Titanic Film Theory: Jack Is A Time Traveller!?

This is where we have to branch out into more speculative territory. What we can be sure of though, is that the future required Rose to be alive when the titanic sank, as Jack makes sure she lives even at the cost of his own life.

One engaging, albeit dark, theory, is that Jack’s job was to ensure the Titanic actually sank by saving Rose’s life! If we consider that Rose’s suicide would have caused quite a big deal on board (she’s among the most dignified passengers and dines at the captain’s table after all) it’s very possible that her jump would have caused the Titanic to be delayed as they stopped to save/look for her.

This would have slowed up the trip, meaning that they wouldn’t have been speeding to break the trans-Atlantic world crossing, and could have potentially encountered the iceberg the next morning, in the daylight, allowing for an easy evasive manoeuvre.

The sinking of the Titanic shook the entire world, and lead to the creation of the Revenue Cutter Service, predecessor to the modern Coast Guard, being placed in charge of ice monitoring operations to ensure it never happened again. Also, in 1913 the first Safety of Life at Sea Convention was convened and global shipping standards were set that greatly improved safety at sea. Perhaps Jack’s role in ensuring the sinking of the unsinkable ship was necessary to prevent a much larger disaster further down the line.

One more outlandish but awesomely creative theory straight from the murky depths of Tumblr suggests that the Jack we know from Titanic might be a little more familiar than first thought. Is there another time-travelling, charming, American Jack we know of?

This theory hypothesises that Jack Dawson is in fact Captain Jack Harkness of Dr. Who and Torchwood. We know Captain Jack was stranded in the 18th century England and forced to wait in real time until the 21st to catch up with The Doctor, and that he's also pretty much immortal.

This explains his placement on the Titanic both in terms of place and time, as well as how he could have survived the Atlantic ocean and continued his journey through time. Jack Harkness was also something of a con-man (and no stranger to pseudonyms), and we see him (potentially underhandedly) win his way onto the Titanic at the beginning of the film in a card game.

Obviously, the character was created after the movie Titanic was released, but in-universe it's a fun and plausible explanation for Jack Dawson's futuristic knowledge. But whatever the reason, all the fact remains that Jack has access to information he shouldn't have.

Maybe he was just making stuff up to get with the hot, rich girl he met on the Titanic and it happened to be the case that things he said came to pass years later. Or, it could be that Jack is a man of the future. A hero out of time who saved Rose's life, sacrificed his own, and possibly even sank the Titanic in the process.

What are your thoughts on this Film Theory? Leave your comments in the comments section below!