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By Jamie Burton
Senior TV & Film Reporter (Interviews)
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Director James Cameron is well known for traveling down to the depths of the ocean, so naturally people are comparing his voyages to the doomed OceanGate Titan submersible.
It was announced on Thursday that debris was found in the hunt for the vessel containing five people, including the OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush. The U.S. Coast Guard said the Titan submersible was likely destroyed in a "catastrophic implosion" while diving to the site of the Titanic's wreckage in the Atlantic Ocean.
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Cameron, the filmmaker behind the 1997 film Titanic, conducted extensive research of the site for the movie. He's also been back several times since in a submersible, creating a documentary about the wreckage. In 2012 he also became the first person do a solo descent to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Deepsea Challenger submersible. Famously, Cameron and others were at the bottom of the ocean exploring the Titanic wreckage when 9/11 happened.
After the details of the OceanGate Titan disaster were revealed, people started drawing comparisons to this voyage, and others undertaken by Cameron in the past.
American sociologist and author Crystal Fleming shared a side-by-side comparison on Twitter that went viral. "On the left: the interior of James Cameron's submersible, the Deepsea Challenger. It cost $10 million. On the right: the interior of the Titan," she wrote
There is a stark contrast between the two images shared by Fleming. Though the vessels are similar in size, Cameron's Deepsea Challenger features lights, wires, computers, control panels and a fire extinguisher. The OceanGate Titan is almost completely bare in a metallic shell, with a picture of Rush holding a wireless gaming controller next to some monitors and keyboards.
Cameron opened up about the recent disaster involving OceanGate and the five people who lost their lives onboard.
"The collective 'we' didn't remember the lesson of Titanic," Cameron told Anderson Cooper on CNN Thursday. "These guys at OceanGate didn't. Because the arrogance and the hubris that sent that ship to its doom is exactly the same thing that sent those people in that sub to their fate."
"And I just think it's heartbreaking," he added. "I think it's heartbreaking that it was so preventable."
The five people who lost their lives onboard the Titan were 61-year-old Rush; French submersible pilot Paul-Henry Nargeolet, 77; billionaire British explorer Hamish Harding, 58; British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48; and his 19-year-old son Suleman Dawood.
Fleming's observation was viewed over 3.6 million times on Twitter, with thousands of people offering their own take in the comments section. Many commented on how Cameron's vehicle looked much safer than Rush's.
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"Just looking at this makes my claustrophobia flare up. I would've freaked out as soon as I saw the thing and would've forfeit my quarter of a million," wrote @thedaynameister. "I thought the controller was a joke," commented @PickledSaint zooming in on the gaming controller in Rush's hand.
"James Cameron went underwater in some Stark Trek [thing] and the Titan billionaires went underwater in a tin can with a PS2 controller," wrote @SeanSchuerman.
Many social media users mocked the use of a wireless gaming controller, but U.S. Navy submarines use a similar device to control periscopes on their vessels.
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