25 Years Later, We're Still Thinking About That Moment In Titanic Where That Guy Hits The Propeller

(To celebrate "Titanic" and its impending 25th-anniversary re-release, we've put together a week of explorations, inquires, and deep dives into James Cameron's box office-smashing disaster epic.)

You remember it because it's hard to forget. The spinning. The smack. The spinning again, sped up this time. The crash into the water. You remember him, because he is legend. He is, of course, the man who meets his untimely death by slamming into one of the Titanic's metal propellers at probably about 40 miles per hour as the ship inverted vertically in the ocean. In the 25+ years since James Cameron's ill-fated 1997 disaster epic premiered, it has been impossible to get this legendary martyr out of our minds. May he rest in peace.

Known simply as "The Propeller Guy," his somewhat gruesome death is like most on that tragic night in history: without visible bloodshed. But instead of a detail that would be a clear-cut gateway to making us shudder, Cameron does something different with our poor guy. The upperclass passenger makes his way over the stern of the boat, where Jack (a young, dreamy Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose (Kate Winslet in her breakout role) are hanging on for dear life. The camera cuts to the ship's baker, Charles Joughin (a real person who survived the sinking, just fyi), next to them.

Charles is holding on too, but the man on the other side of him somehow loses his grip. We don't see him lose contact with the stern, but we — and Rose, who is really not loving the situation they're in — watch him fall down toward the water. On his seemingly eternal descent, he tumbles downward, but he's too close to one of the ship's propellers. His body hits it hard with a cracking smack, causing him to spin wildly on the second half of his fall. Soon after, he hits the water with a crushing splash. It's all, frankly, too much to bear.

All jokes aside, the few seconds James Cameron dedicates to this moment is incredibly effective within the landscape of many effective choices that make "Titanic" so intense. The fall itself is devastating, but it becomes unsettling as the man actually hits the propeller. It makes the situation that much more real, because most people know that this world is full of freak occurrences. Things you'd never imagine happening do all the time. Some of those things end up being beautiful, others are more like bad miracles (to quote Jordan Peele's "Nope"). This moment is one of the latter, but it moves from tragedy to bad miracle with one cruel propeller smack. 

Also, it's important to remember that propellers are mentioned in multiple conversations throughout the film, not just a passing thought. Most notably, Rose uses the excuse of leaning over the stern to "see the propellers" as the reason for why she had "fallen" overboard and Jack had to rescue her on the night they first met. So ... it's really messed up to see them resurface like this after, in a way, being part of the foundation of the film's central love story. After all, that lie is what allows Rose and Jack to start building their bond.

That probably sounds cheesy, but it's "Titanic" and the legendary movie leaves room for cheese and romance and heart-wrenching drama in equal measure. It's impossible not to think of these touchstone moments from the film — the ones that break us down emotionally, shock us, or make us laugh, if only as a way of relieving stress. The propeller guy is probably a little bit of all three of those combined, and the scene will live in our minds as long as our hearts go on.