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India.com
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- India.com
From Downfall: The Case Against Boeing To A Thousand Cuts: 7 Underrated Documentaries That Deserve Your Watchlist
photoDetails english 2940231 Updated:Aug 02, 2025, 10:27 AM IST Lesser-Known Documentaries 1 / 8 Looking for documentaries that dig deep, hit hard, and stay with you long after the credits roll? Here are 7 lesser-known but powerful films that uncover hidden truths, challenge the status quo, and tell unforgettable stories. Downfall: The Case Against Boeing (2022) 2 / 8 Platform: Netflix A chilling exposé of how corporate greed and negligence led to two deadly crashes involving Boeing 737 MAX aircraft. The Cleaners (2018) 3 / 8 Platform: Prime Video This documentary takes you into the secret world of digital content moderators in the Philippines who clean up social media for tech giants. Tashi and the Monk (2014) 4 / 8 Platform: YouTube A short yet heartwarming documentary about a former Buddhist monk who runs a school for orphaned and abandoned children in the Himalayas. The Rescue (2021) 5 / 8 Platform: Disney+ Hotstar Tells the incredible story of the international effort to rescue 12 Thai boys and their football coach trapped in a flooded cave. The Painter and the Thief (2020) 6 / 8 Platform: Prime Video An intimate and unusual story of a Czech artist who befriends the man who stole her paintings. 13th (2016) 7 / 8 Platform: Netflix Named after the 13th Amendment, this Ava DuVernay documentary explores racial inequality and mass incarceration in America. A Thousand Cuts (2020) 8 / 8 Platform: Prime Video Follows Maria Ressa, a journalist fighting for press freedom in the Philippines against the oppressive Duterte regime.
Express Tribune
22-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
The Titan, the Max, and the cult of the visionary
In June 2023, the world momentarily paused to follow the fate of five men trapped inside a small carbon fibre tube descending into the depths of the Atlantic. Aboard the OceanGate submersible named Titan, their mission was to witness the graveyard of another failed engineering marvel — the Titanic. However, it was barely 90 minutes into their descent that the Titan lost contact with the surface ship. A multinational search effort was launched and for days, headlines speculated the possibility of survival and the fate that met the adventurers on board the submersible. TV new channels ran live updates on the oxygen levels inside the sub. On the surface, this was a story of risk, exploration, and tragedy. But as the dust settled — or rather, as the implosion was confirmed — what emerged was not a simple tale of unfortunate loss but a parable of 21st-century hubris. Just like another disaster that came before it — the crashes of two Boeing 737 Max aircrafts in 2018 and 2019, which claimed 346 lives — the Titan sub tragedy was not an accident. It was the vision of a billionaire who placed profit, reputation, and ego above human life. Netflix's twin documentaries, The Titan: The OceanGate Disaster and Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, are in many ways cinematic mirror images of one another. One probes an elite venture's audacious flirtation with death, and the other, a once-revered aerospace titan's calculated betrayal of its founding values. Together, they offer a chilling study of how capitalist incentives and delusional self-belief have hollowed out the core of safety, accountability, and engineering integrity. What the documentary reveals is that The Titan sub was no sleek marvel of deep-sea engineering. It was a patchwork of consumer-grade parts, including a video game controller used to steer it and experimental carbon fibre technology deemed unsuitable by deep-sea experts. Stockton Rush, OceanGate's founder, persisted in cutting corners and dismissing warnings. He had fired employees who raised safety concerns and sidestepped regulatory classification by labeling his vessel as an "experimental" craft. The Titan: The OceanGate Disaster doesn't just document a submersible's final voyage. It examines the psychology of its maker. Rush was a man who saw regulation as an 'obstacle to innovation' and believed himself uniquely capable of rewriting the rules. His hubris wasn't just personal; it was ideological. He believed in the mythology of the visionary entrepreneur, the kind Silicon Valley hails as disruptive geniuses, too bold for bureaucracies and too fast for rules. This myth, dangerously incubated in the echo chambers of modern capitalism, is what ultimately doomed the Titan. What makes Titan particularly unsettling is its cultural context. As the documentary smartly illustrates, the media spectacle that followed the incident became its own capitalist sideshow — clickbait headlines, Twitter jokes, and livestreamed oxygen countdowns. The actual engineering failure became less important than the cultural symbolism: rich men paying $250,000 to tour the ruins of a sunken ship, only to die en route in an imploding capsule. It was sadder than Daedalus' own son flying too close to the sun on the wings he created. The film subtly points