5 bombshells from Netflix’s ‘OceanGate Disaster’ documentary

The summer of 2023 was wild. Moviegoers flocked to Barbenheimer, Swifties pilgrimaged to Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, and everyone watched in either horror or twisted bemusement as a search-and-rescue mission unfolded for OceanGate’s lost Titan submersible.

Tragically, the Titan, a submersible designed to visit the Titanic wreckage site, imploded, killing all five people onboard. One of them was OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, an old-money billionaire with grand ambitions to become the Elon Musk of deep-sea tourism.

Rush is the subject of a new Netflix documentary about OceanGate, the Titan submersible, and that ill-fated descent into the dark depths of the North Atlantic.

Directed by Mark Monroe, Titan: The OceanGate Tragedy assembles several of Rush’s former OceanGate colleagues, as well as multiple reporters, former colleagues, a U.S. Coast Guard investigator, and family members of the deceased, to unpack everything that went wrong at OceanGate, from design flaws and cut corners to a shocking disregard for safety protocols.

What becomes quickly obvious, though, is that this is less a documentary about OceanGate than it is about Rush, who’s painted to be as arrogant and hubristic as he was passionate and ambitious.

As one engineer puts it, “The real mistake isn’t in the idea that… we didn’t follow a set of regulations. That’s not really the mistake. It’s culture that caused this to happen. It’s culture that killed the people.”

Here are the biggest takeaways from Titan: The OceanGate Disaster.

Rush’s design for the Titan was flawed from the start

Rush’s dream of transporting tourists to the Titanic wreckage, which sits more than two miles below the surface off the coast of Newfoundland, was a noble one. He desired to build a submersible that could travel to such depths using cheaper, more lightweight materials that would allow for mass production and greater recreational use. Unfortunately, that dream turned into an all-consuming obsession.

The bulk of the documentary centers around Rush’s decision to build a submersible with carbon fiber as the primary material. Carbon fiber is strong, yet lighter and cheaper than the titanium typically used on deep-ocean submersibles. But it’s also less durable, which poses significant risks.

“If you can realize that dream of a carbon-fiber submersible, you can drop the price, you can suddenly have fleets of these submersibles operating around the world,” explains Wired journalist Mark Harris in the documentary. “It’s not like metal. Titanium is extremely well-understood. Carbon fiber is extremely idiosyncratic, in that the little fibers inside there can snap. And that snap, it actually creates a sound.”

Indeed, the snaps of carbon fiber in the footage of Titan’s dives are among the most nerve-shredding details in the documentary. Rush tried to pass them off as natural, but Tony Nissen, a former director of engineering at OceanGate, asserted that wasn’t the case. “[It’s] still breaking. You don’t want to hear that anymore. Because if it’s not breaking, it’s intact.”

While some engineers were keen to work with Rush on testing a carbon-fiber deep-ocean submersible, testing was, to be generous, inconsistent. Instead of reconfiguring, though, Rush barreled forward, firing employees who raised safety concerns and hiding failures — such as a crack developing on an earlier submersible model’s hull — from the media.

What surfaces time and again in the documentary, though, is that carbon fiber was never the right material for a deep-ocean sub. As Patrick Lahey, CEO of Triton Submarines, told The New Yorker in 2023, “it’s a capricious f—ing material, which is the last f—ing thing you want to associate with a pressure boundary.”

OceanGate performed a handful of successful dives to the Titanic in the Titan, but, according to Rob McCallum, a former expedition leader and deep-sea exploration expert with numerous dives to the wreck, that’s not an indication of long-term success.

“There was no way of knowing when it was going to fail, but it was a mathematical certainty that it would fail,” he alleges in the documentary. “So having a dive or two or 10 to Titanic is not a measure of success.”

McCallum added, “[Rush] had every contact in the submersible industry telling him not to do this. But once you start down the path of doing it entirely yourself and you realize you’ve taken a wrong turn right at the beginning… particularly for Stockton, you have to admit you were wrong. That’s a big pill to swallow.”

Rush is characterized as a “narcissist” who cultivated a “cult-like” atmosphere at OceanGate

Nearly everyone who worked for Rush at OceanGate describes him as some variation of arrogant, stubborn, or unbending. In the documentary, Nissen calls him a “borderline clinical psychopath” who was “definitely a narcissist.” That narcissism, combined with a lack of understanding regarding the risks of the Titan, resulted in an unbending belief in his own creation.

