It is the debate that has occupied fans of Titanic, and plagued the film’s director James Cameron, for 25 years.

At the end of the movie, Kate Winslet’s character Rose survives by lying on a floating door, while Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jack, heartbreakingly, freezes to death in the water.

The perennial cry from audiences has been — why couldn’t he just have squeezed onto the door?

In 2012 the TV show MythBusters set out to solve what has been called the “biggest movie controversy ever”, concluding that “Jack’s death was needless”.

But now, Cameron has had enough and set out to prove that he was right. The Oscar-winning director said he has carried out a scientific study to “put this whole thing to rest and drive a stake through its heart once and for all”.

He told the Toronto Sun: “We have done a thorough forensic analysis with a hypothermia expert who reproduced the raft from the movie.

“We took two stunt people, who were the same body mass as Kate and Leo, and we put sensors all over them and we put them in ice water, and we tested to see whether they could have survived through a variety of methods.

“And the answer was, there was no way they both could have survived. Only one could survive.”

Cameron added: “Maybe... maybe... after 25 years, I won’t have to deal with this anymore...”

He conducted the experiment for a National Geographic documentary which will be released in February.

The MythBusters show demonstrated how, even if the door might have sunk under the weight of two people, they could both have lived.

Jack could have simply attached Rose’s life vest beneath the door to make it more buoyant.

Cameron has previously attacked that theory, calling it “full of s---”. He argued it would have taken Jack, in icy water, too long and “by the time you come back up you’re already dead”.

DiCaprio has always politely refused to answer questions about the iconic scene.

His friend Brad Pitt has repeatedly publicly poked fun at him, once declaring in an awards speech: “I would have shared the raft...” In a joint interview in 2019, Pitt turned to DiCaprio and said: “Could you have squeezed on there, you could’ve couldn’t you?”

DiCaprio stared at the floor and said: “No comment Brad.”

Winslet has been more forthcoming, saying she believes there was room but the door would have sunk.

In a podcast last week, she said: “If you put two adults on a stand-up paddle board it becomes, immediately, extremely unstable.

“I have to be honest, right? I actually don’t believe that we would have survived if we had both gotten on that door. I think he could have fit but it would have tipped and it would not have been a sustainable idea.”

Winslet also said the door controversy had led to her facing “borderline abusive” criticism at the time.

She said: “Apparently I was too fat. Why were they so mean to me? I wasn’t even f--- ing fat.

“If I could turn back the clock, I would have used my voice in a completely different way.

“I would have said to journalists, I would have responded, I would have said, ‘Don’t you dare treat me like this. I’ma young woman, my body is changing, I’m figuring it out, I’m deeply insecure, I’m terrified, don’t make this any harder than it already is.’

“That’s bullying, you know, and actually borderline abusive, I would say. And now that wouldn’t happen.”

The Daily Telegraph in London