How Astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson Convinced James Cameron to Re-Edit Titanic Because the Star Field Was Wrong
Posted on April 3, 2012
After returning from his dive to the Mariana Trench, director and explorer James Cameron has been doing a lot of media interviews to promote the 3-D release of the film >Titanic. He told The Telegraph that astronomer Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson convinced him to change a crucial scene in the film, because the star field was all wrong.
Cameron said, "Neil deGrasse Tyson sent me quite a snarky email saying that, at that time of year, in that position in the Atlantic in 1912, when Rose is lying on the piece of driftwood and staring up at the stars, that is not the star field she would have seen. And with my reputation as a perfectionist, I should have known that and I should have put the right star field in. So I said 'All right, send me the right stars for that exact time and I'll put it in the movie.'"
In this video from a panel he was on in 2009, Tyson was discussing scientific accuracy in the movies. He said that if the movie doesn't take science seriously at all, he just lets it go. But if a movie is based on a scientific premise, it drives him crazy when they get it wrong. Tyson says the Disney film, The Black Hole, didn't even have a science adviser, which was too bad because he "could've hooked them up big time with cool black hole stuff."
At about the 1:40 mark, he talks about the Titanic Editing Incident. He said that Cameron is known for getting the details right, and the movie was widely marketed as having captured the exact details of the ship. Tyson explains that we have someone who cares about details, so he's going to hold him accountable. When the ship sinks, we know the time, date, longitudeand latitude that it happened. In the scene where Rose is holding onto a piece of wood, she gazes up to the star-filled sky -- and it's totally inaccurate. The stars are wrong for the date. Also, the left half of the sky was a mirror reflection of the right half of the sky, which was just lazy. So he wrote a letter to James Cameron, which Cameron never saw. Five years later he ran into Cameron at a NASA event and brought up the letter. Cameron was shocked at the criticism and said he didn't know it was wrong -- it was added in post-production.
Three years later Tyson ran into Cameron again at a dinner which was held at the planetarium where Tyson works. So Tyson decided to corner Cameron at the dinner, and once again complained about the inaccurate star field. Cameron listened to Tyson then joked: "Well, last I checked Titanic grossed $1.3 billion worldwide, imagine how much more it would have grossed if I had gotten the sky correct!" But clearly the inaccuracy really bugged Cameron, because just two months later Tyson got a call for a post production engineer who worked for Cameron who told Tyson, "so I understand you have a star field for me to use?"
Tyson is just so funny when he tells this story of his Titanic obsession, which clearly drove him crazy for years. Take a look: