Titanic: The Digital Resurrection

Disappointed. They claim this documentary will bring new information, but there was nothing really new in it, only how the ship had broke apart. Everything else has been proven before. Good if your new into the history of Titanic, a good way to give you a decent oversight. It definitely focused well on the human tradgedy and heroism. But its mostly a filler documentary and apart from the 3D scan view it doesn't bring much to the table. There are better documentaries out there. It really felt like it was just a way for to try and drag out the info and give the scientists their 15 minutes of fame. Sometimes it felt as if they were speaking to the audiences like they are children and I personally hate that condescension.

Most of what's here has been done before and better. The scans are impressive but most are a bit dark so it's hard to discern a lot of detail. Overall it's a great effort to show the entire wreck but it's nothing that hasn't been done already in other better done documentaries.

The biggest problem I had with it was the leaps they take with the facts. They present a simulation of the ship hitting the iceberg and the exact damage it did to the hull as if it's a forgone conclusion when in fact it's anything but. They are making educated guesses but in truth there's no way they can know exactly what the damage is because that part of the hull is buried in the ocean floor. They present their theory as fact when it's really just supposition. Struck me as very disingenuous.

They so this numerous times throughout the documentary and after a while it gets old. In truth they have no way of actually knowing what actually happened and are making some very large assumptions based on what's left of the ship. That's what I found most disappointing here. To the point that I almost stopped watching several times.

If you're even just an armchair expert regarding the Titanic sinking this documentary isn't going to show you anything new and the opining of the three hosts will probably begin to sound hollow to you very quickly. Still, the digital reconstruction is impressive if also very grim when you see how far the wreck has deteriorated since it was first discovered back in the 1980's. I suppose it's worth watching for that at least.

The headline says it all. While the technology is incredible, and I thoroughly enjoyed the visuals of the scans of a ship wreck we all know is destined to disappear, the remainder of this special was hollow with no clear agenda and dialogue that read like a teen attempting to hit the minimum word limit in a school paper. The messages were redundant, no real information was gleaned from the scans and while I appreciate their focus on the acts of heroism on board the ship that night, that focus was temporary as the dialogue shifted to pure speculation in a poorly executed attempt to humanize a ship wreck that is already inherently human in nature.

This was marketed as a breakthrough documentary, but if you've watched Titanic documentaries nothing much will be new here. We do however get beautiful renderings of the ship taken from underwater scans which really help to understand the wreck.

I would have liked a bit more detail about how the ship was scanned, how the huge debris field was investigated, and how the pictures were pieced together. Along with how the iceberg simulations were made (like, how do they know the shape of the iceberg?)

Still, it's entertaining enough and at 70 minutes long it was about the right length for the material presented.

This is a decent little 70 minute run-down of the sinking of the Titanic, but it is almost completely repeated information from any other Titanic documentary, meanwhile three people stand in front of huge screens showing the digital twin. This special focuses on the emotional experience of the passengers and crew and details some information about who was on board. That's fine, but I was not expecting that; based on the title and synopsis, I expected this to be a documentary about the process of the Titanic's digital resurrection. I. E., how she was scanned, how the 3D model was constructed and processed, and everything that went into creating the digital twin. There is almost nothing detailed about the digital resurrection itself.

I also think this special was made too soon, because it talks about how the scan opens up the possibilities of future investigation, but doesn't go into that yet due to how recent this was scanned.

Ultimately, if you have seen one or two Titanic documentaries AND you've already seen pictures and/or models of the new digital scan, you've essentially already seen this documentary.