‘Titan: The OceanGate Disaster' Review: A Company's Failures

It was only a matter of time before a flurry of documentaries about the Titan submersible disappearance turned up on streaming platforms. The event captured the world's attention in 2023 after the vessel, operated by the company OceanGate Expeditions, vanished in the North Atlantic, triggering a days-long search for survivors.
Netflix's 'Titan: The OceanGate Disaster' offers an adequate rundown of the story. Directed by Mark Monroe, the film wisely does not linger in the lurid details of the Titan's catastrophic end, and instead uses an investigative framing that sketches the company's origins and use of carbon fiber while chronicling a series of problematic dives leading up to its final plunge. As it catalogs OceanGate's failures, the documentary spotlights the faulty judgment of one man: the company co-founder and chief executive Stockton Rush, who died in the implosion.
That Rush mismanaged his employees and played fast and loose while priming Titan is, by this point, old news. And creatively, 'Titan: The OceanGate Disaster' often relies on familiar techniques, such as a continuous, synth-heavy score and sensationalist chyrons for interviewees: the insider, the investigator, the whistleblower.
But audio recordings that capture Rush in fits of frustration, alongside startling footage of him cutting corners during an expedition — 'close enough,' he declares, after reaching 3,939 meters on a dive meant to hit 4,000 — lay bare his grandiosity. Add to that the haunting sound of carbon fibers breaking at depth and one appreciates the case for giving this well-known story an audiovisual treatment, even if it is a standard one.
Titan: The OceanGate DisasterNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. Watch on Netflix.

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CNET

2 hours ago

• CNET

The New OceanGate Doc Hit Netflix's Top 10, but There's Another Titan Doc You Should See

Every week, Netflix unveils its Top 10 lists for the week before, ranking TV shows and movies by viewership. Netflix's Titan: The OceanGate Submersible Disaster was the no. 2 film on Netflix's Top 10 the week of June 9, but the documentary about the deadly 2023 Titan submersible implosion isn't the only film about the catastrophic undersea tragedy. Another, Max's Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster, started streaming in May. Both reveal the lengths that explorer and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush went to in order to send his innovative but flawed submersible to the depths of the Titanic, but is one of these films better or more informative than the other? Both films are compelling, and each one features key witnesses with firsthand knowledge and experience aboard the sub who offer unique perspectives, all of them claiming that the sub's implosion was inevitable. The same points are made in both docs, but the information doesn't feel overly repetitive. Because of that, they complement each other and offer a clearer picture of what happened when taken together. I hate to say it (for time's sake), but if you're invested in the topic, it's absolutely worth watching both. But if you had to pick just one, I do have a recommendation. Both of these Titan documentaries arrived on streaming around the second anniversary of Titan's final, fatal dive, June 18, 2023. Both of them ultimately point to Rush being aware of the flaws and safety concerns regarding Titan, and despite the many whistleblowers around him, he chose to dismiss their concerns. (Titan had several issues, but the two biggest were its cylindrical shape, which didn't distribute pressure evenly, and the fact that it was constructed with an experimental carbon fiber hull, a material that had not