The new Oceanate Doc has hit Netflix’s top 10, but there’s another Titan Doc you should watch
Every week Netflix The top 10 lists from the previous week were announced and rankings TV shows and movie By the viewer. Netflix’s Titan: The Oceanate Submersible Disaster was the second film in Netflix’s Top 10 Top 10 on June 9th, but the 2023 documentary about the deadly Titan submersible absorber is not the only film about a catastrophic undersea tragedy.
Another, Max’s Explosion: Titanic Submarine has begun Streaming In May. Both reveal the lengths made by Explorer and Ocean Gate CEO Stockton Rush.
Both films are persuasive and each features important witnesses with direct knowledge and experience in the sub, each offering a unique perspective. The same point is created in both documents, but the information is not overly iterative. So they complement each other and provide a more clear picture of what happened when they took it together. I hate to say it (for time), but if you’re investing in a topic, it’s definitely worth looking at both. However, if you only need to choose one, there are recommendations.
Both of these Titan documentaries arrived on stream around the second anniversary of Titan’s last deadly dive on June 18, 2023. Both ultimately pointed out that they were in a hurry to notice defects and safety concerns regarding the Titan, and despite the many whistleblowers around him, he chose to dismiss their concerns. (The Titan had some issues, but the biggest one is the fact that it is a cylindrical shape that does not evenly distribute pressure, and that it was built with an experimental carbon fiber hull, a material that has not been tested well to withstand deep-sea pressure at Titanic depths. As the film shows, anyone who dared to dare to withstand scientific flaws was ultimately kicked out. One employee, submarine pilot and former Ocean Gate director of ocean operations, David Rokridge, is portrayed as Ocean Gate’s main whistleblower.
Lochridge is a high-level employee of the company and was eventually fired for expressing concerns about Titan’s design, and later filed a lawsuit when Oceanate tried to publish his safety claim. The documentary includes audio and video recordings of the passionate conversation between Lochridge and Rush, as well as diving footage, which required Lockridge to pilot the sub after Rush engaged the ship under the wreck’s hull. Lochridge is just one of the former Oceangate employees who have documented the film. Because they refused to conspire in a potential situation that could make unsuspecting participants harmful. But Rockridge’s rage over Rush – and in Titan’s outcome, it’s clear. “He wanted fame,” Lokridge said of Rush at the end of the Netflix documentary. “First and foremost. To burn his ego. Fame. That’s what he wanted, and he has it.”
Discovery documentary, Explosion: Titanic’s subdisasterIt features interviews with some of the same players as Netflix Doc, available on Max, but focuses on a US Coast Guard investigation into the collapse of Sub and an interview with Discovery’s unknown expedition host, Josh Gates. Gates himself was on a Titan and planned to feature a submarine in an episode of his show, but was very worried after the “cascade of question” he experienced on his trip refused to air footage that he was due to produce. “It wasn’t just a red flag for me,” Gates said of Rush’s attitude towards Titan’s safety measures. “It seemed like the flare had risen.” The film is not included in the Netflix documentary, and the topside ship loses communication with Titan. Titan shows Rush’s wife, Wendy, and communications director Wendy, and loses contact with Sub, “What was that bang?”
When the submarine disappeared in June 2023, I casually followed the Titan story. Essentially, I believed it was all awful, tragic accident. However, after watching both of these documentaries, it appears that the Titan burst was prevented. The submarine was missing for four days, during which the world embraced the hope that it would simply be missing and that people diving would be found safely somewhere in the North Atlantic. But both films reveal a wealth of things that Titan savvy knew right away when they heard that the submarine was missing, as they were suffering from the same fate as the Titanic itself.
Lochridge’s account of his era in Oceangate on Netflix Doc helps paint Stockton Rush as a boss reluctant to acknowledge the flaws of his company. However, if you had to suggest watching just one of these films, featuring testimony from the Coast Guard investigation, an interview with Christine Dowood, the victim’s two wives and mother on board, as well as Josh Gates’ trip to Titan, will only answer more questions about how this disaster happened and the impact it had remained. But perhaps, looking at one of them, you’ll be hooked anyway, just like I did, and you can see both.