9. Why Didn’t Jack Climb Onto The Door With Rose?
Titanic
The age old question clamoured over by film fans, romantics and those just looking for a reason to hate alike, why couldn’t Jack climb out of the freezing cold water and onto the door beside Rose at the culmination of Titanic? It looks as if there is ample room for Jack to squeeze out of the water, thus ensuring they can spend the rest of their lives together in perfect happiness, so why doesn’t he?
In reality, it’s probably a lot less likely that either of them would have survived had Jack climbed onto the door. Whilst it looks like the door is sturdy enough to keep them both above water, they never actually try and so we cannot definitely say that it could hold the added weight that Jack would bring. Even if the door had even dipped just slightly, the freezing cold water would likely have risen above the edges, leaving them lying in the same freezing temperatures that killed Jack whilst they waited to be rescued, not ideal.
Really, when you think about it, even if the door does look big enough for them both to lie on, that is only from our perspective. Jack is not only rapidly freezing to death, but also clinging on to the side of the door. His view would have been stunted to say the least and he couldn’t possibly know that the door would consistently hold his weight. Even if he thought they would be fine, there is a good chance they would have both died if we were wrong, something he was clearly not willing to risk. In short, Jack ensured Rose’s survival 100%, regardless of what it meant for him, probably a more romantic ending to them both surviving anyway.
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50 Comments
The Pulp Fiction answer though plausible is slightly flawed. In the final scene when S.L.J. is showing Tim Roth what is in the case, Mr. Roth asks “Is that a real one?” Multiple diamonds wouldn’t make sense here as he didn’t ask in plural form. Possibly a single cut diamond more than 100 carats or a similar gemstone?
LOVED the Gremlins answer!!! I’ve been asking that question since I was 12 years old. :)
Ah damnit, it’s been a while since I’ve seen it and I completely forgot about that line! I’ll have to pretend that I wrote diamond and wasn’t talking about multiple diamonds for that whole section haha, thanks for pointing it out!
I’m glad you like the Gremlins answer too it bugged me for a bit because it was always one of my favourite films! The sun always seems pretty important to most horror films so thought it was the most logical answer.
lets not forget the combo for the case 666. maybe it was walleces soul casue dont forget the bandaid on the back of the head.
Yeah that’s always been a pretty strong rumour, but then band aids could mean anything, and the devils number could easily have been chosen just because Wallace is a very devil-like figure himself, albeit a realistic one. Whilst that rumour was thrown up, it doesn’t seem entirely plausible to me. As Fred commented, Tim Roth asks “Is that a real one?” When looking in the case, how is he, or anyone for that matter, supposed to know what a soul looks like? It’s much more plausible that he was asking if it was a real diamond.
Interesting article. It’s a bold move, jabbing the pedants and purists like this. But you’ve done a good job :)
Thanks! I am expecting a few comments pointing out flaws in my answers haha
I don’t feel like checking it right now, but I seem to distinctly remember Jack trying to get on the door with Rose and the door nearly flipping over.
oh, really? Would be interesting if he did try! Especially when I still hear so many people complaining about it.
If memory serves, he half-asses a try up on the door but it starts to flip. James Cameron actually came out with a statement about the whole door debate not too long ago where he explains why Jack didn’t get up on it, i’m sure google could find it.
I thought someone MythBusted this online? Or am I mistaken in that respect.
Mythbusters themselves tried this out, seemingly proving that it was possible for them both to stay on the door and survive. However, the water they were in wouldn’t have been anywhere near as cold as the water Jack and Rose were in and their clothes wouldn’t have already been soaking wet and freezing. Then there’s the fatigue that Jack and Rose would have suffered n getting to that point in the first place. They also used a life jacket to keep the door afloat in order for it to sustain both their weight, something which they wouldn’t have had time to do in the film. If they did have time, it still would have risked Rose’s life, something Jack clearly wasn’t willing to do. He allowed her to keep the life jacket on rather than trying to save them both because he truly loved her. He would do anything he could to make sure that she would survive, thus leading to his own death.
