Did Titanic get the wrong ending?

polygon.com:

While James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Waterhas passed Titanic on the list of all-time top-grossing movies, his 1997 Oscar-winner recently got a boost from a 25th-anniversary theatrical rerelease that played to sold-out theaters and earned the film another $50 million worldwide. It’s a testimony to the power of Titanic’s central love story and disaster movie thrills that even with the movie readily available for home viewing, fans are still willing to go see it again in theaters.

But one thing they won’t get in theaters is a chance to see the alternate ending of Titanic, a longer and more detailed cut that Cameron ultimately trimmed down to the minimalist version in the theatrical edit. Many argue Cameron made the right choice, and avoided sinking the movie’s final emotional beat. But are the audiences lining up to see Titanic again actually missing out?

At Polygon, we’re split. So we’re here to present our evidence and decide: Is the alternate ending of Titanic better than the original?

Polygon Court is now in session.

[Ed. note: End spoilers ahead for two versions of Titanic.]

Tasha: Let’s start with a quick rundown on the two versions we’re debating here. James Cameron frames Titanic as a treasure hunt, where in 1996, salvager Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton) and his crew are searching for “the Heart of the Ocean,” a massive blue diamond built into a necklace that supposedly went down with the Titanic. After finding a drawing of a nude woman wearing the Heart of the Ocean in the Titanic safe where they expected to find the diamond, they track down the subject of the painting, elderly socialite Rose (Gloria Stuart), to fill them in on her time on the Titanic in 1912 (when she was played by Kate Winslet).

In the theatrical