Even though Titanic was released in theaters 20 years ago, one question remains unanswered: why couldn’t Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose (Kate Winslet) fit on the door after the ship sank? There appeared to be plenty of space.

Winslet has spoken openly about the situation, once remarking, “I think he could have fit on that bit of door.” She also praised DiCaprio’s attitude toward the film’s contentious conclusion, saying, “He really doesn’t care about the door.”

James Cameron has finally told us why Jack didn’t live (Picture: Twentieth Century Fox)

In an interview with Vanity Fair, the film’s director, James Cameron, dismissed the question.

James told Vanity Fair, “…it says on page 147 [of the script] that Jack dies. Very simple. … Obviously it was an artistic choice, the thing was just big enough to hold her, and not big enough to hold him …

“I think it’s all kind of silly, really, that we’re having this discussion 20 years later. But it does show that the film was effective in making Jack so endearing to the audience that it hurts them to see him die.”

“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.”

He did, however, try to get the physics correct, revealing that he stepped into the water and made people float on a makeshift door to prove Rose couldn’t live.

“I was in the water with the piece of wood putting people on it for about two days getting it exactly buoyant enough so that it would support one person with full free-board, meaning that she wasn’t immersed at all in the 28 degree water so that she could survive the three hours it took until the rescue ship got there,” he revealed.

“And we very, very finely tuned it to be exactly what you see in the movie because I believed at the time, and still do, that that’s what it would have taken for one person to survive,” he concluded.

We still feel betrayed no matter what he says(Picture: Getty Images)

Cameron made similar remarks earlier this year, then went on to discuss a Mythbusters scenario in which both Jack and Rose might have stayed on the door.

He said: “Let’s really play that out: you’re Jack, you’re in water that’s 28 degrees, your brain is starting to get hypothermia. Mythbusters asks you to now go take off your life vest, take hers off, swim underneath this thing, attach it in some way that it won’t just wash out two minutes later—which means you’re underwater tying this thing on in 28-degree water, and that’s going to take you five to ten minutes, so by the time you come back up you’re already dead. So that wouldn’t work.

“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. They’re fun guys and I loved doing that show with them, but they’re full of s**t.”

Meanwhile, Cameron and Winslet will reunite for the impending Avatar sequels.