For the “Dark Knight Rises” I always thought Bruce crawled over the wreckage blocking the East Tunnel (How he knew about it) because he just crawled out of the Pit.
Well, he also knew that the bridge was blocked. It’s likely he had attempted both entrances on his return to the City I guess. To be honest I was going more for how he returned from the location of the Pit to Gotham City. With his Ninja training he could most likely have crossed the Ice to re-enter the City if neither of the other options were viable.
about the batsuit, there must be more of them, at least in another one in the batcave, that he didn’t wear, beacause he was looking for a way to get fox out, and there’s the rest of that…..and i’m saying he could have easily flown there with nobody noticing, coz if the police force can walk (well, not as easy as it sounds) in the streets, it doesn’t seem that far-fetched that the bane’s men didn’t notice him in their least guarded areas (the sky)
Yeah there were multiple suits. Explaining how he could just suit up at the Bat Cave and head into The City. You have to remember that Bane and his men have no issue with the Police being there, it’s the Police that are blocking the bridge, one of the main routes out of the City. The Police are only able to group together and walk right up to Bane and his men when they are all gathered towards the end of the film. Bruce is already in Gotham by this point and clearly has been for a while, suggesting that he simply snuck in undetected because Bane’s men would have patrolled the streets and had other operations going on to prepare for the bomb. The sky may not be heavily guarded, but the Bat is not only pretty damn inconspicuous, it’s noisy too. Not the ideal stealth plane. Of course how he actually gets back in is left open to interpretation so it’s fine to believe that, I just don’t believe it’s the most plausible answer by any means.
fair enough…..
I always thought he used one of the tunnels under the river from TDK? They probably have more than one entrance to get the Tumbler in/out.
Or maybe he grappled over the free bridge at night in silence (he does similer things in BB). He could hae got a grapple gun from the Batcave outside from Gotham’s main island.
Well, each tunnel was blocked because they didn’t really need to get the Tumbler out of the are that was under their control anyway. If they’d left a tunnel open then even if it was guarded citizens could have just left, and they wouldn’t have needed to bother opening the other exits. At least that’s what I took from it anyway.
He could have got a grapple gun to make his way into the City, it’s definitely a plausible solution! But a part of me still thinks it would risk him being seen, especially seeing as when we first see him on the island he is Bruce Wayne and not Batman, although he had probably been there a while by that point. If he had been setting up his return and leaving the chalk bat symbols, then it’s likely he had an easy entrance / exit point which he could navigate with little trouble and no real risk of being seen, that’s just why the ice sticks out for me personally. They do make a pretty big deal out of the ice when the prisoners that are sentenced to exile attempt to make it across, and then there’s all of Bruce’s training on the ice in BB, so it seemed most plausible that that’s why the whole ice scene existed at all.
Well, i always thought that bane only had one island under siege which would explain the number of cops, the decline in the number of population (in TDK: 30 million as stated by Fox and TDKR: 12 million in that ONE ISLAND as stated by Tate), and the location of the bat after his return, and why the Wayne Manor remained intact. So, what i’m saying is, he found his way to the manor after escaping the pit which isn’t that very far away as you said, then used the plane (because the sky is the only way to take) to get in the island, then parked it in the building where he goes whith Fox later, then he took the batsuit (which wasn’t available in the batcave after he used it to take on bane on their first fight then was stripped off going in to the pit)
sorry for the bad english
Oh yeah chances are Bruce did return to the Bat Cave in between The Pit and re-entering Gotham City, especially seeing as that was the one secret he still had from the League of Shadows. But there was more than just the one Batsuit so tbh I guess he could have just suited up and just one of his many gadgets to get back into the actual City. I wouldn’t imagine he would use the Bat to get into the City, what with the element of surprise still in his court (At least until he lights the Bat symbol on the bridge). He had a good three weeks left when he gets out of the Pit so it is likely he spent a large amount of time setting up his return within the City, which is why we see the Bat symbols drawn in chalk, to let the citizens know he will eventually return. It just seems likely that one of the League of Shadows would have spotted him or at least someone would have if he had flown the Bat into the City prematurely.
