Titanic’s Director James Cameron Says THIS Is Why Jack Had To Die, Okay?

We may be grown adults who know how films and scripts and cinemas work, but that doesn’t mean we don’t hold out hope for a different ending every time we watch Titanic.

Maybe they’ll just shove a few more people on that lifeboat. And maybe Cal won’t be such an asshole. And maybe, just maybe, Jack will hold out in the water long enough for the rescue team to show up.

Regardless of how much we cross our fingers, he goes under every damn time. And despite the many internet sleuths who claim there was room for two on that door, Titanic‘s director James Cameron says Jack’s untimely death just isn’t negotiable.

“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,” he told the Daily Beast in an interview this week.

James Cameron, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet on set.

There’s no room for romance in the Oscar-winning director’s version of events. “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,” he adds.

James is no doubt sick of being questioned about the logistics of Jack’s death, especially given that it was the subject of an entire episode of Mythbusters back in 2012. Presenters Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman proved that Jack and Rose could have both comfortably fit on the slab of wood that Rose lay on in the film, but James maintains that despite the space it just wouldn’t have worked out.

“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,” he says.

“They’re fun guys and I loved doing that show with them, but they’re full of sh*t.”

Fair enough, James. Fair enough.

• james cameron
• kate winslet
• Leonardo DiCaprio
• titanic