If you know anything about perfectionist director James Cameron, you know he’s not one to tolerate mistakes, let alone admit one. But in the spirit of the 25th anniversary of the release of his Oscar-winning film Titanic, he wanted to tackle one of the movie’s most lingering questions.
No, not whether Rose kept that necklace, but could Leonardo DiCaprio‘s steerage class scamp Jack have fit on the floating door that spared Kate Winslet‘s Rose from a watery grave?
In the NatGeo special Titanic: 25 Years Later with James Cameron, the filmmaker set up an experiment using a tank and a pair of stunt divers to play the doomed lovers.
“Final verdict,” Cameron declares, “Jack might have lived, but there’s a lot of variables.” He added, “Based on what I know today, I would have made the raft smaller so there’s no doubt.”
For fans of MythBusters, however, this is a bit of old news: The gang famously proved that it was plausible both could have fit onto the door and lived happily ever after.
Previously, the Avatar visionary resisted this theory, noting to Vanity Fair in 2017, “The answer is very simple: Because it says on page 147 [of the script] that Jack dies. Very simple.”
If one wanted to prove it for themselves, they could buy an inflatable pool floaty made to look like the famous hunk of floating debris in Hollywood history.
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