James Cameron Defends the Much-Disputed Ending of 'Titanic'
Titanic is a great film, and a terribly moving one. But if it has copped its fair share of criticism for anything, it's perhaps the sheer, unfair amount of it flung the way of its finale, in which [SPOILERS] Jack freezes to death beside Rose, who lies atop a floating door in the middle of the ocean. Much mediation has gone into the plausibility of him not fitting on the door, and Mythbusters dedicated an episode to it.
Director James Cameron, in a chat with The Daily Beast, has come out to defend the controversial ending (which really goes to show how good the film is, because it really is a pretty mediocre complaint). “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.”
Maybe it's my appreciation of the film talking, but i think that settles that.
Source: Slashfilm