been sufficiently tested to withstand deep-sea pressure at the depths of the Titanic.) The Netflix doc, for the most part, features interviews with former OceanGate employees and points to a flawed company culture that required unwavering loyalty to Rush. As the film shows, anyone who dared to raise concerns over faulty science was eventually forced out. One employee in particular, David Lochridge, a submersible pilot and OceanGate's former director of marine operations, is depicted as the primary whistleblower at OceanGate. Lochridge was a high-level employee at the company who would eventually be fired for voicing his concerns about Titan's design and was later threatened with a lawsuit by OceanGate when he tried to make his safety claims public. The documentary includes audio and video recordings of heated conversations between Lochridge and Rush, and footage of a dive to see the shipwreck the Andrea Doria, which required Lochridge to pilot the sub out of harm's way after Rush ensnared their vessel under the shipwreck's hull. Lochridge is just one of several former OceanGate employees on record in the film who left the company because they refused to be complicit in a potential situation that might place unsuspecting participants in harm's way. But Lochridge's anger at Rush -- and at the Titan's outcome -- is evident. "He wanted fame," Lochridge says of Rush at the end of the Netflix documentary. "First and foremost. To fuel his ego. Fame. That was what he wanted, and he's got it." The Discovery documentary, Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster, which is available on Max, features interviews with some of the same players as the Netflix doc but focuses on the US Coast Guard's investigation into the sub's implosion, and interviews with Josh Gates, host of Discovery's Expedition Unknown. Gates himself has been aboard the Titan and had planned to feature the submersible in an episode of his show, but grew so concerned after the "cascade of problems" the sub experienced on his trip that he refused to air the footage he planned to produce. "It wasn't just a red flag for me," Gates said of Rush's attitude toward the safety measures on board Titan, "It was like a flare had gone up." The film also features footage not included in Netflix's documentary of the moment that the topside ship lost communication with Titan, a haunting scene that shows Rush's wife, Wendy, the communications director on board, asking, "What was that bang?" after losing contact with the sub. I followed the story of Titan casually when the sub went missing in June 2023. Essentially, I believed it was all a terrible, tragic accident. But after watching both of these documentaries, it seems like the Titan's implosion could have been prevented. The submersible was missing for four days, and in that time, the world at large held out some hope that it was simply missing, and that those on the dive would be found safe somewhere in the North Atlantic. But both films make it abundantly clear that anyone familiar with Titan knew immediately when they heard the sub was missing that it suffered the same fate as the Titanic itself. Lochridge's accounts of his time at OceanGate in the Netflix doc help paint Stockton Rush as a boss reluctant to admit his company's shortcomings, and his testimony alone is stunning to see. But if I had to suggest just one of these films to watch, Max's version, which features testimony from the Coast Guard's inquiry, an interview with Christine Dawood, the wife and mother of two of the victims on board, and Josh Gates' footage from his own trip on Titan, simply answers more questions about how this disaster happened and the impact it left behind. But chances are, if you watch one of them, you'll get hooked and watch both anyway, like I did.

