Back in December, filmmaker James Cameron said he had settled one of the longest-running debates in modern cinema – all to do with the ending of his 1997 epic “Titanic”.
That film closed out with Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jack sacrificing himself to the watery depths of the Atlantic so his love Rose (Kate Winslet) can survive on the makeshift raft they made out of a floating door.
Arguments have since been raised that the rather sizeable door was big enough to fit both of them. The other month Cameron revealed he has the results of a documented scientific study proving two people could not have survived on said door.
Those results were to be shown as part of a documentary special to be released this month on National Geographic and ties in with a re-release of “Titanic” in cinemas from next Friday.
Today comes the announcement of the special, “Titanic: 25 Years Later With James Cameron” and a GMA piece on the new series reveals Cameron there is one possible outcome where Jack “might’ve lived”.
Cameron hired two stunt people with height and weight similar to DiCaprio and Winslet at the time of filming and recreated the raft scene in a pool to test multiple theories and outcomes.
In the clip, Cameron disproves one theory showing that while there is enough room for Jack and Rose to get on the raft, “they’re now both submerged in dangerous levels of freezing water”.
In the second test, Cameron fit both Jack and Rose on the raft but positioned their bodies so their upper halves remained out of the water, increasing their odds of survival: “Out of the water, [his body’s] violent shaking was helping him. Projecting it out, he could’ve made it pretty long. Like, hours.”
There’s the issue of endurance as the pair have endured hours of exhausting running and near drowning. So, after putting the stunt people through a similar level of strenuous activity, Cameron tried again and this time added something not in the film – Rose gives Jack her life jacket: “He’s stabilized. He got into a place where if we projected that out, he just might’ve made it until the lifeboat got there. Jack might’ve lived, but there’s a lot of variables. I think his thought process was, ‘I’m not going to do one thing that jeopardized her,’ and that’s 100% in character.”
“Titanic: 25 Years Later With James Cameron” airs this Sunday, February 5th on National Geographic Channel.
.@GMA FIRST LOOK: @natgeo special “Titanic: 25 Years Later with James Cameron” will settle the debate once and for all: could Jack have survived?@JimCameron@natgeotv pic.twitter.com/OkKCXaEkvF
— Good Morning America (@GMA) February 2, 2023