We see in the film that army officers are snuck into the city via the food van , bruce wayne couldve easily snuck undetected into another food van and snuck out into the city unnoticed , just sayin , possible solution.
In TDK we never find out how large the area Bruce Wayne was searching was. And in TDKR Bane only as the main island in his control…..
Very debatable article, I enjoyed it. I agree with the Gremlins theory!!
Cheers! Yeah I did expect to start a fair few debates about most of these theories haha glad people seem to generally agree with the Gremlins answer though! I always thought when I was young that that’s what I would do when I got a Mogwai haha, if only!
A very well laid article I must say, the Titanic Question really Baffled Me. But as for TDKR’s question, the Pit where Bruce was Imprisoned is ACTUALLY at the Mehrangargh Fort in Jodhpur, India. I know this because I’ve been there so if we assume that in the world of Batman, Gotham is in the US and India is a real place, IT IS QUITE WEIRD…..!
Thanks!
oh wow I did wonder where the Pit was actually based in real life! That’s cool, I’m definitely going to have to try and visit there sometime! Maybe he had some friends in India who could help him out if no-one else could then :)
My guess for The Pit is that he got out of it, and when he gets out, I might be mistaken, but I think we can see a city (or some kind of settlement) in the distance. Walk to there, ask a random person where he is, and from there, he has a better idea on where to go. The most powerful man in Gotham must have friends out of Gotham to help him out, so I guess he contacted them to come and get him, drop him at Gotham’s gate, and from there, we saw Batman in the movie walking on the ice as if it was your everyday sidewalk, so getting inside the city wasn’t that hard, I believe.
Yeah there was a settlement of some kind not too far away from him at all. I reckon the Ice probably was his route into the City, whilst the citizens that are exiled there have no chance of making it across the ice to safety, it would be little trouble for a trained ninja like Bruce, especially after we see all of his training on the ice in Batman Begins.
PROMETHEUS – The APC Paradox – there is actually much simpler answer to this question. If people just watched carefully they would see that when the party is leaving the APC There are two people left behind in the freakin cocpit :) (that means the driver and the copilot)
I’d have to re-watch to find out! Only saw it when it was in the cinema but don’t remember noticing other people in the cockpit, perhaps a DVD re-cut? Or I just wasn’t really paying attention haha one part of the film I definitely couldn’t fault were the visuals, if it was in the cinema version I was most likely distracted by them.
An answer to your WHO SHOT FAST EDDIE question, if you slow down your video you will notice that MR. WHITE indeed fires off two shots very rapidly, one at JOE and one at FAST EDDIE
Who’s Fast Eddie? I re-watched and triple checked and in super slow motion Eddie’s blood squib still explodes before Mr. White has a chance to turn his gun on him. He definitely does fire a shot at Eddie, as I mentioned in the article, but Eddie is seemingly already hit before that shot is fired.
In TDKR , we see the army officers are snuck in by using one of the food vans , bruce wayne could of easily slipped undetected into another of the vans and snucked out into the city without notice , just sayin , possibe solution .
Yeah didn’t even think of that! It’s definitely a possibility. Probably wouldn’t have been too much hassle at all for him to slip into one of them, he’s always been pretty good at staying concealed.
About how Batman gets out of the Pit, why doesn’t he make some tools to do it easier, instead of taking his leap of faith?
I don’t know, but if I have the wisdom and skills of Bat, maybe I try to add another step between the last one and the one before (using some materials in the Pit, creating some tools, etc.), to make things easier. Or is there someone in the Pit tries to prevent him from doing that?
Never really thought about that! It sure would have made it much easier. I guess he could have done, but at the same time, for me it felt more of a psychological challenge than a psychical one.