Fox News

4 hours ago

• Fox News

Barbara Walters turned down Clint Eastwood romance because she didn't ‘mix business with pleasure'

Print Close By Brie Stimson Published June 23, 2025 Barbara Walters told it like it was. The pioneering journalist, who died in 2022 and is the subject of a new documentary streaming this month, paved the way for other female reporters who followed her, breaking ground with news-making interviews. But she was also controversial. Here are six highlights from the new documentary "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything." BARBARA WALTERS' TOUGH INTERVIEWS 'HAVEN'T AGED WELL,' FORMER COLLEAGUE CLAIMS Flirtatious moment with Clint Eastwood While interviewing Clint Eastwood at his California ranch in 1982, Walters and the "Dirty Harry" actor discussed how he keeps most of his feelings inside, often not even sharing his worries with romantic partners. "You would drive me nuts, and I would drive you crazy because I would be saying, 'But didn't you? Or haven't you?'" Walters told Eastwood as they sat facing each other on a picnic bench. "Well, we could try it and see if it worked out," he answered dryly with a smirk. They both then laughed awkwardly, and Walters answered, "We'll start with this interview and if this is OK, we'll say, 'Well, maybe we'll do another interview… and…" After a long pause, Walters said to the camera, "I think we'll stop and reload" as everyone burst out in laughter. "Barbara had her fill of romance," gossip columnist Cindy Williams said in the documentary. "She thought a lot of guys were sexy. She was interested in the possibility of sex. She liked it. She liked men." "She was never cynical about love, and she was definitely a romantic kind of person," makeup artist Lori Klein said. "But romance just never worked in her life for long." Walters revealed on "The Tonight Show" in 2014 that Eastwood had asked her out to dinner after the interview, but she said no because she had work. "This is a sad love story," she told host Jimmy Fallon. "I did this interview with Clint Eastwood something like 30 years ago. He was very flirtatious, and I was very taken (with him). He asked me if I wanted to have dinner... and I said, 'No, I have to work.' You know, I don't mix business with pleasure," which she said she later regretted. "I could have been Mrs. Clint Eastwood!" she added. Obsession with 'money, fame and power' "She was obsessed with three things: She was obsessed with money, fame and power," Peter Gethers, the editor of her autobiography, told the documentary. "When I would have conversations with her about her father, her father was a scoundrel. Her father was irresponsible with money, he was not a perfect family man. Scoundrel was the right word. And I think she was both horrified by that and attracted to that." He said one of the most difficult things in editing her autobiography was dealing with her close relationship with the late attorney Roy Cohn. "I said to her, 'I would put Roy Cohn in my top 10 of horrible people in the 20th century,'" Gethers said. "But she loved him." Williams explained that because Cohn was famous, "it was worthwhile for Barbara. Barbara was famous, so it was worthwhile for Roy. They were two people who loved PR." 'PSYCHO' ACTRESS VERA MILES PUT FAMILY BEFORE FAME, STEPPED AWAY FROM STARDOM ON HER TERMS: AUTHOR Walters didn't have the 'strongest moral compass' and was 'transactional' Gethers also claimed that Walters "didn't have the strongest moral compass. A lot of the relationships she developed were career moves. And she was a pretty transactional person." Walters once explained a controversial favor Cohn did for her. "When my father lost everything, he also had not paid his taxes in New York. And Roy Cohn said, 'Don't worry about it,'" Walters was quoted as saying in the documentary. "'I will take care of it.' I don't know how he did it. I don't know what judges he talked to. I forgot about ethics, and I had been severely criticized by my friends and I can understand because Roy did some terrible things, but this was my father and he saved him." Gethers elaborated, "She didn't see things in that kind of moral light. That stuff was always in the shadows. She could forgive anyone who was really good to her no matter what they did in the other parts of their lives." "You can never know about what's transactional, what's not, but you can wonder," David Sloan, ABC News executive producer, said of Walters. Jealous of Diane Sawyer Martin Clancy, a former ABC News producer, said in the documentary, "Barbara watched Diane warily because she was really in the same altitude as Barbara. Other correspondents were not a threat. I think Barbara secretly resented Diane for being younger." Reporter Cynthia McFadden explained that Sawyer had booked Katharine Hepburn "fair and square" for an interview once and Walters put "a lot of pressure" on the actress to do an interview with her instead, but Hepburn wouldn't do it. "If I showed up on Mars, she would have a note there in the Barbara Walters stationery just requesting an interview with anybody who might happen to show," Sawyer jokingly said in a clip shared on the documentary. Reporter Connie Chung said she realized "how stupid" she was to accept a job at ABC working with Sawyer and Walters while they were "in this monstrous spat to win stories and I was caught in the middle." McFadden said she spoke with Walters about Sawyer many times, and she was "certainly dogged by Diane's very existence. She often said Diane was the perfect woman. She used the word 'blonde goddess.' This ideal woman. And she, Barbara, couldn't compete with that. She could work harder, she could know more people, but she couldn't compete with that. The blonde goddess." BARBARA WALERS LEFT BEHIND MESSAGES ABOU THEIR 'SENSE OF