One of the great debates of our time is the Titanic debate, why didn’t Rose let Jack on the raft? Why did he have to die? Why couldn’t they take turns?
Well, James Cameron, the director of the 1997 romantic classic movie, Titanic has decided to end all the arguments with the help of forensic experts.
The director hired two stunt people with similar body types and mass to the film’s lead actors, Leonardo DiCaprio (Jack) and Kate Winslet (Rose) alongside the forensic experts to prove that there was no way Jack would’ve survived. According to him, this would allow fans to move on and allow him to “not have to deal with this” in the future.
In the classic, following the Titanic’s shipwreck, we see Jack and Rose in the freezing Atlantic Ocean as well as other passengers from the sinking luxury ship. Rose manages to climb aboard a wardrobe door in the water, while Jack hangs onto the side, speaking words of encouragement for her to keep fighting.
Unfortunately, the cold is too much for Jack and he freezes to death as Rose lets him go into the dark, cold sea.
In the years that followed, fans have argued that they both could have shared the door and James Cameron is quite clearly sick of the debate. Ahead of a 4K restoration of Titanic which opens on Valentines Day 2023, the director filmed a documentary for National Geographic about his experiment.
“We have done a scientific study to put this whole thing to rest and drive a stake through its heart once and for all,” said Cameron in an interview.
“We have since done a thorough forensic analysis with a hypothermia expert who reproduced the raft from the movie and we’re going to do a little special on it that comes out in February. We took two stunt people who were the same body mass of Kate and Leo and we put sensors all over them and inside them and we put them in ice water and we tested to see whether they could have survived through a variety of methods and the answer was, there was no way they both could have survived. Only one could survive.”
In addition, he added that Jack’s death was necessary in order to strengthen the almost mythical love affair between the two. “Jack needed to die,” Cameron said. “It’s like Romeo and Juliet. It’s a movie about love and sacrifice and mortality. The love is measured by the sacrifice. Maybe after 25 years, I won’t have to deal with this anymore.”
