Over the last couple of weeks, the eyes of the world have been firmly focused on the North Atlantic, where a drama has been playing out underneath the waves a few hundred miles off the coast of Newfoundland. As everyone now knows, the tragedy of theTitanic’s sinking in 1912 has been added to in the saddest possible fashion: on June 18, during a tourist expedition to view the wreck, the private submersibleTitan imploded with the loss of all hands.
Among the myriad expressions of sadness and grief on social media in the days following the accident, there have also been recriminations directed at a company that appears to have taken a somewhat cavalier approach to the business of building a submersible for ultra-deep dives. Interspersed with these, however, have been comments to the effect that, you know… this story would make a good film.
Reader, it really wouldn’t. Here’s why the OceanGate Titan accident should never make it to the silver screen.
Related:James Cameron Says Tourist Sub Tragedy is Strikingly Similar to the Titanic Disaster
Two Sinkings Featuring Pride Before a Fall
Much has been made in recent days about the attitude of the man behind the Titan to safety. OceanGate’s CEO Stockton Rush, who died piloting the Titan, was bold, imaginative, and highly ambitious – but he is also on record as claiming thatsafety issues were getting in the wayof technological innovation when it came to deep-sea diving.
In deciding to use carbon fiber as the material for the submersible’s hull, rather than titanium (the industry standard), Rush succeeded in cutting costs but also created the conditions for a catastrophic failure: carbon fiber is more susceptible to fatigue and was more likely to fail without warning. Less than two hours into the June 18 dive, contact with the submersible was lost – and the following week, the sub’s remains were found on the ocean floor, just a couple of hundred meters away fromTitanic’s bow.
The parallels with theTitanic’s story are plain. TheTitanicwas widely considered to be, if not unsinkable, then sufficiently safe to withstand anything nature could throw at it, much as Rush downplayed the perils involved in the Titan’s dives while talking up its dubious safety; and the comparison between the steamship’s many first-class passengers representing the highest echelons of American and European society andthe billionaire’s pastimethat is deep-sea ocean diving is another obvious parallel. As the saying goes, history never repeats itself, but it often rhymes – and some rhymes are just too cruel to bear recounting.
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Sensitivity to Those Who Were Lost
OceanGate’s well-heeled clientele have also come in for comment online, with some commentators claiming they ought to have known better than to book a trip with a company who described their own submersible as “experimental,” and who, because they were operating in international waters, did not seek to have the vehicle certified by a regulatory body.Titanicdirector James Cameron, who visited the wreck many times in a titanium-hulled submersible, has spoken at length on the importance of safety on such expeditions.
Much of this talk is, to put it mildly, rather insensitive. With the crew’s friends and acquaintances still in grief, not to mention the families of those who died, the apportioning of blame among those who, after all, simply wanted to take a look at the most famous shipwreck in the world close-up seems like a case of “too much, too soon” – and so would dramatizing the accident and showing the result in movie theaters.
The film industry has tilted at these windmills before. The most obviousexample is Oliver Stone’sWorld Trade Center, the Nicolas Cage movie that came out in 2006, less than five years after 9/11. In that case, however, there was a palpable sense that, in some way, the film helped in the processing of what happened and also told a tale of heroism on the part of the firefighters who responded to the disaster.
Neither of those justifications work when it comes to the Titan. It was an isolated accident that happened to a handful of people whose friends and relatives are still coming to grips with what happened. Under the circumstances, it’s best to leave it be.
Where’s the Story?
Besides which… what is there to make a film about? The crew did not even reach theTitanic, and as far as can be made out, the implosion that destroyed the submersible was (mercifully) almost instantaneous.
The sort of sustained peril and ethical dilemma featured in,say,The Abyss(1989), in which a submersible containing two people gradually floods with only one diving suit on board, simply didn’t happen here. To make any sort of compelling drama out of the accident would mean substantially altering the narrative – at which point, creators may as well simply write a brand-new work anyway.
The massive amount of interest generated by Titan’s fateful end online pretty much ensures we’ll be seeing a spate of dramas set in the deep ocean in the next few years – but if the makers have any sense, they’ll situate the action in the realm of fiction, where it belongs.
