James Cameron: Jack 'Had to Die' in Titanic

As the New York Daily News notes, the show Mythbusters once devoted an episode to proving that both Jack and Rose could have survived on that floating door near the end of Titanic. So why did Leo DiCaprio's character have to die? "The answer is very simple because it says on page 147 [of the script] that Jack dies," James Cameron tells Vanity Fair in a wide-ranging Q&A. "Very simple." The director think it's "silly" the topic still comes up 20 years after the film's release. It was an "artistic choice," says Cameron.

"Had he lived, the ending of the film would have been meaningless," he explains. "The film is about death and separation; he had to die." Cameron adds that he thinks the door was, in fact, big enough only for Kate Winslet's character. But if even that weren't the case, Jack was still going to die. "It’s called art, things happen for artistic reasons, not for physics reasons." (Cameron's recent criticism of the Wonder Woman movie didn't go over well.)