out that the real problem is not that the story distracted us from "more important" news. The tragedy is that our social media-fueled discourse couldn't rise above simplistic binaries: Either mourn the deaths or mock them; there was no nuance to the discussion on wealth inequality and scientific exploration. A corporation falls If Titan is a story of libertarian arrogance run amok, Downfall: The Case Against Boeing is the quiet, damning chronicle of institutional rot. Directed by Rory Kennedy, Downfall traces the corporate unravelling of Boeing from a beacon of engineering excellence to a cautionary tale of financialised capitalism. When Lion Air Flight 610 crashed into the Java Sea in October 2018, and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 fell out of the sky five months later, the world wanted to blame pilot error or poor training. After all, it was unthinkable that Boeing — with its sterling legacy and global dominance — had built a flawed aircraft. 'If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going' was the tagline bandied about, such was the faith in this aerospace engineering marvel. However, Downfall strips away that illusion with surgical precision. It reveals how the 737 Max, Boeing's bestselling plane, had been designed with a secret: a deadly anti-stall system (MCAS) that pilots weren't told about, not even in manuals or simulators. The documentary makes it clear that the crashes weren't engineering mistakes — they were business decisions. Boeing had faced stiff competition from Airbus, which launched a more fuel-efficient model. Instead of designing a new aircraft from scratch, Boeing retooled the ageing 737 to save billions and rushed the Max to market. The company lobbied the FAA to forgo extensive pilot retraining, fearing it would cost sales. They won. The regulators rolled over. And 346 people died. The most powerful aspect of Downfall is its use of voices we rarely hear — the families of victims, the disillusioned engineers, the whistleblowers. One bereaved father becomes a searing voice of grief-fueled advocacy, and a former Boeing employee recalls the moment he realised the company had 'lost its soul.' These testimonies, paired with internal Boeing emails mocking regulators and boasting about 'Jedi mind tricks,' expose not just negligence but cruelty. When safety became optional at Boeing, accountability became negotiable. Capitalism with a death wish While the disasters chronicled in Titan and Downfall seem wildly different — one a private undersea expedition, the other a mass-market airliner — they are united by a deeper critique. Both documentaries argue that today's capitalism is no longer about innovation or production. It's about optics, speed, and shareholder value. Rush brashly ignored deep-sea experts because he needed hype. Boeing callously sidelined engineers because Wall Street needed dividends. In both cases, the system rewarded shortcuts and punished caution. Rush was a media darling until his hubris killed him. Boeing's CEO was paid $23 million in 2018, even as the company laid off thousands and falsified safety data. The firm spent $43 billion on stock buybacks while its planes were crashing. And when finally fined, Boeing paid $2.5 billion — less than 4% of its 2021 revenue. The pattern is unmistakable: destruction follows when corporations prioritise speed, cost-cutting, and PR over design, safety, and truth. This is not just unfair. As one analyst in Downfall puts it, 'It's not that capitalism isn't working. It's that it's no longer capable of delivering products that work.' Both films are also meditations on distraction — how capitalism commodifies even its failures. Titan became a Twitter meme faster than it became a tragedy. Downfall shows how Boeing's PR machine spun its way out of accountability, while most media outlets dropped the story once the planes were grounded. The documentaries themselves stand almost as acts of resistance: attempts to force attention back onto the lives lost, the systems failed, and the accountability evaded. The deeper tragedy is not just that people died, but that we may already be forgetting why. In our hyper-speed information In Titan, we witness the literal implosion of a vessel designed with fatal flaws by a man who believed he could bend physics to his will. In Downfall, we watch a metaphorical implosion — a company once synonymous with trust and safety reduced to an emblem of regulatory capture and corporate decay. What kind of society rewards recklessness with wealth? How did we allow institutions meant to protect us to become tools of political influence and market domination? Both are American stories. Both are capitalist stories. And both leave us with the same message: when profit becomes the only metric of success, we all become collateral damage. These documentaries are not just post-mortems; they are warnings. The sea and sky are unforgiving environments. So is reality. No matter how much money you throw at it, how many rules you bypass, or how compelling your origin myth is, eventually, the truth will catch up — with a stall, a crash, or an implosion. And when it does, it won't care how good your stock looked.
