Titanic is not safe from plot holes, and while many of them don’t have an explanation, there’s one about Jack Dawson that is solved through a deleted scene. Although James Cameron’s name is now mostly associated with big-budget productions and sci-fi movies, one of his most ambitious and successful projects was a disaster-drama movie based on a real-life tragedy: Titanic, which was the most expensive movie ever made at the time and held the spot of the highest-grossing movie of all time for many, many years.
Although Titanic is based on the real-life sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912, the movie tells a fictional story through two fictional characters, though through them, the audience gets to meet characters based on real-life passengers of the ship. Titanic, then, follows first-class young woman Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) and third-class passenger Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), who over the course of four days meet, get to know each other quite well, fall in love, and defend their romance from those who look down upon them, as are Rose’s fiancé, Cal Hockley (Billy Zane), and her mother, Ruth (Frances Fisher). The story of Rose and Jack’s relationship is told by older Rose (Gloria Stuart) to treasure hunter Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton) and his crew, but this part of Titanic makes way for a couple of plot holes.
The events of Titanic begin with Lovett’s mission to find the Heart of the Ocean, which leads to the discovery of the drawing Jack made of Rose. A now old Rose contacts Lovett to tell them what she knows about the diamond, and so she shares her story with Jack. At the end of her tale, one of Lovett’s crew members, Lewis, says they “never found anything on Jack” as there’s “no record of him at all”, which creates a plot hole as they just learned about Jack’s existence – however, this is quickly solved by a deleted scene that reveals Rose took a break in the middle of her narration.
A deleted scene from Titanic, set right after the one where Cal gives Rose the Heart of the Ocean, shows older Rose describing how the diamond felt. Lewis interrupts by laughing at Rose for trying to kill herself by jumping off the ship, and those comments understandably upset Rose, who claims to be tired and is taken to her room to rest. Rose eventually returns to continue her story, but in the meantime, Lovett’s crew continues their research, and this break would have given them enough time to look through the records of the Titanic to see if they could find information on Jack Dawson. This deleted scene also explains a continuity “mistake” as Rose is wearing different clothes during the second part of her narration, and the well-deserved break she took explains this too.
The plot hole of Lovett’s crew not finding any records on Jack (as he won his ticket on a very lucky game of poker just minutes before the ship sailed) is one easy-to-miss detail, but once you pay attention to how the final cut of Titanic makes it look as if Rose told her story uninterrupted, this “mistake” is very noticeable. Although it’s understandable that this particular scene was cut from Titanic, as it does mess with the pace of the movie so far, this scene would have solved the plot hole of Lovett’s crew knowing there are no records of Jack and Rose’s subtle outfit change, though it definitely doesn’t do any good to Lovett’s crew member, Lewis.
