The climactic scene, which features the breakup of the ship directly before it sinks, as well as its final plunge to the bottom of the Atlantic, involved a tilting full-sized set, 150 extras and 100 stunt performers. James Cameron criticized previous Titanic films for depicting the final plunge of the liner as sliding gracefully underwater. He "wanted to depict it as the terrifyingly chaotic event that it really was". When carrying out the sequence, people needed to fall off the increasingly tilting deck, plunging hundreds of feet below and bouncing off of railings and propellers on the way down. Even though the sequence had been rehearsed for weeks, stunt performers were suspended by harnesses and wires and the set had been coated with foam rubber, the actual filming of the scene resulted in one stunt man breaking a leg, and one stunt women fracturing a rib. Cameron halted the more dangerous stunts, and inquired with special effects supervisor Robert Legato if computer-generated people could be used for the more dangerous falls. Legato acknowledged, even though he was still in the initial stages of employing this technique. It finally paid off, although the amount of digital stunt people was purposely limited due to the fact that they didn't always hold up to close scrutiny (clothing textures and faces still looked a bit fake). The shot of Titanic's final moments was featured prominently in the trailer, and Cameron later commented that "that shot alone got our opening weekend audience."

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