Mythbusters Sink Titanic Logic: Jack Didn't Have To Die?!

I've watched Leonardo DiCaprio die a dozen times as Jack Dawson in Titanic, each time cursing that Rose (Kate Winslet) for not sharing the Floating Debris of Life with her doomed lover. With every frail tweet of that rescue whistle, every whispered "Come baaaack!" I've wondered: Did Jack really have to die?

Now we have our answer.

The good folks on The Discovery Channel's MythBusters must have shared my nagging concerns, because they put Jack's Titanic death scene to the test. Could two human beings have fit on Rose's makeshift raft, and therefore survived to live happily ever after sketching nudie pics of each other forever in Paris??

Granted, Jack was a streetwise, card-playing, jig-dancing sensitive artiste with probably zero physics training, so he probably wouldn't have thought to tie Rose's life jacket to the bottom of the debris to give it enough buoyancy to hold the two of them.

But if he hadn't had to shove over to let stupid Rose cling to the entire thing Jack wouldn't have had to chill, literally, in the freezing waters, and maybe then he wouldn't have died of sinking like a beautiful popsicle to the bottom of the ocean. Or as you fancypants science types call it, hypothermia.

"With all we've learned, I think Jack's death is needless," co-host Jamie Hyneman tells James Cameron, who appears in the episode. Cameron's response?

"The script says Jack dies. He has to die."

DAMN YOU, CAMERON.

[MythBusters via Thompson on Hollywood]

Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter.
Follow Movieline on Twitter.