Lamar Reviews - "Titan: The OceanGate Disaster" (Airdate 6/20/2025)

Lamar's Reviews

Lamar Reviews - "Titan: The OceanGate Disaster" (Airdate 6/20/2025)

Clean

Published on Jun 20, 2025, 11:42:00 AM
Total time: 00:06:12

Episode Description

I had not planned on watching or reviewing this Netflix documentary. It was a tragedy that did not have to happen. There were so many jumping off points where all of this could have and should have been called off. There is a real villain in this documentary, and it is Stockton Rush the founder and CEO of OceanGate. He refused to listen to many people he hired that were experts and new way more than he did, but instead he fired them when they disagreed with him.

He had a radical idea to build a submersible out of carbon fiber, something that was untested for the depths he would have to go to show people the Titanic. What makes Stockton such a terrible, selfish person is how he went to such lengths to avoid registering the Titan because that would require a third party to test and examine it to make sure it met the standards and was safe. At one point he told the guy under him if he had to, he would just buy a congressman. 

He came from money and lived a privileged life.

But being born rich didn’t make him famous, the submersible was going to do that, and nothing or no one was going to stop him. His two biggest idols were Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk he wanted that kind of fame and recognition.

 Stockton partnered with Boeing at first but when they came up with data saying it wouldn’t work, Stockman picked up his toy a left. Of course, I’m not sure Boeing is the most trusted builder of something I would get in to go miles deep in the ocean. 

So, he came up with his own safety protocol. He had his engineers build a “acoustic monitoring system to track the sounds of the carbon-fiber hull snapping and popping under the extreme pressure of diving deep in the ocean. When the monitoring showed it was getting worse with each dive, he decided to quit doing it. Anything that didn’t prove him right, he ignored.

He ran the company like a cult leader, and it was his way, or you were out the door.

To circumvent all regulations, he made sure to launch his subs in international waters. He did not refer to the people that paid to go on the sub as passengers, for that he had to be regulated, so he called them “mission specialists.”

He was told over and over that a catastrophic structural failure was inevitable, it was not a question of if but of when.

Again, this is a documentary on Netflix, and it is 1 hour and 51 minutes long, Rated TV-MA.

It was not as haunting as I thought it would be, but it is very eerie to see how much this did not need to happen. One man is responsible for those 5 deaths, and it is Stockman. This is bad to say but it is only justice that Stockman suffered the same fate as the poor people he, for all intents and purposes, died from, at the least, negligent homicide, or at worst, murder.

The documentary is well done and very informative, but what happened is absolutely outrageous, inexcusable, and criminal!

My Score: 4 Buds 

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