It's one of the saddest scenes ever depicted in a movie and one we all remember. It's also a scene that has been debated many times over and now almost 20 years later, still draws discussions about if it had to happen. Of course we are talking about Jack Dawson freezing to death in Titanic and director James Cameron is so tired of hearing the chatter that he wants everyone to know that Jack had to die.
In a recent interview with the Daily Beast, Cameron was asked yet again about if Rose, played by Kate Winslet and Jack, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, could have survived on that door used as a makeshift raft.
He specifically debunked Mythbusters' claim that they both could have and the science the show put forth to back up the claim. The show's hosts said Rose's life jacket could have been used to add buoyancy to the raft.
"OK, so let’s really play that out," Cameron said. "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 5-to-10 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," he said of the MythBusters crew. "But they’re full of s**t.
So while Cameron's take is that Jack just had to die, what does the movie's star think? Well, Kate Winslet believes they could both have survived as well.
“You know, I think he actually could have fit on the door,” she told Jimmy Kimmel last year.
So it looks like no matter what the director has said, this topic will still be debated for another 20 years.
Now, if you have tissues handy here is the heartbreaking scene of Jack's death again: