Time to eat some words!!
But which side will do the swallowing??
Buckle up, folks! Cuz we’ve learned the answer to the biggest debates in film history! But we gotta hop on this ride to Sciencepalooza to get through it all!
THEORY
Leonardo DiCaprio totally could have lived if Kate Winslet would have just moved over some on that floating door in Titanic! Obviously!
TRUTH
According to MythBusters‘ Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, the buoyancy of the door was not enough to keep Rose and Jack fully afloat …unless they could have used their brains enough to realize her life jacket was the real winning ticket to NYC.
You see… they needed to tie that sucker under the door! Genius!!
On Sunday night’s episode, the guys pulled James Cameron aboard for some extensive tests to ensure the accuracy of their hypothesis.
First, they needed to make sure these love fools wouldn’t freeze their butts off. Since Hottie Officer Lowe didn’t come back for Rose until 20 minutes after the ship sank and didn’t find Rose ’til the end of his 45 minute search (honestly, seemed like it was a lot longer than that in the film), James and the boys agreed 63 minutes is a fair assumption for her wait.
So Jamie made this awesome gelatin fleshie/water-heated copper cardiovascular struttin’ human thing, got his temp right at 98.6F and then dumped him into some cold-as-ballz 29F water.
51 minutes later, the sorta-human’s temp dropped below 85F, resulting in a hypothermia-ridden death. Major freezer burn!!!
But Kate’s dummy was dressed in all those wet clothes and placed right above the freezing water. Gurl’s temp was 82.5F at the 63min mark. She was just warm enough to be revived had she been rescued then. Technically, she’d be pushin’ it pretty hard, and the probability of dipping into the water and blowing through that whistle was super low, but clearly the gurl was pissed since the dude she just risked a lifeboat for left her in the real world. So we assume she had some extra fighting fire left in her enough for that.
So after all that good measure stuff, they tested both of the bodies on the life jacket-boosted board, with 80% of the bodies out of the water and resting.
AND THEY BOTH LASTED TO 63 MINUTES!!!
DAMNIT, CAMERON! YOU KILLED JACK FOR NO REASON!! UGH!!!
Of course, Cameron said:
“I think you guys are missing the point here. The script says Jack died. He has to die. So maybe we screwed up and the board should have been a little tiny bit smaller, but the dude’s goin’ down.”
Sigh… yeah… the ending wouldn’t have been nearly as moving without a lil’ slice of Titanic heaven. This is true.
And really, would these two have really thought to have tied that life jacket under the board?? Clearly the crew didn’t give anyone a proper run-down of what to do if their arrogant ship sunk anyways.
So it’s good to know that it was possible. But would that have won 11 Oscars?? Don’t think so!!!
[Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures.]
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