Rush’s zealousness is on full display in previously unreleased audio from an OceanGate meeting played in the documentary. “I don’t want anybody in this company who is uncomfortable with what we’re doing,” he declares. “We’re doing weird s— here, and I am definitely out of the mold. There’s no question. I am doing things that are completely non-standard. And I’m sure the industry thinks I’m a f—ing idiot. That’s fine, they’ve been doing that for eight years. And I’m gonna continue on the way I’m doing, but I’m not going to force people to join my religion if they don’t want to.”

As Rush fired more and more employees who raised safety concerns, he began surrounding himself with younger engineers, many of whom were right out of college. His mention of “religion” dovetails with McCallum’s characterization of the OceanGate team as it evolved over time.

“It just became such a tight group of people who had such strong belief in what they thought they were doing that it became almost cult-like,” he explains in the documentary.

David Lochridge, who served as OceanGate’s director of marine operations, sums it up thusly: “[Rush] wanted fame. First and foremost, to fuel his ego. Fame. That was what he wanted, and he’s got it.”

OceanGate worked around U.S. law by calling passengers “mission specialists”

To take paying passengers on a submersible, the vessel must be “classed,” or, in other words, certified as safe by a third party. Since the Titan was not classed — Rush told colleagues he had no interest in doing so — and OceanGate needed income, Rush had to implement workarounds to take people on expeditions. One of those workarounds? Calling passengers “mission specialists.”

“The term ‘mission specialist’ is a workaround,” explains McCallum. “There are some rules about operating vessels at sea. Those rules differ based on whether you’re a crew member or a paying passenger. Stockton was trying to confuse them, ensuring that nobody was ever referred to as a passenger. It was just one of the steps OceanGate took to make sure they could work around U.S. legislation.”

McCallum elaborated while speaking with the New Yorker. “[Under] U.S. regulations, you can kill crew. You do get in a little bit of trouble, in the eyes of the law. But, if you kill a passenger, you’re in big trouble. And so everyone was classified as a ‘mission specialist.’”

Furthermore, he says mission specialists didn’t buy tickets. Instead, they “contributed an amount of money set by Rush to one of OceanGate’s entities, to fund their own missions.”

Bill Price, a mission specialist interviewed in the documentary, explains that he appreciated the “total transparency” of the operation, noting that he and other mission specialists signed waivers making it very clear they were riding an “experimental” and unclassed vessel and that they could die.

What gave him confidence, he says, was Rush’s willingness to join them on the journey, as well as the presence of Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a Titanic expert and seasoned deep-sea explorer who later died in the implosion. A similar sentiment was echoed by David Pogue, a reporter with CBS News, who previously joined Rush for a dive.

Rush allegedly declared he could “buy a congressman” if OceanGate ran into legal issues

Former OceanGate employee Matthew McCoy, speaking at a Coast Guard investigation hearing, testified that Rush told him he was willing to “buy a congressman” to make any legal issues go away. He says he resigned the day after this exchange.

McCoy was addressing Rush’s attempts to circumvent U.S. law by “flagging the Titan in the Bahamas and launching out of Canada so that they wouldn’t fall under U.S. jurisdiction.” But the allegation speaks to a ruthlessness in Rush that many former employees touch on in the documentary.

Lochridge faced Rush’s wrath after raising safety concerns following an inspection. He alleges that he was fired in 2018 due to his report, and fearing that a disaster was imminent, he had contacted the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) with his concerns.

After learning that Lochridge went to OSHA, he says OceanGate’s lawyers descended on him. According to Lochridge, who hails from Scotland, they threatened to take away his home and his green card. “The intent was to shut us down,” Lochridge says in the documentary. “Basically keep me quiet so they could proceed with their project. Get out to Titanic and get people out there.”

Nissen alleges that the day Lochridge was fired, Rush told him that “it would be nothing for [me] to spend $50,000 to ruin somebody’s life.”

Rush could easily afford a prolonged legal battle, but Lochridge couldn’t. Though he countersued in federal court, Lochridge ultimately withdrew his complaint as his savings dwindled.

Rush allegedly wanted to make OceanGate’s former finance director a lead pilot

After firing Lochridge, Rush allegedly became fixated on hiring a female lead pilot. According to Bonnie Carl, OceanGate’s former director of finance and administration, he wanted to appoint her to the position despite her lack of engineering experience.

“Stockton went along as though, well, Bonnie’s going to be our next lead pilot,” she explains. “‘This is going to be great. We’re going to have a female lead pilot. This is gonna play well to the media.’ And I remember thinking, ‘What’s happening? Are you nuts? I’m an accountant.'”

Carl quit OceanGate soon after.

Where can I watch Titan: The Oceangate Disaster?

Titan: The Oceangate Disaster is now streaming on Netflix.

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly‘s free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.