ISOLATION' AS A CHILD – AND WHAT DROVE HER SUCCESS Victor Neufeld, a former ABC executive producer, said Walters would tell him, "Diane is married to Mike Nichols. I'm not married to Mike Nichols. I would say, 'Barbara, you can marry anybody you want.' Her insecurities were really nightmarish." McFadden added, "This has been interpreted, I think, by a lot of people to say that Barbara was not good to other women. And I think that is a canard. Not at all. She couldn't tolerate having Diane Sawyer rise in what she saw as a direct challenge to what she had accomplished. What a sadness. Talk about the death of joy." She 'neglected' her personal life for the sake of her career Walters is quoted in the documentary as saying that she was 23 years old when she first got married and went straight from her parents' house to her first home with her husband. "And it was a marriage that never should have been," she said. She also adopted her only child, Jackie, when she was in her 30s during her second marriage. "This idea of a working mother seemed like an oxymoron. People didn't think you could take care of a child or take care of a husband and have a full-time job," Katie Couric said of Walters' struggle to balance motherhood and her career. Walters explained once that she only took two days off after she adopted her daughter. Walters once said she was disappointed when her second marriage ended because, at that time, their daughter was 4. "I don't think I was very good at marriage. It may be that my career was just too important. It may have been that I was a difficult person to be married to, and I wasn't willing perhaps to give that much. But through it all there was this career I felt I needed to have, and I loved it." She added, "When I was in my 20s and 30s, when I should have been dating, I was working day and night. I didn't have those kinds of years. I didn't have those years until I was in my 30s and 40s. Mine was a very delayed romantic period." Walters said in an interview she didn't realize how much Jackie struggled with having a mother who was a celebrity, revealing that she ran away when she was 16. "She had a charged, complex relationship with her daughter," Oprah Winfrey said. "I remember her telling me once it's really fulfilling having children, and you should really think about it, and I was like 'OK, but I'm looking at you, so no,'" Winfrey said, adding that she knew she could only do one thing well and being a mother and a career woman are both sacrifices. CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT NEWSLETTER McFadden said Walters told her "many times that she'd made mistakes as a mother, she'd made choices for herself, for her work." "The View" co-host Joy Behar said she didn't think anything was ever enough for Walters. "But that was her secret to keep getting better and striving all the time. I think that her personal life suffered because of that." "I felt like she neglected her personal life and poured so much into her work life that I'm not sure she was a truly happy person." — Katie Couric on Barbara Walters Walters was quoted as saying that young people would come up to her and say they wanted to be her. "And I say, 'You have to take the whole package.'" She also once said on "The View," "To this day I feel guilty" about not being there for her daughter enough. McFadden, who interviewed Jackie as an adult about her relationship with her mother, said she felt Walters worried their relationship was "shaky" and thought she and her daughter might have "fallen out again." Walters said once, "Look, are there times when I look at people, I've got a friend, for example, who's got four children and 11 grandchildren, and she says, 'Look at your life,' and I say, 'Look at your life. I mean, how rich you are. Four children, 11 grandchildren. That's richness.' But I don't have that. I didn't take that path." Couric added, "I felt like she neglected her personal life and poured so much into her work life that I'm not sure she was a truly happy person. And I remember thinking I want to make sure that I have a family, that I don't just have a big job, and I always got the sense that Barbara wished she had paid more attention to that." Gethers said, "I never got the sense from talking to her that there was one love of her life. Her job was the love of her life. I mean, when she would glow, she wouldn't glow talking about the men in her life, she would glow talking about creating 'The View.' She was as driven a person as I've ever met." LIKE WHAT YOU'RE READING? CLICK HERE FOR MORE ENTERTAINMENT NEWS Oprah suggests Walters stole Monica Lewinsky interview from her Before Walters did Monica Lewinsky's first sit-down interview in 1999 that was watched by 70 million people, Winfrey suggested she was set to talk to the infamous former intern. "We had an agreement with Monica Lewinsky's team, and then Barbara swooped in," Winfrey said, "and said to Lewinsky, I can give you a better deal. I can not only do a primetime Barbara Walters special, but I can offer you 'Nightline,' I can offer you 'Good Morning America,' I can offer you…' And I just had 'The Oprah Show,' so, I didn't like that." Walter said it took her a year to get the interview, which started by getting Lewinsky's lawyer on her side. Lewinsky, who was interviewed for the documentary, said Walters made her feel "put at ease quite quickly." Winfrey added, "Because Barbara had been number one, she had been it, she had been the madam, she saw that as her rightful place in the space, and if there was something that deserved a special one-on-one interview, I think she felt that she was the one who was supposed to have it. And 9.9 times out of 10 she got it." CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything" will premiere on Hulu on June 23. Print Close URL

