The door debate has been the most popular Titanic-related conversation ever since you first bid adieu to Jack Dawson, who floated gently into the dark and cold waters of the Atlantic. Or did he? In the past 20 years, the door has received some great company in the fan theory department. Below, a breakdown of all the ways to possibly ruin Titanic for you forever.
1. There was room for both Jack and Rose on that door.
Also known as the debate that just won't die, there has been a 20-year-long discussion about whether or not Jack could have survived if Rose had just moved over a tad on that door. There was room, right? In 2012, MythBusters threw science in James Cameron's face and proved that Jack and Rose could have bumped up the buoyancy of the door by taking off their life vests to tie underneath. Granted, the two MythBusters guys were doing it in broad daylight and on what appeared to be a nice, sunny day. But they made it work! See?
In 2016, Kate Winslet hopped on the door debate and agreed that Rose was a selfish rich girl who wanted the door to herself. JK, her words on Jimmy Kimmel were much nicer: "I think he could have actually fit on that bit of the door."
Cameron, who appeared on the Mythbusters episode, rehashed the conversation in January 2017 when he told The Daily Beast that Jack and Rose could have never pulled off the door-lifejackets raft. According to Cameron, Jack would have already been dead by the time he returned to the surface after tying the lifejackets to the door. "His best choice was to keep his upper body out of the water and hope to get pulled out by a boat or something before he died," he said, adding that the Mythbusters guys are "full of shit."
In October 2017, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson chimed in. But instead of taking sides or offering complicated math equations, he simply said that Jack didn't try hard enough. "Whether or not he could have been successful, I would've tried more than once. You try once. 'Oh, this is not gonna work. I will just freeze to death in the water.' No, excuse me. No! The survival instinct is way stronger than that in everybody, especially in that character. He's a survivor, right? He gets through. He gets by."
Then, it was Cameron's turn, once again, in November 2017, when he sang the same song to Vanity Fair: "I think it's all kind of silly, really, that we're having this discussion 20 years later." Still, he says it's a nice confirmation that Jack was "so endearing," people care about his fate this much. "Had he lived, the ending of the film would have been meaningless... The film is about death and separation; he had to die. So whether it was that, or whether a smoke stack fell on him, he was going down. It's called art, things happen for artistic reasons, not for physics reasons."
2. Jack died as the ship was sinking and his ghost found the door for Rose.
This door theory deserves its own entry solely because it involves the ghost of Jack Dawson. As Redditor Cloudsurfer 101 explains, Jack died just as the second piece of the boat sank and separated them. It was the ghost of Jack who found Rose so quickly, along with the piece of door that could fit her and her only. The theory also points to Jack's last words to Rose, when he tells her she's "going to make babies" and "die an old lady, warm in your bed… not here, not this night." The ghost of Jack isn't just trying to keep her alive with these words of encouragement; the ghost of Jack can see into the future, and as the film reveals at the end, this all comes true for Rose.
3. Jack is a time traveler.
This one has also been around for a while, but it's hard to re-watch the film without picturing Jack truly flying through time once you consider all the evidence. Let's start with an easy clue: one of the first errors moviegoers noticed after watching Titanic in 1997 was Jack's mention of Lake Wissota, a lake he once fished in. The only problem? The man-made lake wasn't built until 1917 — five years after Titanic sank. Next up, you have that roller-coaster Jack promises to take Rose on at Santa Monica Pier. Like that lake, the roller-coaster wasn't built until much later. The theory also suggests that Jack gambled for a ticket on the Titanic because he simply didn't have any currency from 1912. If you believe this theory, you also believe that Jack only boarded the Titanic to save Rose from jumping off the ship. If you need more evidence, just take a look at Jack's out of place (but very beautiful) floppy hair and his rucksack, which apparently wasn't popular until 1930s.
4. Rose is Sara Conner's grandmother.
Branching off the time traveler theory, this notion connects Titanic to Cameron's other blockbuster, The Terminator, which definitely rides on the time travel theme. What if Jack went back in time to save Rose to ensure Sara existed in 1984? CinemaBlend took a stab at further explaining this in 2015, with the belief that Jack time traveled to the Titanic in 1912 only after a terminator was sent to kill Rose.
But perhaps instead of killing Rose outright, the terminator decided to plot a more elaborate scheme to get Rose to die, by killing Rose's father and leaving Rose and Ruth with "a legacy of bad debts hidden by a good name." And Rose's desperation was all part of the machine's much-more-subtle plan to alter the future, forcing Rose into a situation where she had to marry Hockley in order to "insure our survival," as Ruth put it, thusly sending Rose into a desperate attempt to end her own life. Had she succeeded, no one would have ever suspected the machines, right? Just a woman in a pretty dress jumping off a ship. It'd be a very under-the-radar approach on the part of the machines, but they would have learned their lesson from the original Terminator's Sarah Connor-killing spree, which was all over the news. Too far-fetched?
