James Cameron is a man with a lot of opinions, from how MCU characters behave like “they’re in college” to how, if people are struggling with the runtime of Avatar: The Way of Water, they can just “get up and go pee.” And if you disagree with him, especially when it comes to the movie Titanic, and (in the eyes of many fans) its most debatable scene… well, he’ll respond.
At the very end of a very long day at the Television Critics Association press tour in January, Cameron made an unannounced visit; as a National Geographic “explorer-at-large,” he was there in part to promote two new specials he was producing for the channel, Secrets of the Bees and Secrets of the Octopus. His real purpose in being there, though, was to yell at critics about Titanic.
Specifically, he showed up to discuss Titanic: 25 Years Later with James Cameron, which follows up on the 20-year anniversary special he did for NatGeo with an additional twist: He would use science to take on the longstanding complaint that at the end of the Best Picture-winning epic, poor Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) didn’t have to die — he could have lived, if he’d been able to share the debris upon which Rose (Kate Winslet) was laying.
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Oh, and for the record, while everyone refers to the debris as a door, Cameron would like you to know that “it’s technically not a door. It’s a piece of paneling from the first class lounge, but lush.”
This is a debate that’s been going on since the film’s original release, with, up until now, the most thorough scientific breakdown of the debate occurring in a 2012 episode of Mythbusters. (Their theory: Jack could have lived if he and Rose had used Rose’s life vest as additional support.)
While that episode aired in 2012, this question still comes up, which is perhaps why it’s so deeply funny that Titanic: 25 Years Later with James Cameron fact-checks the film yet again: In fact, the special first digs into whether the film’s depiction of the ship’s sinking was accurate (in terms of whether part of the ship actually went straight up before collapsing) before getting to the question of whether or not Jack would live.
