James Cameron has a score to settle, and he’s using science to do it.
The Oscar-winning director has spent the last 25 years hearing speculation about whether there was room for Jack on Rose’s makeshift raft in the 1997 movie Titanic. In other words, Leo died and the internet still isn’t over it. In an interview Friday with Postmedia, which owns the Toronto Sun, Cameron said he’d worked with stunt divers and a hypothermia expert to determine whether both Rose (played by Kate Winslet) and Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) could have gotten a little more creative in their survival strategy. What’s more, he’s putting his findings out in a documentary.
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The “thorough forensics analysis” included sensors and ice water.
“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,” Cameron said. “Only one could survive.”
Whether Jack died for no reason has become a cheeky recurring debate in pop culture. The Sun pointed out the show MythBusters even tried to answer the question, concluding that the pair could have lived if they’d attached their lifejackets under the door they were floating on.
Online, you can find photos of people showing how the door was easily big enough for two people — and others making the point that even if there was space, their combined weight would have been no match for the door’s buoyancy.
In an interview with the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Winslet offered: “I don’t fucking know. That’s the answer. I don’t fucking know,” according to Entertainment Weekly. “If you put two adults on a stand-up paddleboard, it becomes immediately, extremely unstable.”
Cameron’s documentary will air on National Geographic in February, timed for the Titanic’s 25th anniversary re-release. His latest cinematic offering, Avatar: The Way of Water is in theaters now.
