Long before he ignited viewers’ imaginations about the world of Pandora and the Na’vi people, James Cameron sparked a major debate about the ethics of disaster survival with his 1997 film, Titanic. The historical romance movie starred Leonardo DiCaprio as “Jack Dawson,” a free-spirited orphan who wins two first-class tickets onto the luxurious Titanic cruise ship in a poker game. Jack meets and falls in love with Rose (Kate Winslet), a girl of high society who is engaged to a boorish, wealthy tycoon named Cal Hockley (Billy Zane). Unfortunately, Jack and Rose find one another just on the eve of one of the greatest modern tragedies, making their love affair as doomed as it is passionate.
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The ending of Titanic has become one of the most infamous scenes in cinema: Jack and Rose escape the Titanic’s sinking, but while Rose is safe atop a doorway left floating in the ocean, Jack is left in the frozen waters, where he soon succumbs to hypothermia. Since then, movie fans have spent decades debating whether or not Jack had to die and coming up with their own strategies for escape. Now, James Cameron is getting in on the fun.
James Cameron Explains How He Would’ve Survived The Titanic’s Sinking
THR recently approached James Cameron with a very specific “What If?” question regarding Titanic: “If you were traveling by yourself as a second-class passenger on Titanic when it hit an iceberg, what would you have done?”
If you know James Cameron, then you know that the Oscar-winning filmmaker isn’t one to be caught off guard by a question. In this case, Cameron had an in-depth breakdown of how he would’ve gotten off the Titanic alive, even if it was from the lower levels (and social classes) of the ship.
“I think there were interesting ways to what-if or second-guess the whole thing,” Cameron explained. “One I like to play with my Titanic experts is — with what we know now, and if you had the captain’s ear — how could you save everybody? The other is: What if you’re a time traveler, you go back and want to experience the sinking, and the little time-travel thing that gets you back fails, and you’re like, ‘Oh f–k, I’m really on the ship, I’ve got to get off it.’”
If you’re thinking that James Cameron knows some intricate details about the Titanic’s blueprints – a secret hatch or passageway – guess again. To hear him describe it, Cameron was less concerned about strategic maneuvers than he was about tapping into the compassion of his fellow passengers in that dire moment of survival. Cameron’s strategy involves waiting for the lifeboat evacuation to begin, then storming one of the boats that’s already in the water and away from the fray of the panicked, desperate mob on the deck of the ship, fighting for lifeboat space.
“Most people wouldn’t have had the courage to jump into the water. They couldn’t quite believe that the ship was really going to sink,” Cameron explained. “But if you knew for sure it was going to sink, and you weren’t on a lifeboat, you would jump in the water next to the boat the second it casts off. Once they rowed away, you were screwed. Are they going to let you drown when the Titanic is still there and everybody is watching? No, they’d pull you in, and the officers would go, ‘Well, f–k, there’s nothing I can do about that.’ Boat four would be a good one for this.”
That’s a lot of goodwill that Cameron is counting on – the kind that’s not necessarily supported by his own film. The sinking of the Titanic was an ugly affair, not just because of the death and hysteria all around, but also because of the breakdown in human decency, as people fought and stepped on one another to get off the sinking ship.
Cameron also inadvertently brought the debate back to most fans’ biggest dilemma: why Rose watched Jack hanging off that door instead of making space for him. So if Rose couldn’t be bothered to make space for a lower-class passenger, it’s hard to believe lifeboats of privileged people who fought their way to survival would’ve been more welcoming…
You can stream Titanic on Disney+. Let us know how you feel about James Cameron’s theory over on the ComicBook Forum!
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