Two years ago, the world was gripped by the story of the Titan submersible disaster, in which an unregulated undersea vessel was crushed during an attempt to visit the wreckage of the Titanic.
Everyone on board the vessel was lost, including Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet and Stockton Rush, the pilot of the Titan and the CEO of its parent company, OceanGate.
The story behind this tragic event is told in Titan: The OceanGate Disaster, a new documentary coming this month. It’s also my pick for the one Netflix movie I can’t wait to watch in June.
These events played out in the public eye in June 2023, but the backstory of Rush and his apparent disregard for the dangers involved are part of the film’s primary focus.
Who Was Stockton Rush?
Director Mark Monroe spends a good deal of time unraveling Stockton Rush, a man whose dreams of fame were only truly achieved by his death and by the way it happened. The people who worked alongside — and for — Rush describe him as someone who wanted to be known as the next Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. He was also, by his own words, less than concerned about the safety of his company’s activities.
The portrait of Rush that emerges in Titan: The OceanGate Disaster isn’t very flattering, as he refused all warnings and silenced all whistleblowers who tried in vain to rein him in before it was too late. In the trailer above, one of the documentary participants says that Rush was “a borderline psychopath” who was impossible to manage as the boss of his own company. He paid the price for his hubris, but he wasn’t the only one.
Why Did the Titan Fail?
This question is explored at length in the documentary itself, but the short answer is that Rush opted to have the Titan constructed with materials that weren’t meant to be used for a deep-sea submersible vessel. There’s a reason why there aren’t many underwater excursions to the Titanic’s wreck. It’s nearly 3,800 meters beneath the surface of the ocean, and that’s a depth that the Titan could only reach so many times before it imploded from the pressure.
There are several pictures and video clips of the Titan itself in this documentary, and you may be horrified to learn that Rush and his other pilots controlled the vessel’s movements with an off-the-shelf video game controller. Rush catered the Titan to wealthy tourists, but some of them were understandably horrified by how unsafe the vessel appeared to be. That response may have saved their lives.
Does Titan: The OceanGate Disaster Tell the Story of the Other Victims?
No. For the most part, the film’s focus is on Rush and the creation of the Titan and the origin of OceanGate. There’s always room for more documentaries about the other victims in the future, but almost everything about this event centers on Rush himself.
It seems inevitable that someone will make a scripted movie about Rush in the future. For now, Titan: The OceanGate Disaster may be the definitive word on what happened.
Titan: The OceanGate Disaster will stream on Netflix on June 11.
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