Washington Post

5 hours ago

• Washington Post

‘Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything' could have told us more

There's nothing wrong with ''Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything,' the new Hulu documentary about the late broadcasting icon. It's an extremely thorough and enjoyable recap of the life of an extraordinary, pioneering television journalist. But it never really goes deeper than that. Jackie Jesko's star-studded film features testimonials from television legends such as Oprah Winfrey and Katie Couric about the role that Walters played — both in their lives and for the industry. Some of Walters's most prominent sit-down subjects are also featured, including comedian Bette Midler and Monica Lewinsky, who both attest to her humanity and character. The film does a good job of telling her whole story, beginning with a difficult childhood and ending with her departure from ABC and all of the 'mixed feelings' (her words) she had about stepping away after 50 years on television. It also charts the sexism, and sexist anchors, that she had to overcome to rise the ranks. A 'warts and all' look at Walters, the film drives home the point that what made her so good on television — an extreme dedication to her craft and an insatiable competitiveness — also hurt her personal and family life. It includes a strong section that poses thorny questions about the ethical implications of Walters's approach to landing interviews with some of world's most hated and feared figures, including an uncomfortable-to-watch-now meeting with Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi and his family. 'I think Barbara would be friends with the devil if it would get the interview,' a former ABC News producer says in the film. It's less clear what the ultimate goal of the film was. Did the filmmakers set out to provide a historical accounting of her career and legacy? Mission accomplished. Or were they hoping to make something that connected her story to the present moment and used it as a window into how television has changed, how it continues to change and what that means for the future? If so, the film falls short. There are, to be clear, some astute observations made about how things are different today than they were in Walters's heyday, when news shows regularly attracted tens of millions of viewers. As recently as 1999, her '20/20' interview with Lewinsky was watched by about 70 million people, a near impossibility today for a distracted populace that spends their evenings scrolling on their phones instead of sitting down for a prescheduled program. 'There's a certain feeling you get when you're watching something knowing that everyone is watching the same thing at that very same moment,' Couric says in the film. 'And that doesn't exist anymore, and I think that's when Barbara was the queen.' Winfrey also talks about how celebrities today no longer need gatekeepers and go straight to the audience. 'There really is no place for a Barbara Walters interview now because everybody does their own interviews,' she says. But the film doesn't explore that keen observation. It doesn't talk about what is lost when newsmakers no longer have to go through someone like Walters to talk to the public. It doesn't address how an Instagram Live video from a pop star is not news or journalism. And it doesn't necessarily connect the dots at a larger level and examine the slow-motion collapse of the television industry, which has been shedding relevance and revenue because it no longer serves the role it once did. Those big newsmaker interviews, for example, helped subsidize some of the less profitable aspects of the television business, meaning that networks today just cannot cover the world like they used to. These days, 'scoops' still matter, but they can't fundamentally change the outlook for a network that is competing with cooking shows on Netflix for attention. While Walters was briefly shown pushing back on Donald Trump in a now-viral 1990 interview, the film doesn't dwell much on the current era in politics, a missed opportunity, as television networks — such as her former employer, ABC — struggle to cover a hostile president who has shown a desire to exact his will on the media industry. The film ends on an extremely uplifting note, with video shown of Walters's last appearance on the daytime talk show she started, 'The View.' Winfrey played emcee as she announced a long list of female television hosts who lined up to greet Walters and wish her well upon her retirement. The picture today is murkier, though. None of the broadcast evening news shows are hosted by women anymore, after Norah O'Donnell was replaced as anchor of the 'CBS Evening News' by two men, John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois, this year. If the point of the documentary is to make clear to viewers how special Walters was and how dynamic she was and how influential she was, it also made clear how irreplaceable she was, at a time when her talent at extracting information and confessions is needed more than ever. And that's a sad note to end on. Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything premieres Monday on Hulu.