Time of India
14-06-2025
- Business
- Time of India
From Dreamliner to nightmare: The warnings Boeing may have missed as Air India crash rekindles old fears
Before every flight, cabin crew ask passengers to pay attention to safety demonstrations, an assurance that procedures are in place and risks are minimized. But a 2022 Netflix documentary on the inner workings of Boeing claimed that despite employees having raised alarms for years, many of those warnings were not always met with appropriate internal actions. After the Air India Boeing 787-8 crash in Ahmedabad on June 12, 2025, the Netflix documentary, Downfall: The Case Against Boeing , has once again become an important reminder on the questions that have been raised on Boeing's safety culture over the years. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Wärmepumpe lohnt sicht nur – wenn Ihr Haus diese Kriterien erfüllt! heizexperte Mehr erfahren Undo While investigators are still working to determine the cause of the crash, the tragedy has placed renewed attention on Boeing's internal practices and oversight history. The company's record with the 787 had been largely free of major incidents until now. Over 1,100 Dreamliners are currently flying, part of a wider fleet of over 2,500 units sold globally. Also Read: India's aviation boom is flying on fumes Live Events Yet for close observers of the company, this accident cannot be viewed in isolation. Since 2018, Boeing has faced public scrutiny over safety gaps exposed by whistleblowers, regulatory probes, and two earlier 737 Max crashes. These developments, highlighted in testimony and documentary investigations, suggest that pressures to meet production goals may have come at the cost of engineering safeguards. Though no direct connection has yet been made between those earlier lapses and the recent Air India crash , Boeing's broader safety culture remains under the spotlight. Internal warnings ignored As shown in the Netflix documentary Downfall: The Case Against Boeing , engineers and managers at Boeing had flagged safety issues long before recent crashes. These concerns intensified after two deadly 737 Max crashes between 2018 and 2019, which killed 346 people. The documentary and the investigation documents cited revealed how the company had hidden critical design flaws to avoid costly pilot retraining. Internal memos showed Boeing downplayed problems with its MCAS system, the software that contributed to both crashes. 'If we emphasize MCAS as a new function, there may be greater certification and training impact,' one internal note said. Another read, 'Externally, we would communicate it is an addition to Speed Trim. Internally continue using the acronym MCAS.' As Peter DeFazio, A senior U.S. House Democrat who oversaw a massive investigation into the Boeing 737 MAX, put it bluntly: 'Everybody at Boeing knew you can't have pilot retraining. No matter what we do, no matter how we change this plane, we've gotta pretend it's the same plane as the predecessor.' According to the documentary, one internal test found that if pilots took longer than 10 seconds to respond to MCAS failure, the outcome could be catastrophic. Yet, the system relied on a single angle-of-attack sensor, considered a basic violation of aviation safety norms. Also Read: Air India Crash- Eight Boeing 787 jets inspected so far, full fleet surveillance underway, says Aviation Minister 'You never ever have a safety-critical system that has a single point of failure,' DeFazio noted. Small incidents like bird strikes or even balloons could disable the sensor. Captain Dan Carey said, 'Believe it or not, we hit balloons, we hit birds, these things are not uncommon.' The production line that couldn't stop Even as design shortfalls were being exposed, Boeing's troubles kept piling on. Inside its factories, especially after the McDonnell Douglas merger, priorities shifted from safety to delivery deadlines. As Edward Pierson, former senior manager at Boeing's 737 factory in Renton testified, 'I had grown gravely concerned that Boeing was prioritizing production speed over quality and safety.' In 2018, as Boeing chased aggressive production targets, key safety metrics collapsed. Pierson pointed to rising metrics like 'Jobs Behind Schedule' and drops in 'Roll Out on Time,' combined with excessive overtime, causing what he called a dangerous mix of fatigue and process breakdowns. 