Paramount Pictures
2017 marks the 20th anniversary of the blockbuster film Titanic. And despite it being 20-years-old there are still fans out there who CANNOT BELIEVE that Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) couldn’t have just climbed on to the raft Rose (Kate Winslet) was on and lived.
Of course this fan theory hasn’t been slowed down thanks to a couple of things: (1) Kate Winslet believes it herself, and (2) the fact that Mythbusters “busted” it by “proving” that all Jack needed to do was tie his life vest underneath the door and they both would have floated away happily ever after.
To that, the director of the film, James Cameron says, “they’re full of shit.”
Speaking to The Daily Beast, he settles this issue (hopefully) once and for all…
You mentioned Titanic, so I’ve got to ask: the age-old question is whether or not there was plenty of room on that plank-raft for Leo. I say yes, there was.
[Laughs] We’re gonna go there? Look, it’s very, very simple: you read page 147 of the script and it says, “Jack gets off the board and gives his place to her so that she can survive.” It’s that simple. You can do all the post-analysis you want. So you’re talking about the Mythbusters episode, right? Where they sort of pop the myth? OK, so let’s really play that out: you’re Jack, you’re in water that’s 28 degrees, your brain is starting to get hypothermia. Mythbusters asks you to now go take off your life vest, take hers off, swim underneath this thing, attach it in some way that it won’t just wash out two minutes later—which means 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. So that wouldn’t work. His best choice was to keep his upper body out of the water and hope to get pulled out by a boat or something before he died. They’re fun guys and I loved doing that show with them, but they’re full of shit.
Got it everyone? Jack is dead and there was nothing anyone, not even Rose could do to stop it.
Nice knowin’ you, buddy.