But a mini-rebellion had to happen before I got to that point. In summer 1998, I was 11 years old, visiting my family members in Iran with my mother. To my delight, “Titanic” was still everywhere—bazaars sold T-shirts with Leonardo DiCaprio’s face on them, everyone was wearing recreations of the Heart of the Ocean necklace, and car stereos blasted Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.” It was inescapable, and I became obsessed. I remember finally watching the film on a bootleg VHS with my cousins when my mom wasn’t around, utterly entranced—and 15 years later, that’s still the case. I’ve probably seen it more than 100 times on VHS, TV, and DVD. Now, seeing the film in theaters for the first time because of “Titanic 3D,” it’s clear how little has changed for me, how much the film is still burrowed deep into my cinematic memory.

For me personally, “Titanic 3D” is the culmination of years of longing. It’s a nostalgic return to my childhood, to coveting something so much that it becomes this inescapable part of you. And it feels reassuring to realize that a film I care so much about is just so, so objectively good, still emotionally affecting and visually marvelous. Cameron has had a varied career, starting out in great sci-fi like “The Terminator” and “Aliens” and returning to those themes with the highest-grossing film of all time, “Avatar,” but “Titanic” is, for the devoted romantic in me, his best film. It has the most human impact—as a child, I was absolutely riveted on the love affair between Jack (DiCaprio, of “Inception” and “Shutter Island”) and Rose (Kate Winslet, of “Contagion”), but as an adult I’m more aware of the tragedy’s overwhelming human toll. Other details besides the color of Leo’s eyes (swoon!) stick out to me now, like the trickle of blood making its way down the ship’s deck after a passenger is shot, or the piles of smashed, brand-new china littered around the first-class dining rooms. So much waste. So much unnecessary loss.

Cameron has changed nothing about the plot of “Titanic 3D,” so the story you’re familiar with remains intact: In 1996, famed treasure hunter Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton, of “Haywire”) is searching through the wreckage of the RMS Titanic for a 56-carat diamond necklace called the Heart of the Ocean. Convinced the necklace went down with the ship, Lovett is frustrated to find only a sketch of a nude woman wearing the bauble in the safe of necklace owner Cal Hockley (Billy Zane)—and then shocked when he gets a call from someone claiming to be that woman. He welcomes the elderly Rose (Gloria Stuart) to his ship, however, and invites her to tell her story, which becomes the main narrative of the film.

Back in 1912, Rose was a 17-year-old rich girl (portrayed in youth by Winslet) in a loveless engagement with Hockley; thanks to her family’s money troubles, her mother is forcing the marriage, believing that Hockley’s wealth will save their name. No matter that Hockley is a domineering, sneering brute defined only by his smugness and selfishness, attempting to pressure Rose into sex and schmoozing her mother the whole time. Feeling she has no way out of a superficial, meaningless life predetermined for her, Rose decides to throw herself off the ship, only to be pulled back by third-class passenger Jack, an amateur artist who has traveled the world. “You jump, I jump,” he says, and they’re probably the only honest words Rose has ever heard.

It’s hard not to fall in love with the passionate, spontaneous Jack, and of course, Rose can’t resist—even though she tries to hide her attraction and stay committed to her pairing with Cal. But the realization that she has only one chance to live drives her into Jack’s arms, while the catastrophic effect of that unexpected iceberg drives them apart. As the ship sinks, Rose and Jack have to struggle to not only stay together, but also stay alive, one of those profoundly sad you-know-this-can’t-end-well love stories.

All that stuff? Still the same. But what “Titanic 3D” does is emphasize the terror and horror of the sinking ship, with 3-D accents on Lovett’s exploration of the wreck, that evil iceberg, and the water invading the lower decks as Titanic begins to go under (and after it finally does). The items littered along the bottom of the ocean, like a babydoll’s head, a pair of eyeglasses, and one women’s shoe, take on a new eeriness with the 3-D depth, and the water roaring toward you as Jack and Rose persevere to reach the ship’s top deck heightens the tension. It’s almost like the 3-D adds a grandiose glamour to these scenes, which seems perverse but isn’t—ultimately the Titanic was a failure of human ambition, whereas Cameron’s film is an example of technological might done right. It’s a juxtaposition that elevates the mistakes of everyone involved in the downfall of the Titanic, a reminder that we can’t always get what we want.

The love story between DiCaprio and Winslet does the same thing in denying us a happy ending, in a heartbreaking way that still gets to me. Despite more than a decade of regular viewing, I still cried at “Titanic 3D,” and I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon. It’s such a pitch-perfect demonstration of that kind of all-consuming, anything-goes, let’s-save-each-other love that I won’t let it go. “Titanic 3D” isn’t all that different from the original, but that’s a good thing—an experience I’m not going to ever forget.