'Workmanship mistakes, missed inspection items, incomplete paperwork, or failure to follow established test procedures, all of which add considerable risk to the safety of airplanes,.' Pierson said. Safety culture undermined Boeing's culture once encouraged people to raise safety concerns. But that shifted after McDonnell Douglas took over. John Barnett, who worked as a quality manager, described in the documentary how things changed: 'If something's not right, you need to find it and get it fixed. But instead of fixing problems, everything was about speed. You can't stop. You can't slow down,' Barnett said. 'Every time I'd raise my hand, they would attack the messenger and ignore the message.' Michael Goldfarb, a former Boeing safety expert, said the company's culture shifted after the merger. 'Historically, Boeing was a culture of telling bad news. Now it became a problem that you do not bring bad news to the boss.' Marginalized inspectors and hidden risks At Boeing's Charleston plant, which produces significant portions of the Dreamliner's fuselage, the pressure to move fast led to the marginalization of inspectors. The facility is responsible for assembling major sections of the 787, including the mid-body and aft-body fuselage structures, before final assembly. Cynthia Kitchens, who worked there between 2009 and 2016, recalled, 'They have one quality person for almost a whole building on each shift. We used to have 15.' The pressure to prioritize speed was captured in secret recordings from inside the Charleston plant. An undercover worker, as shown in the documentary, spoke to colleagues who openly admitted cutting corners: Hidden camera recordings at the plant revealed how some workers skipped safety steps to save time. One mechanic said, 'They didn't put a shim on the landing gear yesterday. On the lugs. The night shift didn't.' The colleague's reaction: 'Oh, f***.' The reason: 'They said we don't have time to f***ing put it on. Debris left inside planes Shortcuts had dangerous consequences. Barnett described daily discoveries of foreign object debris inside completed aircraft, recalling, 'Every day, we were finding crap on airplanes that people were leaving. There were drawings, tools, and fasteners.' For Barnett, One incident stood out: 'There was this one 787, and after a test flight, they found a ladder inside the horizontal stabilizer. All it would have taken was that ladder to fall up against the jackscrew assembly, and that plane would have been history.' He added: 'These are pictures of metal shavings in wire bundles. These shavings can cause a fire or a short. These aircraft fly by wire, if you have a short, it could cause malfunctions in your instruments, your landing gear, everything that runs by wire would be affected.' Whistleblowers faced retaliation when they tried to formally report concerns. 'My pay was docked for putting quality concerns in writing. They told us flat out they do not want anything in documentation so they can maintain culpable deniability,' Barnett said. Concerns about Air India deliveries Two people familiar with the Charleston 787 plant told The American Prospect that some of their deepest safety concerns involved planes delivered to Air India. At the Charleston plant, Cynthia Kitchens kept meticulous records of her time inside Boeing, including one document listing 11 Dreamliners that troubled her most. Six of them were sold to Air India. When she asked her manager if he'd let his children fly on those aircraft, he replied: 'Cindy, none of these planes are staying in America, they're all going overseas.' As per one of investigators, who worked on the documentary, employees were particularly anxious about three Air India planes scheduled for delivery in early 2014. These aircraft required rework at Boeing's Everett union facility before delivery, as per The Prospect . The Air India Dreamliner that crashed in Ahmedabad was delivered from Everett on January 31, 2014, its mid- and aft-fuselages built in Charleston. Boeing's response to MAX's investigation In response to longstanding safety concerns, the then Boeing CEO David Calhoun, during his testimony before the U.S. Senate on June 18, 2024, acknowledged the company's past failures and said, 'Much has been said about Boeing's culture. We've heard those concerns loud and clear. Our culture is far from perfect, but we are taking action and making progress.' Calhoun added that Boeing has implemented safety stand-downs, brought in external experts, and asked every employee to act as an "aviation safety advocate" to strengthen oversight and quality across its operations. However, with Kelly Ortberg now leading Boeing, the crash involving the Air India Dreamliner presents a critical test for the company's stated reforms and its commitment to safety over speed.
