James Cameron’s 1997 film follows Jack and Rose, portrayed byLeonardo DiCaprio andKate Winslet, respectively. They’re both passengers aboard theTitanic, but they’re from vastly different worlds, separated by class. Of course, they fall in love anyway. And when the Titanichits an iceberg and sinks to the bottom of the ocean, Jack performs one final act of love: He helps Rose onto a floating wooden board—and remains in the freezing water beside her. Rose makes it. Jack doesn’t.
Over the past 25 years, the gesture has racked up a whole lot of skepticism. Did Jack really need to sacrifice his own life for Rose to survive? Couldn’t he have shared that piece of wood with her?
But Cameron, who has always maintained that the script calls for Jack to die, is determined to put an end to these questions. “We have done a scientific study to put this whole thing to rest and drive a stake through its heart once and for all,” he tells the Toronto Sun’s Mark Daniell.
The study consisted of “a thorough forensic analysis with a hypothermia expert who reproduced the raft from the movie” as well as “two stunt people who were the same body mass of Kate and Leo,” Cameron continues. “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.”
It’s not the first time Titanic’s tragic endinghas been put to the test. Jack and Rose’s raft was the subject of a2012 episode of “MythBusters,” which came to the conclusion that Jack and Rose could have shared the board and made it out alive—if they secured Rose’s life jacket underneath.
“I think you guys are missing the point here,” Cameron said in the episode. “The script said Jack dies. He has to die. So maybe we screwed up and the board should have been a little tiny bit smaller, but the dude’s going down.”
Besides, the hosts of “MythBusters” didn’t account for how the water’s temperature would have affected their proposed plan of action, Cameron told theDaily Beast’s Marlow Stern in 2017.“You’re underwater tying this thing on in 28-degree water, and that’s going to take you five to ten minutes, so by the time you come back up you’re already dead,” he said.
The findings of Cameron’s study will be explained in a National Geographic special in February 2023. Around the same time, aremastered version of Titanic will hit theaters in honor of the film’s 25th anniversary.
With his special, Cameron hopes the skeptics will finally leave him alone. “Maybe … maybe … after 25 years, I won’t have to deal with this anymore,” he tellsthe Toronto Sun.
Sarah Purkey, an oceanographer at the University of California at San Diego, tells the Washington Post’s Praveena Somasundaram that any answers will come down to buoyancy and gravity: The buoyancy of the wooden board must be greater than or equal to the gravity from Jack and Rose.“That’s how boats float, and that’s how a piece of driftwood floats,” she says. “And it’s going to sink if gravity is more than its buoyancy.”
But either way, she adds, if the study gets people thinking about physics, “then it’s great.”
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Ella Malena Feldman is a writer and editor based in Washington, D.C. She examines art, culture and gender in her work, which has appeared in Washington City Paper, DCist and the Austin American-Statesman.
They showed that by tying Rose's life jacket underneath the raft, it could have been made buoyant enough to support their combined weight. Fans of the movie have insisted on one unanswerable argument. Even if there wasn't enough space or buoyancy in the raft for Jack, Rose should still have tried harder to save him.
Of course, they fall in love anyway. And when the Titanic hits an iceberg and sinks to the bottom of the ocean, Jack performs one final act of love: He helps Rose onto a floating wooden board—and remains in the freezing water beside her. Rose makes it. Jack doesn't.
As for why Jack sacrificed himself at the end of Titanic to save Rose, he didn't do it for love, and the author lists some of the reasons that could have led Jack to do that: chivalry (after all, it was 1912), gratitude for saving his life, guilt over stealing the diamond and playing with her, and him being a decent ...
Jack Dawson is the deuteragonist in Titanic and the love interest of Rose DeWitt Bukater. He dies at the end of the film from hypothermia, protecting Rose by having her float on a doorframe while he stays in the water; he was only twenty years old.
Jack didn't really have a family. Rose at this point is alone and broke and had to rebuild her whole life - do you think she'd have money? Add to that she doesn't even know if she's going to get rescued to begin with.
Jack could have survived, says film-maker James Cameron as 'Titanic' re-releases 25 yrs on. Fans insist Jack could have survived the icy Atlantic waters after the ocean liner sank, if only he had shared an improvised raft with Kate Winslet's Rose.
Rose Dewitt Bukater became one of only six passengers rescued from the water following the sinking of the Titanic, and the survivors were later rescued by the RMS Carpathia. Once on board the Carpathia, Rose hid among the steerage passengers to avoid Cal, who she saw walking around looking for her.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Cameron was asked directly, "Why doesn't Rose make room for Jack on the door?" To which he replied, "And the answer is very simple because it says on page 147 [of the script] that Jack dies.
Promise me you'll survive.That you won't give up, no matter what happens, no matter how hopeless.Promise me now, Rose, and never let go of that promise.
The dream scene, also known as Titanic Heaven, is the last scene of the 1997 film 'Titanic'. Also thought to be Rose's heaven, she is reunited with Jack and his friends, along with the 1503 historical people who died in the sinking.
"Had he lived, the ending of the film would have been meaningless," Cameron told Vanity Fair in 2017 on the film's 20th anniversary. "The film is about death and separation: He had to die. So whether it was that, or whether a smoke stack fell on him, he was going down. It's called art.
Over his (very) long life, Captain Jack Harkness has been many things. Revived and made immortal by Rose Tyler after she'd absorbed the power of the Time Vortex, Jack travelled back to 1869, where his vortex manipulator burned out.
Jack puts the stone plug back to restore the golden light exposing himself to the electromagnetism at the Source, as he realizes that this is destiny. He dies in the bamboo grove after assuring the survival of his friends and their escape from the island.
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