>He looks up at the burning wreckage and quips, "Oh yeah? Well I'm taller!" Roll credits.
>but it would start a long string of malfunctions which would lead to the whole ship disintigrating in a string of spectacular explosions which the "Good Guy" somehow survives without a scratch.
Before the credits roll, a final shot of Jack and Rose standing triumphantly on the ice field watching the rescue helicopters approaching from the East backlit against the rising sun would be nice.
Since I am a fan of Jaws, if Cal HAD to die, I would have enjoyed a sequence in which Jack wrestled the gun away from Cal, jammed a dive tank into his mouth and then shot it from a distance (after saying "Smile, you Son of a B") sending Cal upward in a fountain of gore.
Since gay-themed is presently on the menu in Hollywood, perhaps an ending in which Cal admits the underlying reason for his hostility and the ongoing game of cat-and-mouse that he and Jack play through the central portion of the film is in order. Freed of his "dark secret," and the burden of his ghastly fiancee, he becomes a lot more easygoing and fun to be with, and sacrifices his own life so that Jack can float to safety on the panel. Jack, for his part, after a period of "exploration" ages to be as perky an old timer as Rose, and one day is watching TV at his winter home in Key West when he sees news footage regarding a certain item he and Cal shared being recovered from the wreck. Memories come flooding back, and the film suddenly flashes back to 1912.
There is a film obscurity from the 1970s called "Cycle Vixens" which has the ultimate oddball "we couldn't think of a way to end this film" ending: a character who wasn't in the film up until that point other than a brief shot in a scene early on in the expository footage, suddenly steps into the screen and for no reason guns down the entire cast. After the "WHAT THE....?" effect wears off, one begins to ponder how neat it would be to introduce that character to other films: Maria and the Von Trapp brats run across a field in Austria singing and suddenly the killer from Cycle Vixens enters the screen and guns them down; just at the moment when the interaction between Elliot and ET is at it most heartwrenching, the Terminator from Cycle Vixens enters the screen; Ferris Bueller is all full of life and singing Twist and Shout in that parade and suddenly; and, of course, Babe and whatever Patrick Swayze's character in Dirty Dancing was named, are having that final romantic dance to "The Time of our Lives" when their bliss is forever spoiled by the harsh cry of a sawed-off shotgun. In that spirit, just as the dinner party sequence in Titanic is in full congeal (and certain audience members are praying for death having spent close to six hours onscreen running time with Rose and the iceberg is STILL nowhere in sight) the mystery last minute killer psycho from Cycle Vixens enters the dining room and guns the whole table down, freeing up the plot to move forward at a good pace and give the audience what they paid to see~ the Titanic.
