What did James Cameron, the director of the film ‘Titanic’ say about the missing OceanGate submarine that took the lives of five people in June 2023?
James Cameron’s “Titanic” is an epic, action-packed romance set against the ill-fated maiden voyage of the R.M.S. Titanic; the pride and joy of the White Star Line and, at the time, the largest moving object ever built.
Basically, is a story of a seventeen-year-old Rose who hails from an aristocratic family and was set to be married. When she boards the Titanic, she meets Jack Dawson, an artist, and falls in love with him.
One of the reasons that Titanic is so well remembered is that James Cameron’s film was, at the time, an undeniable achievement. The scale and accuracy of the titular ship were mind-blowing to audiences at the time, and its mix of practical and computer-animated effects was revolutionary in 1997.
Although Titanic is ultimately based on a true story and even added some real life characters, not everything in the movie actually happened. James Cameron had to either change, add, or embellish some details to fit the story he wanted to tell.
Released on December 19, 1997 in the United States, the move grossed 2.257 billion.
On Sunday June 18, 2023, a similar tragic to the ‘Titanic’ movie and even it’s reality happened and this time, OceanGate submersible that had five passengers got lost at sea and all them are now believed to be dead. This leads to many wondering what James Cameron thinks about the situation. Cameron, 68, is not only a filmmaker but an experienced diver, reportedly completing 33 trips to the ship’s wreckage site in his life. So, what has the ‘Titanic’ film director said about the incident so far? Read on for more.
What did James Cameron say about the OceanGate submarine incident?
James Cameron has reacted to the OceanGate’s Titan submersible and how he “hoped” he was wrong when “the only scenario” that he “could come up” with in his “mind that could account for that was an implosion.”
“I mean, obviously, we’re all – we’re all kind of heartsick from the outcome of this,” he told CNN host Anderson Cooper on Thursday. “And I’ve been living with it for a few days now as some of my other colleagues in the deep submergence community.”
“I watched over the ensuing days this whole sort of everybody running around with their hair on fire search, knowing full well that it was futile – hoping against hope that I was wrong but knowing in my bones that I wasn’t,” he admitted. “And so, it certainly wasn’t a surprise today, and I just feel terrible for the families that had to go through all of these false hopes that kept getting dangled, you know, as it played out.”
“I was out on a ship myself when the event happened on Sunday. The first I heard of it was Monday morning. I immediately got on my network because it’s, you know, a very small community in the deep submergence group and found out some information within about a half hour that they had lost comms and they had lost tracking simultaneously,” he added.
His Theories: James explains why he believes the submarine faced difficulties.
“The only scenario that I could come up with in my mind that could account for that was an implosion. A shock wave event so powerful that it actually took out a secondary system that has its own pressure vessel and its own battery power supply, which is the transponder that the ship uses to track where the sub is. So I was thinking of implosion then. That’s Monday morning,” he explained.
After doing an enormous amount of research and getting “confirmation that there was some kind of loud noise consistent with an implosion event,” Cameron “let all of my inner circle of people know that we had lost our comrades, and I encouraged everybody to raise a glass in their own on Monday.”
Later in the conversation, Cameron said he hopes a thorough investigation will take place to provide information to the deep submergence community and others.
James Cameron reacts to the deaths of the five people by saying ‘the similarity’ between Titanic disaster and Submersible deaths is ‘astonishing’.
The director of the Titanic movie told ABC News Thursday that the diving community was “deeply concerned” about the submersible’s safety even before Sunday’s expedition.
“A number of the top players in the deep submergence engineering community even wrote letters to the company, saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers and that it needed to be certified,” he claimed.
“I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result.”
“For us, it’s a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded,” the Canadian director surmised. “To take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going on all around the world, I think it’s just astonishing. It’s really quite surreal.”
The OceanGate Expedition submersible named Titan went missing on Sunday while venturing into the depths of the North Atlantic Ocean to view the Titanic wreckage. The Titan was equipped with an estimated 96 hours of oxygen at the start of the expedition.
On Thursday, OceanGate announced that the five people onboard a missing submersible lost their lives after they found debris that was likely caused by a “catastrophic implosion.
“We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost,” the company said.
“These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans,” the statement continued. “Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.”