Titanic director James Cameron has admitted Jack “might have lived” after testing out raft theory
Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Jack Dawson in the 1997 romantic drama, which follows his love story with Rose DeWitt Bukater (played by Kate Winslet).
In the film, the ship the couple are on crashes into an iceberg, and they try to save themselves by getting onto a floating door in the freezing water.
However, there is not space for them both on the piece of wood, so Rose says on and survives and Jack tragically dies.
For years, fans of the film have argued there was enough space on the raft for both Jack and Rose.
In a new hour-long special called Titanic: 25 Years Later with James Cameron, the film’s director tries to “find out once and for all if Jack could’ve survived the sinking of Titanic” by recreating the raft sequence with two stunt people in “a controlled laboratory setting.”
He explained: “We released Titanic 25 years ago. But, despite all our efforts to make the film as accurate as possible, there’s one thing some fans just can’t accept: they insist Jack could’ve survived if he climbed on that floating piece of debris with Rose.”
During the test, the stunt people manage to get both their bodies onto the raft with their lower legs in the water.
James and his team determined that in this position, Jack could have survived “a few hours” in time to be rescued.
He said: “Final verdict: Jack might have lived but there’s a lot of variables. In a well-lit experiment in a test pool, we can’t possibly simulate the terror, the adrenaline, all the things that would have worked against them.”
“[Jack] didn’t get to run a bunch of different experiments to see what worked the best. Jack’s survival might have come at the cost of her life. Based on what I know today, I would have made the raft smaller so there’s no doubt.”
