Alternative Character Interpretation / Titanic (1997)

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• Near the end of the film, Rose tells her granddaughter and the others that Cal "married of course and inherited his millions", implying that Cal's father may have been giving him an inheritance if Cal married and started a family. This would mean that if Cal and Rose married, they both would have benefited financially from the arrangement. Is Cal's obsession with Rose and determination to have her motivated by a desire to acquire his inheritance? Or simply wanting to have a beautiful wife and conform to society's expectations? Or some twisted form of actual affection (see Jerkass Woobie entry below)? Or all three?
• Made possible for everyone but Jack and Rose when you watch the extensive deleted scenes. The Strausses' refusal to part, a joking-in-the-face-of-death J.J. Astor, the grim parting later between him and Gugenheim (something Cameron even had to create, as no one witnessed such an exchange and survived to tell about it), a shell-shocked Ismay's known dressing-down by Lowe and Ismay's apology, Ismay later entering his PTSD phase on the Carpathia, Lightoller balancing survivors on the upturned collapsible, Cal's frantic response to the woman he thinks is Rose, her shell-shocked mother looking into the faces of mothers and children and clearly hunting for her own daughter... Basically, there's a whole other set of characterizations on the cutting-room floor. Though in fairness and as Cameron himself points out, part of the reason why the scenes were cut was because it was already a really long movie.
• Many viewers have pointed out that, if you really think about it, Old Rose could be seen as a major Jerkass. The survey ship is on an expensive and dangerous mission to recover a gem that Rose has in her possession despite having no claim to it (it was intended to be a wedding present, but Rose and Cal never got married). And after regaling the crew with her story, Rose simply tosses the diamond overboard. Then (if you subscribe to the theory that Rose dies at the end of Titanic) upon reaching the afterlife, the first thing Rose does is go to Jack, a guy she spent a few days with when she was a teen, rather than the husband she was married to for years and who fathered her children.
  • On the other hand, one could argue that Old Rose's claim to the Heart of the Ocean may have been weak, but still far stronger than Brock’s. He wanted information and she had it, but that doesn’t mean she had to give him everything.
• Some have taken Cal's line "You are my wife in practice if not by law" to mean that he and Rose may have slept together already. It's also been noted that Rose is far more sexually forward than Jack; it's her idea to be sketched nude (and the fact that she intends for Cal to find a nude drawing of her suggests that it's not the first time he's seen her that way). In the sex scene in the car, Rose takes control and lets Jack rest his head on her, suggesting that she's more sexually experienced.
• Rose's mother may have been a bitch, but do you really feel sorry for her when Rose leaves her, or do you think she deserved it? And as we never learn her fate after the Titanic, did she die broke and penniless or perhaps throwing herself at the mercy of her society friends? Or did she remarry and end up living a comfortable life after all? There's also whether she was right to put the entire family's future on Rose marrying an abusive jerkass; since she was a name herself, there was nothing stopping her from trying to remarry an older bachelor in the first place.
• There are some who think that Rose herself is mentally unstable instead of being a Rebellious Princess. Those who agree with this think that leaving Cal, her mother and her riches was a very selfish act. Rose's mother and Jack himself even lampshade this opinion: the former calls her selfish while the latter calls her a "spoiled little brat". Then again, this ignores how both Ruth and Cal were willing to trap Rose in a loveless and abusive marriage just to secure their own financial future.
• Is Cal an abusive Yandere who is cruel and controlling to Rose, or is he a loving guy who is adhering to the social values of his time, and angry because his wife is basically fooling around with a random stranger? While this certainly doesn't excuse him from shooting Rose and Jack, someone who finds themselves cuckolded can sympathize with Cal's anger.
• Before boarding a lifeboat, Ismay takes one final look around him. Is it to make sure no one is looking at him or to see if no one else would be needing his help?
• That little kid who Jack and Rose unsuccessfully try to rescue before his father retrieves him and they both die. Was he crying because of the situation and/or because the man who took him to his death wasn't his father? Cal was shown to snatch a little girl and pass her off as his daughter in order to escape, so who says that Cal was the only one who got this idea?
• Was that guy who grabbed on to Rose a jerk trying trying to drown her to get her life vest, or was he just your typical drowning victim, panicking and trying to grab on to anything in order to stay afloat without realizing that he's endangering the other person? There's a reason lifeguards are trained to subdue as well as rescue people—any of them can attest to a victim trying to do this.
• Some viewers mistakingly believe that Guggenheim doesn’t realise how bad the situation is and thinks everyone will be saved. This is mostly due to his reaction upon seeing the water and the rich passengers being portrayed as somewhat dimwitted and pompous. A deleted scene however shows Guggenheim was fully aware of the severity of the situation and chose to Face Death with Dignity.

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