I know that sounds pretty stupid, being that the whole jumping and climbing is clearly physical, but I don’t believe that he has genuinely become Batman once again until he is out of the Pit and has returned to Gotham. It’s like Bane says, about victory making him weak, he has been out of action for so long and has not only become unafraid, but has somehow lost his faith. Regaining that faith in his own ability and in his power helped him to get out of the Pit and become who he once was, which is why when he returns to Gotham he bests Bane easily. Bruce always had the strength to beat him, he just had to find it within himself and giving his mind the necessary work-out it needed to shake away the fear for his life once more and take off the rope to get out of the Pit, was exactly what he needed.
Myth busters actually confirmed that the idea that Jack and Rose could have survive by both being on the door was completely plausible. It was a part of an episode and everything.
I did look into that when I was writing this, but to be fair they had to add a lifejacket to increase the buoyancy of the door before they could both lay on it. Whilst they did both manage to stay on the door afterwards, there is no way Jack and Rose would have had time to attach the lifejacket to the door, especially in freezing cold water and if they had tried it is highly likely Rose would have died too. I guess they didn’t attach it so much as just place it under the door, but I doubt Jack and Rose would have thought about it. Especially when, as I said in the article, all Jack wants is for Rose to survive, which is why she has the lifejacket. It would be counterintuitive for him to then take that lifejacket on the chance they might both survive, because he’s risking her life for something that may not work, something he wasn’t willing to do.
Then of course there’s the fact that the water used in Myth Busters is clearly nowhere near as cold as the water would have been surrounding the Titanic, and their clothing wasn’t exactly similar to the already soaking wet, freezing, clothing Jack and Rose were wearing back then. Their experiment was flawed to say the least.
Great article. I have a few theories. Did anyone see Gotham Knight? It takes place between BB and TDK. In it, there’s a sequence when he travels to what could possibly be India to learn how to ignore pain,so it’s very probable that he knows people in India. The bigger question for me is, how did Bane and Talia know? Obviously, if they know Batman is Bruce Wayne, they would assume that his gadgets are developed in the now defunct applied sciences division of Wayne Enterprises, but how did they know? If they were excommunicated by Ra’s Al Ghul, it was before Bruce went to TLOS, and Talia didnt speak to her father, so that’s out. If it was after Bruce left, Talia wasn’t speaking to her father. The logical assumption is Coleman Reese-a simple 7 minute scene of Bane finding and torturing him would have solved this problem…
Cheers! I must admit I haven’t managed to see Gotham Knight yet, although I do have a copy of it in my house that I borrowed from a friend ages ago! That is definitely a possibility then.
I always assumed that, although Ra’s Al Ghul had excommunicated Bane and Talia hadn’t spoken to her father, there were likely many other League of Shadows members that would have known of Batman’s true identity from him, so as soon as Bane and Talia took the reins on the League after Ra’s death, they could easily have then relayed the information to them. I guess because the League of Shadows is always depicted as an extremely large, mysterious faction, that they would have had countless operatives, exactly why they have so many operatives in the film itself, from the time when he was in charge, so at least one of them must have known Bruce was Batman.
How does Bruce get back to Gotham? Consider the following:
In Batman Begins, it is established that Bruce disappears for 7 years, travelling the world and “exploring the criminal fraternity.” Here, he has proven his ability to travel the world undetected.
In The Dark Knight, it is established that Bruce worked with “South Korean smugglers operating out of Pyongyang” in his mission to extradite mob accountant Mr. Lau out of Hong Kong. Here, Bruce works with lesser criminals as a means to achieve his goals – namely, taking down the bigger criminals.
In The Dark Knight Rises, it is entirely plausible that Bruce could have used some combination of both of these techniques (traveling the world undetected, with the aid of lesser criminals) in order to return to Gotham.
In my humble opinion, and as the author of this article originally stated, is really isn’t all that necessary for the filmmakers to re-hash these previously-established plot points.
For Raiders: if everyone looks at Indy’s being all wet when the U-Boat gets to the dock as proof that he was in the water, or didn’t hold on to the top and the boat never submerged, I posit that in order to get OFF the top of the boat (which never submerged), when those rascally Nazis started crawling around, he would have had to get into the water and swim his way to safety, that’s all.
