James Cameron thinks Titanic is a "metaphor" for the end of the human race.

The writer and director of the 1997 epic movie thinks the tale of Jack and Rose - portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet - is still relevant 12 years later because the sinking of the legendary ship represents the problem of global warming.

"I think we're facing a century of adversity on a global scale because we're just going past all of nature's boundaries for how we create food and how we create energy. This is the century where we're either going to figure it out and get our s**t together as a species or we're going down. TheTitanic metaphor is there. We've been warned, the iceberg is right in front of us and we just can't seem to turn this big b***h of a ship fast enough not to hit it."

With the Oscar-winning movie re-released on April 6 in state of the art 3D, James warned the human race is currently "recklessly charging towards an iceberg," proving the film still has "meaning" today.

"Governments seem paralyzed; they just can't seem to do anything that's concrete, there doesn't seem to be strong leadership in the world on critical issues and a lot of it is because of the influence of special interests to businesses. We've got to make the money, we've got to make the GDP, we've got to turn the economy around. So let's just turn a blind eye to the environment, to the ocean, to carbon pollution. This legacy that we're going to pass on to our kids. This is just like the Titanic - we're just recklessly charging towards an iceberg and the thing that wreck proves is that the unthinkable can and does happen. We have to be prepared to accept the consequences. That's why Titanic still has meaning to me; it's a great metaphor to society."

Titanic 3D comes out on April 6.