Popular on IndieWire Be that as it may, the fact remains that the OceanGate disaster is so recent — and, more importantly, so well-remembered — that Monroe’s documentary would have to go a hell of a lot deeper to justify dredging it up again for yet another look.
Odds are that anyone reading this already knows everything they ever will about Stockton Rush, which “Titan” sees as permission not to plumb any deeper under the surface.
“If you hear an alarm, don’t worry about it,” we hear Rush saying at the start of the film.
“It’s culture that killed the people.” If we understand what they mean, that’s largely because it’s threatening to kill the rest of us too.
Grade: C “Titan: The OceanGate Disaster” premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Festival.
Although Mark Monroe’s “Titan: The OceanGate Disaster” is too thoroughly researched and well-sourced to be mistaken for one of those eerie documentaries that appear on Hulu a week after a significant American tragedy (the topics range from the Astroworld tragedy to the Diddy trial and the Fyre Festival), this watchably macabre piece of Netflix content somehow feels both too soon and too late at the same time.
Naturally, the phrase “too soon” is a relative one these days, as the news media, both social and network, were giddy with anticipation over this story long before it was officially confirmed that OceanGate founder Stockton Rush and the four people on board his Titan submersible had perished on June 18, 2023, when the capsule imploded as it plunged towards the Titanic’s wreckage. That may not seem like it was that long ago, but the past 24 months have seen more news cycles than some of the 24 years prior, and time has become so compressed that Stockton Rush and the 113-year-old shipwreck that called him to his death could as well have been part of the same ancient history.
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That being said, the OceanGate tragedy is still so recent—and, more significantly, so well-known—that Monroe’s documentary would need to delve much deeper to make the case for revisiting it yet again. Although the film’s nature and design aren’t particularly cynical, its forensic tone belies the familiarity of its evidence, and its subject has already been thoroughly examined, making it difficult to believe that Monroe’s attempts to remove that telltale true-crime stench—the strong smell of a once-proud medium that has been allowed to rot on streaming—were sincere.
Yes, it is beneficial that Monroe presents this story as a warning against giving in to personality cults (though there is no other way to frame it), and the Elon Musk of it all gives the documentary a current relevance that supports its timing. However, the disaster’s dramatic irony is too strong for “Titan” to ignore, and — cue the menacing violins — what could have been a more insightful examination of “visionary” culture instead consists of rubbernecking at a wealthy jerk whose death has always been more notable for the widespread schadenfreude it sparked than for its horrific circumstances.
If anyone is reading this, they probably already know everything there is to know about Stockton Rush, which “Titan” interprets as permission to avoid going any further. However, the videos Monroe uses to support his accusations against the square-jawed CEO are more damning than anything I recall seeing on television at the time of the incident. The CEO apparently thought that his natural greatness was the best safety precaution any submarine could ever hope to have on board. At the beginning of the movie, Rush is heard saying, “Don’t worry about an alarm if you hear it.”. “The best course of action is to take no action. Later, Monroe inserts a panel show clip in which Rush asserts that Titan’s carbon fiber hull is “pretty much invulnerable.”. Rush merely smiles and nods in agreement when the interviewer says that others have made similar remarks regarding the Titanic. History rarely treats men who treat it with disrespect.
As expected, “Titan” begins with footage taken shortly before the tragedy to set the stage for the deaths that will occur. However, instead of just going back in time and navigating through the years from there (with a number of talking heads available to discuss their individual experiences working with Rush), Monroe chooses a more abrasive format that alternates between the founding of OceanGate and the congressional hearings that followed its demise. That strategy does not explain the movie’s lack of interest in Rush’s private life or the underlying reasons for his egotism, but it does highlight how everyone—aside from the Titan’s victims—knew that the Titan’s implosion was fated.
Rush’s passengers, who were never categorized as such because doing so would have subjected OceanGate to more government regulations that its CEO so blatantly disregarded, are largely left out of this film, which is a glaring omission for a movie that focuses so heavily on the practical aspects of how charisma can entice people to disregard common sense. Though the exception “Titan” makes for deep-sea explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet is laden with the suggestion that he should have known better, I suspect the decision was primarily made out of sensitivity for the innocent dead. Sidonie, Nargeolet’s daughter, consented to be interviewed for the movie, but her testimony serves more to evoke our feelings than to clarify her father’s decisions.
Monroe instead concentrates on OceanGate’s former workers, such as operations director David Lochridge, who exposed Rush’s business and was promptly let go after realizing the dangers involved. Additionally, “Titan” describes those risks in great and detailed detail, particularly with regard to Rush’s use of carbon fiber for the Titan hull as an inexpensive substitute for industry-standard steels and alloys (the part where the CEO boasts about his new hires from Boeing made my stomach drop). Hearing the ear-splitting horror as OceanGate’s engineers test the material is a different experience than reading about what it sounded like when the fiber started to crack. When Rush boasted that OceanGate was “doing weird shit,” Monroe skillfully uses archival footage like that to pique our curiosity and give the meaning a tangible context, all without using footage from the actual tragic dive. “.”.
The carbon fiber hull, which was created with the intention of building a fleet of submersibles that would appeal to tourists and promote the brand, also perfectly captures how much OceanGate was a direct reflection of its founder. Rush became inseparable from his business, much like Steve Jobs did with Apple or Elon Musk with Tesla, to the extent that any criticism of its product was automatically interpreted as a criticism of him, and vice versa.
For this reason, it could be argued that “Titan” tells more about Rush than a more conventional biographical film ever could by examining in great detail how OceanGate changed from a science-driven company to a more ostentatious one that capitalized on public curiosity. However, Monroe’s film is too preoccupied with its own drumbeat of gory details to do much more than stare in shock at the truth about Rush’s wealth and self-assurance and shake its head at the fact that most people were unable to recognize that truth until it was too late.
Although Monroe’s documentary “Titan” is unquestionably an authoritative screen account of the events leading up to the OceanGate disaster, the story it tells is so obvious in retrospect — and its telling is so content with the macabre entertainment of exploring that obviousness — that it is limited in its ability to delve deeply into the implications of Stockton Rush and his victims’ deaths for the wider world. One of the talking heads in the movie asserts that “culture is what caused this to happen.”. “The people were killed by their culture. If we get what they’re saying, it’s mostly because it threatens to kill the rest of us as well.
Grade: C.
Tribeca Festival in 2025 marked the debut of “Titan: The OceanGate Disaster.”. Netflix will begin offering it for streaming on Wednesday, June 11.
