OceanGate Disaster: When a real-life psychopath is just as scary as a fictional one
- Camila Domingues
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
I'm torn between two statements, because they're both true: I sit here absolutely stumped as the credits roll on my TV and as I process what the hell exactly I just watched, and Netflix's newest documentary, Titan: The OceanGate Disaster, is the movie to watch this summer.
It was June 18th, 2023 when the news broke out about a submersible that had been lost in the ocean with passengers inside. As the days passed and as more and more updates surfaced (no pun intended), the truth was learned: Titan 1, owned and operated by OceanGate, had imploded underwater, by the Titanic's resting location. OceanGate's CEO Stockton Rush, French Titanic expert and former Navy commander Paul-Henri Nargeolet, British billionaire and aviator Hamish Harding, and Pakistani-British Director of Dawood Hercules Corporation and philanthropist Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood had all but perished in what I can only imagine were absolutely horrific few moments.
Titan: The OceanGate Disaster brings back former employees and folks who had been previously involved with anything related to the company and its egotistical maniac of a leader, and dives deep (again, no pun intended) into the history of OceanGate. It revisits and recounts all event leading up to the catastrophe - and what it sheds light on is nothing more than absolutely horror.
It literally all comes down to one man and his arrogance: Stockton Rush, OceanGate's own CEO.
Titan: The OceanGate Disaster is tragically poetic
The documentary manages to peel back every single layer of this tragedy like a catastrophically beautiful golden onion. I'll come back to this comparison.
It introduces key players in OceanGate's creation and original team, including Stockton Rush and his wife Wendy Weil, who had both been privileged enough to be born into wealthy families. As folks like the assistant to the Lead Engineer, the Director of Marine Operations, the Director of Engineering, and more speak about their experiences with Rush and the company itself, it paints a very, very clear picture: Stockton Rush's arrogance and blatant refusal to keep everything up to standards was the ultimate cause of the Titan 1 implosion. Rush's initial passion for his project ultimately consumed his ability to understand that his submersible was not safe at any point in time.
There were reports upon reports, folks downright refusing to work with him due to his refusal to listen to solid and life-saving advice, but absolutely nothing made this man think about anything else other than "buying Congressmen" to make problems go away or "ruining lives" if anyone tried to get in his way. The documentary shows just how many times and how many people tried to bring Rush to see that there we major flaws with this metal tube - hell, even Boeing stated on their report that it was absolutely not safe and urged caution. It also reveals a lot of details both exposed and not exposed to the public, including bits of very important conversations and the hearing on the incident.
I'm not going to spoil the documentary here for you, because it's truly a wonderfully made one and I believe everyone needs to watch it. Not just because of the incident itself, but because of the gigantic lesson this movie leaves us with: arrogance and ego can kill you.
Remember how I compared this all to a beautifully golden onion?
We also get to hear from scuba diver YouTuber Jake and learn about his experience and reflect on the heartbreaking fact that, had his dive not been cancelled, he'd be the one to die in an implosion. Yep. The dive the Titan 1 imploded on was the one right after his failed dive. I just want to give that man a tight hug at the moment.
As if this didn't tug at your heart enough, as it all comes to a close and we're being walked through the finding of evidence of the implosion, the sound of the implosion is shared with us all. I sat there, my heart beating in my throat, and completely dissolved in tears at that point. The delivery was rudely genius, as with everything else in this wonderful documentary. But the sound...
It's a sound and a silence that will most likely haunt me for the rest of my life. It's a poem about Stockton Rush that wrote itself into existence due to his ego.
BBC actually has a different audio of the implosion, and because of how and when it's heard, it's tragic all on its own.
I say do take the time to watch this. Don't watch it before going to bed. But do watch it - it is an incredibly good documentary.
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