It was only a matter of time before a documentary filmmaker made the deep dive into Titan: The OceanGate Disaster and show how this tragedy happened.

The three most popular words in the world are Coca-Cola, G-d, and Titanic. It’s no surprise given the obsession with the doomed ocean liner that sunk in the early morning of April 15. 1912. Many expeditions have been made, mostly for research purposes. But then, along comes Stockton Rush and his bid to turn Titanic into a tourist destination–while prioritizing profits over safety.

What happened on June 23, 2023 was a tragedy, but it didn’t need to happen. Say what you will about the Titanic becoming a tourist destination at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean but what happened to the Titan was a preventable tragedy. Part of it is a problem with the engineering, but the other part of it was OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush not listening to his employees and other partners. When people press play on this film, they’ll learn just how reckless Stockton Rush was when it came to his ambitions.

I’ve seen the memes, the James Cameron jokes, etc. I even watched a number of Titanic documentaries in the days after the disaster was first reported. Hell, I even watched the Asylum film, Titanic II, made about a ship that followed in Titanic’s fate. Don’t ask–it was more of a dare. But I digress. And now we have Titan: The OceanGate Disaster, a film that should not have had a reason to exist.

Communications and tracking ceased just over an hour and a half into the dive. Some 16 minutes after that, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration moored passive acoustic recorder–located 900 miles from the Titanic recorded a loud sound, presumably the implosion. As of June 2005–nearly two years after the implosion–the U.S. Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation has yet to release its final report.

It’s too early to say if Titan: The OceanGate Disaster will be one of the best documentaries at the end of the year, but this film should serve as a warning. A warning for any CEO that decides to take the ruthless route. That decides to ignore the advice of engineers. Put it this way: if a company making planes were being lax, I would make sure to never fly on the airlines that use those planes. It makes you wonder what really lead to the breakup between OceanGate and Boeing. Boeing had provided a document to OceanGate and there’s quite a bit of discussion in the film.

One surprising thing I learned while watching Titan: The OceanGate Disaster is just how many of former OceanGate employees wouldn’t open up until after Stockton Rush’s death. That says something–there are a number of former employees interviewed on camera. Even CBS Sunday Morning‘s David Pogue recollects his experiences while reporting on a story that aired in November 2022. OceanGate took five 9-day expeditions each summer since they started diving to the Titanic, providing a total of 5 opportunities to see the ship on each expedition. After 2 summers, they only made 9 dives due to “a maniacal safety culture.”

Where things took a turn was on Dive 80. There was a large bang or cracking sound in the hull. This is where the real-time measurements (RTM) can be a godsend as they can prevent tragedy before it happens. Additional carbon fibers broke in the hull on Dives 81-82. In 2023, there were four attempts to dive and see the Titanic. But its final dive would prove to be its most fatal and that’s a tragedy. If there’s a lesson to be learned from Titan: The OceanGate Disaster about submersibles made from carbon fiber, it’s that the material isn’t made to withstand such pressure.

The tragedy about the Titan isn’t just Stockton Rush. No, it’s the four others whose fate were doomed the minute they stepped foot in the submersible:

• Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French deep-sea explorer and Titanic expert
• Hamish Harding, a British businessman
• Shahzada Dawood, a Pakistani-British businessman
• Suleman Dawood, Shahzada Dawood’s 19-year-old son

One of Nargeolet’s daughters, Sidonie, said that OceanGate didn’t reach out to offer their condolences after her father died. A quick search on Google shows that this was certainly the case in the one year following the tragedy. I don’t know when the interview was filmed for Titan: The OceanGate Disaster but if that’s still the case right now, it’s unacceptable and inexcusable. Whoever was the most senior member of the OceanGate leadership should have reached out as soon as it happened. Families shouldn’t have to find out through the news.

Titan: The OceanGate Disaster should be a lesson in what businesses shouldn’t do and that we need to stop treating the Titanic like a tourist destination.

DIRECTOR: Mark Monroe

Titan: The OceanGate Disaster holds its world premiere during the 2025 Tribeca Festival in the Spotlight Documentary program. Netflix will release the film on June 11, 2025. Grade: 4/5

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