It’s one of the most iconic lines in cinema, but for 28 years, everyone has been misquoting it!

Released 28 years ago, Titanic was a colossal success thanks to the scale given to the film by James Cameron and his team, but also by the perfect couple Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in this romantic drama that made an entire generation of viewers cry.

But one of his lines has already entered everyday language, and we’ll pull it out whenever we’re on the receiving end of something, especially on a boat!

The answer that comes from the context

With no money, the heroes of Jack Dawson (DiCaprio) and his friend Fabrizio (Danny Nucci) win two third-class tickets at poker for a trip aboard the liner Titanic and board so quickly that they avoid the passenger list. Once at sea, Jack and Fabrizio make their way to the bow, where they marvel at the spectacle of dolphins that accompany the ship’s progress through the waters of the North Atlantic.

Just then, Jack, in this moment of euphoria, throws his arms up in a “V”, gives his best smile, and then shouts out a sentence that sticks in everyone’s memory:

“I am the master of the world”

At least that’s the line the French public knows, because in the original version, Leo DiCaprio says, “I’m the king of the world.” The translation as “I am the master of the universe” is a change we owe to the French dubbing team, which thus retained the general idea, but led to the fact that viewers who discovered the film in VF did not exactly have the “real” line in mind.

For the most part, they often declare it by mistake, subliminally changing it, and thus the French form of the original version: “I am the king of the world!” This is, for example, a scene from Mission Cleopatra with Bernard Farsi, which is parodied in Cameron’s film.

Sadly, it’s less amusing that Jack’s character met a tragic end in Titanic , sacrificing himself to let Rose onto a piece of wood floating alongside them, allowing her to survive as she died of hypothermia in the icy waters. He will still be, for a moment of happiness, master (or king) of the world.