The one scene James Cameron regrets shooting: “I think I wasn’t as sensitive”
Befitting his reputation as one of cinema’s hardest taskmasters and a filmmaker who’ll gladly bet everything on himself because he knows he’s more than likely going to end up winning big in the end, James Cameron has never come across as a person who’ll backtrack on anything they’ve said or done.
He’s ruffled plenty of feathers along the way, made enemies with several of his cast members and contemporaries, and been subjected to more lawsuits than the average auteur, but at the end of the day, it’s almost always Cameron who emerges on the other side smelling of roses.
Building his entire career on the back of repeatedly making the most expensive films of all time and pushing the boundaries of technology to new heights is a risky strategy, but it can’t be said it isn’t one that’s paid off handsomely. After all, Cameron has helmed three of the four highest-grossing titles to ever grace the silver screen, so he knows how to put butts in seats.
Every single one of his features, bar one, has carried a fantastical element, and even as it applies to the sole outlier, Titanic did take some creative and artistic liberties with the titular ship’s fateful crossing. For the most part, Cameron got away with the embellishments and burnishments he made to the fact-based narrative, although there was one exception that landed him under so much fire that he eventually apologised.
It was a very un-Cameron thing to do when he’s proven himself a lot more likely to tell his detractors to go fuck themselves than hold his hands up and admit he was wrong, but the fate of Ewan Stewart’s first officer William Murdoch eventually forced him into a comedown when the real-life figure’s family took issue with the way he was portrayed.
In the film, Murdoch shoots two passengers in a moment of panic as all hell breaks loose aboard the ship before turning the gun on himself and committing suicide. Eyewitness accounts claimed there was an officer who shot themselves on the Titanic, but there’s no confirmation as to whether or not it was Murdoch. He perished in the disaster and was hailed a hero until Cameron damaged his reputation in the eyes of his family.
Studio vice president Scott Neeson visited Murdoch’s hometown of Dalbeattie to issue a personal apology, claiming the movie “never intended to portray him as a coward.” Per the BBC, Murdoch’s nephew remained indignant that Titanic would “still portray my uncle as a murderer when he was a hero and helped save many passengers.”
As for Cameron, he got around to apologising, even if it took him 20 years. The director admitted he “took the liberty” of putting his own spin on Murdoch’s final moments, a decision he regretted. “I think I wasn’t as sensitive about the fact that his family, his survivors, might feel offended by that, and they were,” he explained.”
If he were to make Titanic again, he’d have stayed much closer to the facts when dealing with a real-life character, but the scene is too deeply woven into the story for Cameron to make any George Lucas-like alterations in subsequent versions.
