Mark Monroe’s “Titan: The OceanGate Catastrophe” is just too well-sourced and researched to be confused for a type of ghoulish docs that reveals up on Hulu inside per week of some main American disaster (they vary in topic from the Astroworld tragedy to the Diddy trial and the Fyre Pageant), however this watchably morbid piece of Netflix content material nonetheless manages to one way or the other really feel each too quickly and too late at the identical time.
After all, “too quickly” is a relative time period in terms of such issues as of late, as the media — social and community alike — started salivating over this story properly earlier than it was even confirmed that OceanGate founder Stockton Rush and the 4 passengers aboard his Titan submersible 4 passengers had been killed when the capsule imploded because it dove in direction of the ruins of the Titanic on June 18, 2023. That will not sound prefer it was all that way back, however the final 24 months have suffered extra information cycles than a number of of the 24 years earlier than them, and time has been flattened to the level the place Stockton Rush and the 113-year-old shipwreck that summoned him to his demise may as properly belong to the identical chapter of historic historical past.
Be that as it could, the truth stays that the OceanGate catastrophe is so current — and, extra importantly, so well-remembered — that Monroe’s documentary must go a hell of so much deeper to justify dredging it up once more for yet one more look. Whereas there’s nothing egregiously cynical about the movie’s nature or design, its forensic tone belies the familiarity of its proof, and its topic has already been too well-excavated for the sincerity of Monroe’s efforts to shake off that signature true-crime stink (the pungent stench of a once-proud medium that’s been left to rot on streaming).
Sure, it helps that Monroe frames this story as a cautionary story about the risks of surrendering frequent sense to cults of character (not that it might be framed in another means), and the Elon Musk of all of it undoubtedly lends the doc a topicality that helps to validate its timing. However the dramatic irony of the catastrophe proves too irresistible for “Titan” to drag away from it, and — cue the ominously sawing violins — what may need been a extra illuminating exploration of “visionary” tradition settles for rubbernecking at some wealthy asshole whose demise has at all times been much less exceptional for its nightmarish circumstances than for the nationwide wave of schadenfreude that it brought about.
Odds are that anybody studying this already is aware of all the things they ever will about Stockton Rush, which “Titan” sees as permission to not plumb any deeper underneath the floor. Nonetheless, the clips that Monroe makes use of to make his case in opposition to the square-jawed CEO — who appears to have believed that his inherent greatness was the most beneficial security measure any submersible might ever hope to have onboard — are extra damning than something I keep in mind seeing on TV round the time of the incident. “For those who hear an alarm, don’t fear about it,” we hear Rush saying at the begin of the movie. “Smartest thing to do is to not do something.” Later, Monroe features a clip from a panel present the place Rush claims that Titan’s carbon fiber hull is “just about invulnerable.” When the interviewer mentions that individuals stated the identical factor about the Titanic, Rush solely nods and smiles. Historical past is seldom type to the males who condescend to it.
“Titan” predictably decides to open with footage shot simply earlier than the catastrophe as a teaser for the deaths to return, however quite than merely roll again in time and wend his means ahead by means of the years from there (with quite a lot of speaking heads readily available to share their private experiences of working with Rush), Monroe opts for a extra pincer-like construction that cuts between the creation of OceanGate and the congressional hearings that adopted its collapse. That strategy fails to account for the movie’s disinterest in Rush’s private life and/or the root causes of his egotism, nevertheless it does assist to underscore the fated inevitability of the Titan’s implosion, which was apparent to everybody besides the individuals who died in it.
Rush’s passengers — who had been by no means labeled as such, as a result of that may have made OceanGate topic to extra of the authorities rules that its CEO so overtly defied — principally go unmentioned right here, which is a obtrusive omission for a movie so targeted on the nuts and bolts of how charisma can seduce individuals out of their frequent sense. I believe the choice was largely borne out of sensitivity for the harmless useless, even when the exception “Titan” makes for deep-sea explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet is freighted with the implication that he ought to have recognized higher (Nargeolet’s daughter Sidonie agreed to be interviewed for the movie, although her testimony does extra to impress our feelings than to elucidate her father’s decisions).
Monroe focuses as a substitute on OceanGate’s former workers, like operations director David Lochridge, who blew the whistle on — and was instantly fired from — Rush’s firm as quickly as he understood the extent of the dangers concerned. And “Titan” outlines these dangers in queasy and exhaustive element, particularly in terms of the carbon fiber that Rush used for the Titan hull as an inexpensive substitute for the business commonplace steels and alloys (my abdomen dropped at the half the place the CEO brags about his new hires from Boeing). It’s one factor to examine what it gave the impression of when the fiber started to crack, nevertheless it’s one other to listen to that ear-splitting horror for your self as OceanGate’s engineers take a look at out the materials. In lieu of footage from the fateful dive itself, Monroe successfully makes use of archival video like that to feed our imaginations, and lend a bodily dimension to what it meant at any time when Rush bragged that OceanGate was “doing bizarre shit.”
The carbon fiber hull — designed with the thought of making a tourist-friendly, brand-forward fleet of submersibles in thoughts — additionally epitomizes the diploma to which OceanGate was a direct expression of its founder. Like Steve Jobs with Apple or Musk with Tesla, Rush made himself inextricable from his firm, to the level that any criticism of its product was naturally taken as a criticism of himself, and vice-versa.
To that finish, the argument might be made that “Titan” — in its detailed evaluation of how OceanGate morphed from a science-driven enterprise to a flashier enterprise that ate up public marvel — reveals extra about who Rush was than a extra conventional biodoc ever might. However Monroe’s movie is just too entranced by its personal drumbeat of macabre particulars to do far more than gawk at the actuality of who Rush was underneath all of his capital and confidence, and to shake its head at the undeniable fact that most individuals couldn’t see that actuality till it was too late.
Whereas “Titan” is an undoubtedly authoritative display screen account of what led to the OceanGate catastrophe, the story it tells is so apparent in hindsight — and its telling so content material with the macabre leisure of exploring that obviousness — that Monroe’s documentary can solely get so deep into what the deaths of Stockton Rush and his victims portend for the world at giant. “It’s tradition that brought about this to occur,” says one in every of the movie’s speaking heads. “It’s tradition that killed the individuals.” If we perceive what they imply, that’s largely as a result of it’s threatening to kill the remainder of us too.
Grade: C
“Titan: The OceanGate Catastrophe” premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Pageant. It is going to be out there to stream on Netflix beginning Wednesday, June 11.
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