Titanic: 5 Things The James Cameron Movie Got Right (& 5 It Got Wrong) – Screen Rant

Some details in Titanic were married to fiction, but there's no doubt the movie remains one of the best interpretations of the catastrophe ever made.

The sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic remains one of the worst disasters in maritime history, and one of the most tragic losses of human life in the 20th century. Its harrowing circumstances provided the source material for James Cameron's 1997 epicTitanicwhich, like its namesake, madehistory worldwide. Its sweeping story and state-of-the-art special effects helped it gross $2.2 billion, and it launched the careers of both Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

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Over the last several decades, historians have debated the authenticity of Cameron's masterpiece. While he took many creative liberties to create a more dramatic story, the vast majority of the actual tragedy he recreated was true to life. Some details were married to fiction, but there's no doubt the film remains one of the best interpretations of the catastrophe ever made.

Perfectionist James Cameron recreated the R.M.S. Titanic exactly as it appeared on its maiden voyage on April 11th,1912, after 15,000 Irishman completed construction on the largest man-made moving object on Earth. Cameron's ship was 744 feet long (about a hundred feet shy of the real Titanic), and its internal sets boasted all of the splendor seen in the film.

Cameron recreated Titanic's indoor swimming pools, gymnasiums, and two libraries (one for the first-class passengers and one for everyone else), as well the resplendent dining halls and staterooms offered to its most elite passengers. Every attention to detail was made, right down to the china in Rose's suite.

Quite frequently there are scenes involving the fraternizing of passengers from different classes. They're both allowed to walk areas of the promenade that would ordinarily have been segregated, which wouldn't have been possible on the real ship.

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Rose strolling with Jack Dawson, each in garments that telegraphed their class, wouldn't have been probable because they wouldn't have ever encountered one another. Jack wouldn't have been sketching in an area of the ship anywhere Rose could have seen him.

Right down to the fact that no one had binoculars in the crow's nest (because no one had a key to the locker), every aspect of the ship's collision with the iceberg was correct. From the time the real Mr. Fleet saw the shape rising from the water, "blacker than black", there was only 37 seconds before Titanic made contact.

Had Titanic hit the berg straight-on, its reinforced bulkheads would have prevented as great a catastrophe. However, since it sliced its side,it took on more water than it was designed for. Eye-witness accounts from passengers who survived said it was "incredibly calm" before the event plunged all aboard into chaos.

Jack and Rose might be praised as one of the most romantic couples of all time, but in all likelihood, they would never have become one during the real Titanic's voyage. Based on the tickets they held, they wouldn't have been permitted on the same parts of the ship, so they would have never "bumped" into each other on the stern or on the promenade.

The concept of a carefree steerage passenger and a stifled aristocrat meeting and falling in love days before a historic tragedy is certainly something out of a modern fairytale, but there were enough real emotional moments in the catastrophe to not need any additions.

Cameron set out to capture the terror inherent in a sinking as dramatic as Titanic's, but it wasn't all dependent on actors performing hysteria. His crew built a ship to split in two, reflecting the real moment when Titanic broke in half. Though the ship did split in half, Cameron took some liberties with its stern splashing back into the water (in all likelihood it would have been pulled down with the rest of the ship).

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The iceberg's large gashes in the side of the hullled to significant water making its way onto Titanic's bulkheads. The ship's hull began to take on too much water and the front end was pulled down first, causing a catastrophic weight imbalance.

While it made for harrowing cinema to watch first-class passengers weasel their way onto lifeboats while third-class passengers were left to die,the reality was no such lifeboat discrimination happened. When it was apparent all hope was lost, White Star Line personnel immediately began helping all souls they could get to safety.

60% of first-class passengers were rescued, which is more than half of the second and third-class passengers combined, but this has more to do with their inability to get from below decks, thanks to gates that were placed around the ship to prevent them from going into areas reserved for first-class and to slow the spread of diseases.

When Rose takes Jack for a tour of Titanic's glittering assembly after saving her life, she points out many famous historical figures. Such augustnames included John Jacob Astor, one of the wealthiest men in the world, and Benjamin Guggenheim, who really did dress in his finest waistcoat and quip, "We've dressed up in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen."

Isidor Strauss, the co-owner of Macy's department store perished in the sinking along with his wife, shown as the elderly couple holding each other as water rushed in their cabin. The ship's designer Thomas Andrews also joined them in their plunge to the depths, but not before making sure hundreds of people had life jackets.

Though the R.M.S.Carpathia was the ship that eventually reached the stranded passengers at 4:05 AM on April 15th, it wasn't the only ship that Titanic sent a distress missive to, and not nearly the closest.

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The SS Californian was quite close when Titanic sank, and would have been able to see the signal rockets that were fired by its anxious crewmen. The SS Californian wasn't depicted in Cameron's film, perhaps because they didn't answer the calls. However, historians debate whether the distress calls really signaled the ship sinking, or were in fact erroneously fired in a sequence that meant "navigational errors, stay clear".

Titanic had room for 64 lifeboats in the event of a disaster that required abandoning ship, but financiers thought so many ships made the decks looked "too cluttered" in the words of shipbuilder Thomas Andrews, and so only 20 were left for use when Titanic hit the iceberg.

Of the 20, only 18 were used, and some only filled with 17 passengers when they were built to hold 40. Second Officer Lightoller, the only senior officer to survive the sinking, was pulled under the waves two separate times before managing to grab hold of one lifeboat with a sail, Collapsible Boat B.

Recent evidence from an original inquiry into the actions of Mr. William Murdoch, theFirst Officer aboard Titanic under Captain Edward Smith, revealed that had he acted just thirty seconds faster the ship might have averted disaster. This contradicts the previous verdict that the ship immediately altered course but couldn't prevent the catastrophe because the iceberg was seen too late.

Regardless of Mr. Murdoch's actions or feelings of subsequent guilt, he didn't put a pistol to his head as depicted in the film. William Murdoch perished going down with the ship, and his family's estate took umbrage with Cameron for depicting him as anything less than heroic.

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Kayleena has been raised on Star Wars and Indiana Jones from the crib. A film buff, she has a Western collection of 250+ titles and counting that she's particularly proud of. When she isn't writing for ScreenRant, CBR, or The Gamer, she's working on her fiction novel, lifting weights, going to synthwave concerts, or cosplaying. With degrees in anthropology and archaeology, she plans to continue pretending to be Lara Croft as long as she can.

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Titanic: 5 Things The James Cameron Movie Got Right (& 5 It Got Wrong) - Screen Rant