If you read the book you would know lashing himself to the periscope is how Indy survived.
Yeah, I did read that was how he survived in the graphic novel, but then they have been known to change details of films for the novelisations before, and this is just a plausible answer to the film, as Indy doesn’t look near death and worn out when we see him again, yet in the graphic novel he is very much exhausted after the trip due to being carried through the water for so long. Of course it’s still a plausible answer, just viewers shouldn’t be expected to read a movies novelisation to fill in key questions that the film brings up.
That was an enjoyable read. I watched The Shining in full for the first time last weekend – shocking for a 29 year old that it took me that long – and whilst both myself and my wife enjoyed it we equally couldn’t fathom how Jack Torrance gets out of the (bolted shut) food storage room prior to the infamous “Here’s Johnny!!” scene.
Thanks! Ah I haven’t seen The Shining fully in a long time! I wish I could attempt to provide a plausible answer to that as well but think I’d need to watch it all the way through again to make an informed answer, I barely remember some of it haha, I’ve noticed a few more questions in various films that may add up to a sequel to this article with The Shining included! Thanks for commenting, glad you liked the article :)
I don’t buy the Batman explanation. Sure, he’s the most resourceful man in the world, but he’s also *without resources* at that point. No money to his name, remember? You didn’t even touch on that problem. He would have actually had to hijack one of the League’s planes, and then manage to sneak in under US RADAR. Difficult proposition at best, even for a ninja. Not letting us see him do this is a gyp of significant proportions.
Well you did miss out my points about it being extremely likely that there was radio or phone contact with the League of Shadows and the nearby settlement or whatever you fancy calling it. Yeah he had no money, but he has limitless contacts, especially as he is the most powerful man in Gotham, even news teams would have jumped at the chance to fly him back from India. He wouldn’t necessarily have to hijack a League of Shadows plane at all, maybe he’d have to sneak in and steal a phone but I know I’m not overly bothered in watching him sit around for ages waiting for a guard to change position so he can sneak in, it’s not a Splinter Cell game after all.
The whole point of being resourceful is that you don’t need particularly special resources to get yourself out of dangerous situations, (You even mention a League plane, meaning you must agree that the League has a base nearby or an airfield of some kind, think there won’t be any resources there he can acquire?) There’s any number of ways that he could have got back to Gotham and in reality, if we were in as much trouble as Gotham was, our eyes wouldn’t be on one man, even if he couldn’t contact anyone he could have jumped on any number of domestic flights to get home, he had the time after all. We don’t know exactly how long he was in the City before we see him…Yeah he had no money to pay for the flights, but he’s Bruce Wayne, and the very fact that he is an incredibly skilled ninja means that he is the master of being invisible, remember how he travelled round the world in Batman Begins with no money to his name, and that was before he was even trained as a ninja.
It’s fair enough for people to dislike the film, although I personally disagree with the majority of holes that have been picked in it, but there’s little need to pick holes in something that would have significantly brought down the pace of the film, as well as lengthening the running time even more. I’ve heard the same people that complain it’s too long, say that we should have seen him get home, yet the only explanations would all have taken at least 20 minutes of screen time even if they were rushed through. The point then is that it’s Bruce Wayne’s story and all he truly cares about is saving Gotham at this point, his focus is on the City and that is exactly why all of our focus is on the City from that point on as well.
The real question is, did you question his journey to the plane that took him to Hong Kong in The Dark Knight and do you still wonder what he did whilst he was on that plane for the majority of the journey? If not, why question this? I know he was in Gotham then and had plenty of resources, but a single phone call and he has all of those resources in the palm of his hands once more.
what about the hulk in avengers, how did he got his sense to take order from captain, and save Stark..??
I always assumed that was good character development, it was Banner overcoming the Hulk, or at least showing that he is able to control it at times. It was his humanity sneaking through, proving to the world that Hulk isn’t just a vicious unthinking killing machine, but could actually live alongside humanity as well.