James Cameron Turned To Science To Prove The Door In Titanic Could Only Hold One Surviving Person

There are several universal questions that we may never get answers to. Are we alone in the universe? Is there life after death? And why on earth couldn't Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) climb onto the door at the end of "Titanic?" Well, it appears we finally have an answer to the latter from none other than director James Cameron. Following its release, "Titanic" became a worldwide phenomenon, to say the least. The film went on to become the first to ever earn $1 billion worldwide (via BBC) and received a record-breaking 14 Academy Award nominations, taking home 11 golden statuettes, including best picture (via History). The story of the fictional star-crossed lovers aboard the real-life ill-fated vessel might have sunk all competition at the box office and throughout award season, but over time, one question has plagued both the film and its director over 25 years later. 

The infamous finale sees Jack Dawson allow his love interest Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) to take up space on the floating door, only for him to sink beneath the frigid waters later in the night. Since its release, fans have gone back and forth about the possibility of Jack being able to climb aboard the door and survive. Now this decades-long mystery can be put to rest, thanks to a science experiment conducted by Cameron himself.

Even after all the work put into researching 1997's "Titanic" (via Eye for Film), there was one final experiment that director James Cameron needed to complete to prove that the film was logically sound. 

In an interview with The Toronto Sun, the "Terminator" director described what went into a recent experiment made to test if Jack would truly survive until the end of the film. "We have since done a thorough forensic analysis with a hypothermia expert who reproduced the raft from the movie and we're going to do a little special on it that comes out in February," Cameron said, referring to a re-release of "Titanic" in February 2023. "We took two stunt people who were the same body mass of Kate and Leo and we put sensors all over them ... and we put them in ice water and we tested to see whether they could have survived through a variety of methods and the answer was, there was no way they both could have survived. Only one could survive." 

No matter what fans believe the outcome should have been, Cameron insists that Jack's death had a more significant meaning to the story itself. He told the Toronto Sun, " ... he needed to die ... It's a movie about love and sacrifice and mortality. The love is measured by the sacrifice." 

The "Titanic" re-release, complete with the experiment airing on National Geographic, is set to arrive on February 10, 2023 (via Deadline).