James Cameron says he’s done debating the end of Titanic.
The filmmaker addressed the long-standing question during a recent appearance on The Hollywood Reporter‘S Awards Chatter podcast. Looking back on the scene where Jack, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, shared a floating raft with Rose, Cameron simply dismissed the subject outright.
“Don’t ask me about the damn raft, people!” Cameron, 71, said when the subject came up.
When Cameron told listeners to stop asking him about the raft, he said the debate ignores both the intent of the scene and the science behind it.
“Look, we even went out of our way to do an experiment to see if Jack could have survived somehow, or if they both could have survived, and people didn’t even hear the answer when I told them the answer,” explained Cameron, who won three Oscars for the film.
“The answer is, if Jack was somehow an expert on hypothermia and somehow knew what science knows now in 1912, it is theoretically possible, with a lot of luck, that he might have survived.”
“Therefore the answer is no, he couldn’t have. He couldn’t have. The conditions weren’t met. He couldn’t have known those things.”
Cameron emphasized that the ending was never intended to be ambiguous. He said that Jack’s death was essential to the story and Rose’s arc because changing that outcome would undermine the emotional core of the film.
The director’s comments come as his career continues to set records. Cameron is the only filmmaker to have directed four films that grossed more than $1 billion worldwide. Those movies include Titanic and three terms of Avatar.
