bit off on the relationship between Cal and Jack. It seems to me that Jack always knew Rose was unhappy with Cal, so he probably never trusted him at all. Jack could see right through Cal’s outward facade, and Cal knew it and resented it the whole time (plus the fact that he saw Jack as a threat to his position of power over Rose)- hence Cal’s attempts to sideswipe Jack so many times.

I do think another important difference to point out is the nature of the scene when each man says the line and whom they are speaking to. Both times, Harvey is talking to Rachel privately (although in public- side conversation) and trying to comfort/placate her in some fashion: first to reassure her that he’s not crazy, then to reassure her that he isn’t about to die. The first time it happens with Cal, he’s talking to two at once: the group at the table is meant to hear it, but it’s directed at Jack and is intended to insult him; the second time, he’s alone with his (crazy) man-servant, Lovejoy (terribly ironic name, eh? too bad he’s so unlike the B5 character he played in season one), and he’s talking about being underhanded and buying his way off of the sinking vessel. Further, I think it had already been clear that Cal had either fallen from grace or never was even there (which one is correct is debatable) by the time Cal says it the second time, whereas Harvey was still Harvey that second time. In other, more succinct, words, Harvey does it to be nice and Cal does it to be not-so-nice; Harvey does it for someone else’s sake, Cal does it for his own sake.

So maybe that’s why I cried when Harvey died but laughed when Old Rose said he “put a pistol in his mouth that year” or whatever the exact quote is. And maybe that has to do with the differences in how their deaths were treated: the (surviving) characters that knew and respected Harvey before he turned protected his reputation and/or mourned him; but those associated with Cal forgot about him (as far as we can tell).

I suppose one could probably write a full paper on the differences between the two characters, though. Even knowing the Batman mythos, Harvey’s transformation was still much more traumatic than Cal’s for me (and whether Cal even “transforms” versus “evolves” is, again, a debate in itself).

Actually, Dent is the one that dies, not Billy Zane’s character. Well, obviously Zane dies, but not on the ship.

Spot on for catching the coincidental line and to Becky for her ROTK notice. Would you like to see my script where Bernard Hill utters the “lucky line”? I wrote it for some teenagers.

And if we’re talking world wide box office, the top two positions are held by Titanic and Return of the King. Both of which have Bernard Hill in them. So maybe he’s a lucky charm…

Interesting comparisons though (although I believe Harvey to be a much more fleshed out character than Cal).