Movies often are known to show inaccuracies and still get away with those, with viewers hardly noticing them. But for eagle eyed viewers such as Neil deGrasse Tyson who has built a reputation for picking even the slightest deviation from science, movie directors know they have to be spot on with their creations.
As James Cameron found out with one of his immortal creations, Titanic, the film seems to have been on the wrong footing with at least one scene. And who best to have picked it up than Tyson who promptly brought it to the notice of Cameron, the latter again being generous enough to pay heed to such criticisms and agreeing to actually edit the film to show the fact upon the film’s re-release.
Specifically, it is the scene where Rose is shown hanging on to a floating door, and she flips over to face the night sky, which is exactly what Tyson has issues with. For the star constellation shown wasn’t what it should have been on that fateful night of 1912 when the Titanic had sunk in reality.
Cameron later recalled having received a ‘snarky’ e-mail from Tyson about the error which the legendary director admitted should not have been there in the first place given his reputation as a perfectionist. He went on to edit that particular scene to show the correct star field that applies to the specific night when Titanic went down into the Atlantic.
For those who are curious may consider comparing the night sky as shown in the movie, when originally released versus the one show when the film was subsequently re-released again in 2012. Ironically, the error got rectified exactly a century after the ship got sunk while on its maiden voyage. The Washington Post confirmed that was the only major change that was introduced in the film.
While that should be enough to please Tyson, he seems to have yet another issue. This time, it is with Rose who, he said, should have persuaded Jack to come onboard the floating piece of wood she was hanging on to. Whether or not that would have been able to support the combined weight of both Jack and Rose is debatable but Tyson feels Rose should have at least attempted doing that.
In any case, both Rose and Jack are fictional characters and have nothing to do with reality. Most other scenes or characters shown in the films are however, correct and resembles the sequences when the ship got sunk.
