Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron Page #12

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It was because

nobody would've believed you

if you'd had them burst into colored balls.

That's my memory.

Do you think they were colored?

'Cause you asked me about...

We know they were now. I mean...

- They were white.

- We had enough...

- He says they weren't white.

- They went up white,

-and they burst into colored balls.

- Yeah, they were white.

- All of them.

- STEPHENSON:
No.

LYNCH:
They went up white

and burst into colored balls.

Yup.

Well, no, it wasn't the consensus,

it was because

nobody would've believed you.

The only people who said they burst out

into white balls were the officers.

Can we put Parks' monitor up, please?

'Cause this is something

we did not know then that I now know.

-2004, we found a box of rocket detonators.

- CAMERON:
Right.

STEPHENSON:
And the interesting thing

about this is,

there was a hole

behind the brass cone of the detonator

that was cut out to let you see

the color of the balls that would

come out of this white burst.

This is definitely bluer and greener,

and this is definitely warmer, redder.

Obviously white.

SAUDER:
What a discovery.

CAMERON:
That's pretty cool.

I wish we'd had that

when we were making the movie.

We would've made it look right.

And so, apparently they were sending up

rockets that did burst into colored balls,

the way people remembered.

He's got to go back and change everything

he's ever written about the rockets,

Ken's got to go back and

redo every painting he's ever done,

and I'd have to go back and redo the movie

and change the colors of

some of the rockets at least.

Of course what we all cling to is,

at least some of them were white.

Well, how about the fact that

all of your paintings and the movie

Well, how about the fact that

all of your paintings and the movie

show the elevation of the stern

significantly higher than

what we now know from this simulation.

We now know

the angle of the ship's too high.

It's dramatic. You know, it looks cool.

(PEOPLE SCREAMING)

So it's not like there was this equipoise,

this moment of it just sitting there.

Even though we protracted it in the film,

and that's the romanticized image of it.

In fact, it would've just accelerated

through that angle

until it finally did that.

It's not vastly different

than what we've showed,

just a little less dramatic.

And I think that we're constantly trying to

take into consideration

what eyewitnesses saw

and how dramatic it was to them,

how it felt to them, and how they might've

slightly exaggerated things later,

in the telling of the story,

as almost everyone would do.

Bloody pull faster! And pull!

CAMERON:
But we weren't wrong

in broad strokes.

The ship broke at the surface.

We know that.

(PEOPLE SCREAMING)

The bow plunged vertically. We know that.

The stern hung around for a while.

We know that.

So the movie was true in its broad strokes.

So I didn't feel after the film

that I had a lot to defend.

I felt like we had done good work

at the time.

But it was limited.

There was still so much more

that the wreck site could teach us,

which is why I personally

went back out there

on two successive expeditions.

My decision has been to

not change anything in the movie.

Because once you start that process,

where do you stop?

And the things that are wrong

are things that would only bother

eight people in the world.

Myself being one of them,

but I can live with it.

Even though I'm not going to

change the movie,

I do get to redo

the animation of the sinking.

It's going to be very cool.

The most accurate depiction ever

of what happened that night,

100 years ago.

We've beat it up.

We've disagreed.

But we've found a lot of consensus.

We've advanced our knowledge

of Titanic's final moments,

and have plugged what we've learned

into an updated visual record.

The final word on the disaster in animation.

So this is the last thing I, uh...

As Quicktime, that you had...

Now did you notice that,

in Stettler's paper, he said that

the final trim angle before the break

was 23 degrees, not 19?

Yes.

CAMERON:
Since the conclusion

of our investigation,

Commander Stettler revised his results

and published 23 degrees

maximum angle of tilt.

You know, if our two-and-a-half year

engineering study shows 23 degrees,

we should show 23 degrees.

Okay, there.

That's the number that he settled on, right?

It's two degrees off right now.

That's an easy fix.

You know, we've been arguing

over the number of degrees

for about 15 years now.

Let's make it 23 degrees.

Oh, absolutely. I'm happy to do it.

All right. Let's put this to bed.

There we go.

All right. That looks good.

The ship's veering to port at 22 knots.

Sideswipes the iceberg.

Murdoch ports around the iceberg,

trying to keep from hitting the propellers.

That looks pretty good.

Okay, so now we're watching

in accelerated time.

We see the first five compartments flood.

They equalize pretty quickly.

Bow is pulled down.

We see the port list.

Port list looks right.

That looks like about nine degrees.

Oh, you can really see the effect of that list

on the flooding.

So, yeah, superstructure

starts to get pulled under.

Funnels collapse at their base.

Now the bow is accelerating downward.

That looks good.

We're starting to see the stern come up.

We got our maximum peak stress,

and yeah, boom!

It breaks.

Okay, bow swinging down...

That looks good.

The double keel hang on,

then they separate.

Bow plunges straight down.

All right, we got mast snapping back,

the funnels are ripping backwards,

pulling off all the davits.

Bow is going down like a torpedo.

Here's the angle when it falls through

into a stable position.

Let's see the stern.

Keeling way over to port. That looks right.

And she goes... Yup, that is right.

She goes almost vertical

just when she goes under, and then, boom!

Implodes.

Now she accelerates,

and all the stuff starts to rip off.

See the shell plating going.

There goes the double bottom.

Double bottom frisbeeing off.

And the stern's falling through.

So now the stern's falling aft-end down.

And we see the spiraling.

Here comes the bow.

Bow is falling in its stable position,

and it hits...

Yeah, boom!

It kind of breaks its back.

And we see the hydraulic outburst

and the down blast effect.

Let's see the stern.

Oh, you see the shell plating blowing off,

decks, everything kind of settling around it.

Looks like a big airplane crash site.

Badda-bing, badda-boom.

That's exactly what we're looking for.

And action!

And action!

I've been working on Titanic

for nearly 20 years.

I've planned this investigation

to be my final word.

It's time for me to pass the baton

and move on to some new challenges,

but I'll never stop thinking about Titanic.

For me, it's so much more than

simply an exercise in forensic archeology.

Part of the Titanic parable is of arrogance,

of hubris,

of the sense that we're too big to fail.

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