Right from its arrival in 1997, fans of Titanic have been arguing about the ending. Did Jack really need to freeze to death? Could Rose have pulled him onto that door? It’s a debate Kate Winslet just added fuel to, by revealing she thinks Rose threw Jack under the boat, as it were. But believe it or not, “Doorgate” has been settled for years, thanks to James Cameron being sick of hearing about it.
Cameron went to the Mythbusters and asked them to test out the idea that Jack could have survived, and the answer is probably not. It’s not a question of having space on the door; everybody involved admits Jack could have crawled onto the door. The problem is that the door, which the Mythbusters went to the trouble of making out of the same wood you would have found on the Titanic, couldn’t float with two people on it. If Jack had crawled on, it would have dumped them both into the water, killing them.
That said, the Mythbusters did figure out that if Jack and Rose had somehow figured out that tying her life jacket under the door would have given it enough buoyancy, they both might have survived. But it seems a bit of a stretch to think a pampered society girl and a rough-and-tumble Wisconsin kid would know enough about physics in 1910 to think of that, especially when they were both in the process of freezing to death. In other words, sorry, lovers of happy endings, but Jack was probably an icicle no matter what.
(Via YouTube)
