Featured Image Credit: Paramount Pictures
Topics: Film and TV, James Cameron, Titanic
Aisha Nozari
James Cameron addressed one of pop culture’s biggest plot holes, but his answer wasn't particularly satisfying.
Many Titanic fans have spent the last two-and-a-half decades wondering why Rose didn’t just shuffle to the right a few inches so that Jack could climb aboard that floating door, which most definitely had space for two.
As we’ve all come to accept, Rose didn’t budge over, and (spoiler alert!) Jack sank lifeless to the bottom of the ocean. But Cameron, who directed the blockbuster, is not here for all the moaning.
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“The film is about death and separation; he had to die,” the director said.
Speaking to Vanity Fair in 2017, Cameron was asked why Rose didn’t make room for Jack on the door, and the director’s answer suggested he’d grown a smidge tired of the question.
“The answer is very simple because it says on page 147 [of the script] that Jack dies. Very simple,” he replied, before calling any arguments over the scene ‘silly’.
“I think it’s all kind of silly, really, that we’re having this discussion 20 years later. But it does show that the film was effective in making Jack so endearing to the audience that it hurts them to see him die,” he added.
“Had he lived, the ending of the film would have been meaningless. So whether it was that, or whether a smoke stack fell on him, he was going down.”
Cameron concluded with the most ‘it’s called art, look it up’ response of all time, adding: “It’s called art, things happen for artistic reasons, not for physics reasons.”
Despite Cameron revealing he’s not a fan of the plot hole police, Kate Winslet, who played Rose, has previously admitted she did feel as though there was room for Jack [played by Leonardo DiCaprio] on that damn door.
During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live back in 2016, Kate told the host: “I think he could have actually fit on that bit of door.”
She added: "People are always so excited to see Leo and myself in the same space, which at the end of the day, that's so lovely, isn't it?... It's been 20 years and people still get such a kick out of it. It's really quite endearing.
"We do laugh about it. We were giggling about it that night. I was like, 'Oh my God, can you actually believe it that people still get so overwhelmed by the Jack and Rose thing?'."
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