You also can't ignore the similarities between Jack's hair and young John Connor's hair. It could just be coincidence.
Or it could just be James Cameron making his very subtle mark on his own films.
5a. Rose suffered a psychotic episode on the Titanic and made Jack up.
One of the newer Titanic theories to surface belongs to yet another Redditor, who believes Jack is part of Rose's imagination and she used the idea of him to distract herself from her otherwise miserable life as the future Mrs. Cal Hockley. The first time she "meets" Jack, as she's hanging off the ship, is actually Rose talking to her subconscious. What's more, in present day, Bill Paxton and his treasure hunter crew tell Rose there's "no record" of Jack at all. While it's easy to explain that with Jack's poker game victory (winning Sven's ticket), it's hard to ignore Rose's response: "He exists now only in my memory." Moving onto the door scene, it doesn't matter whether or not Jack could have fit on the wood panel. This theory believes Jack was never physically there to join Rose.
5b. Old Rose is a straight up liar and you can blame her age and possible dementia for that.
This one is a little dark, but as the hosts of FanTheoriesPodcast.com point out, present day Rose's retelling of her Titanic story to the treasure hunters is too amazing for it to be true, even in movie land. On top of her accent changing between British and American throughout the film, the theory also goes after Rose's husband: there's no explanation of why he never finds the Heart of the Ocean, or why Rose never had to use it during times of economic hardship. Are we to believe in the 84 years since Titanic, she's been super comfortable and well off?
6. Jack was running the D.E.N.N.I.S System on Rose.
Fans of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia should be familiar with the D.E.N.N.I.S. System, Dennis Reynolds' (Glenn Howerton) technique for seducing women. The steps are as follows: Demonstrate Value, Engage Physically, Nurturing Dependence, Neglect Emotionally, Inspire Hope, and Separate Entirely. In 2017, clever Titanic fan Josh Pappenheim took to Twitter to reveal his discovery about Jack's lady loving ways:
Plus, how else would you explain all the boat references on the show?
7. Jack is Jay Gatsby.
This one is super fun. In brief, after having dinner in first class, Jack decides he likes the fancy lifestyle and comes up with a fan to get rich fast. Enter: the Heart of the Ocean. After drawing Rose with the necklace, he takes it and replaces it with a replica. When they're in the water after the ship sinks, Jack fakes his own death, ends up on home soil in 1912 and changes his name to Jay Gatsby. As the book and its many film adaptations tell us, Jay is a private person who likes to keep his past to himself. He's also afraid of swimming, perhaps because he's forever traumatized by water from the whole Titanic episode. So how fitting is it that Gatsby falls in the pool after getting shot? Before you proclaim this to be your favorite Titanic theory, there is one tiny problem: there's no real explanation for how Jack makes a replica of the diamond necklace. Maybe, during his Paris years, in addition to drawing nude one-legged prostitutes and old ladies at cafés, he had a side job as a fake jewel manufacturer?
8. Titanic is the prequel to Inception.
This theory made its way to Reddit in 2012, two years after the release of Inception. There's no explanation as to why it took so long for people to start making the connections, but the ride is a trip: After Jack's death, he "wakes up" Inception-style in limbo, with the lines between the past and present blurred. There are a few things to consider: one of Jack's drawings is of a girl and her father with a top; there are safes in both films; being dropped into water is one way to wake up from Fischer's (Cillian Murphy) dream; both Jack and Cobb try to get home to America. As the Redditor puts it, "What if you had no choice and thought you were in the real world? What if you were really drawing from memories that happen to be another person's dream?"
9. Revolutionary Road is what the Titanic sequel would have looked like if Jack survived.
Age differences aside, this theory rests entirely on Jack secretly surviving the Titanic and using a different name aboard the rescue ship, Carpathia. Years later, Jack and Rose get married and settle down in suburban Connecticut and live their picture perfect lives as Frank and April Wheeler. One could argue this is less of a theory and actually more of a nice thought. Who wouldn't want a happy ending for Jack and Rose (up until the point where things go south for Frank and April in the Richard Yates novel). What's more, the film was the first for Kate and Leo since Titanic, and a lot of nice, nostalgic feels came up. So maybe it's just that. And the reunion of Kate, Leo, and Kathy Bates, who plays the Wheelers' realtor, Helen, in the film.
Titanic turns 20 on December 19. Read more anniversary articles here.
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