Cameron reveals why Jack had to die in Titanic

Why did Rose not make room for Jack? This is a question the world has debated and debated some more over the years. In the climax of James Cameron’s Titanic, Rose (Kate Winslet) could have saved Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) by making some space for him on the door. But she didn’t, and Jack died while Rose lived to a ripe old age to tell us the story. So, could Rose have indeed saved Jack? And if yes, why didn’t she do so?

In the 1997 movie, Jack sacrifices his position on a floating piece of debris — and chance to live — so that Rose could survive Titanic’s sinking. But many viewers have suggested that both could’ve stayed on the makeshift raft and survived. Mythbusters even did an experiment to prove that Jack could have lived.

When Vanity Fair posed the question to the film’s director, he blamed it on art and the script. Talking to the magazine, James Cameron said, “Obviously, it was an artistic choice; the thing was just big enough to hold her. [Jack] didn’t know that she was gonna get picked up by a lifeboat an hour later.”

He finds answering the same question ‘silly’ but Cameron humoured the fans anyway, “It shows that the film was effective in making Jack so endearing to the audience that it hurt them to see him die.”

“Had he lived, the ending of the film would have been meaningless. The film is about death and separation. So, whether it was that or whether a smokestack fell on him, he was going down. It’s called art; things happen for artistic reasons,” Cameron shared.

PHOTO: GARETH CATTERMOLE/GETTY IMAGES James Cameron won the Oscar for Best Director for Titanic