Movies based on recent history often face questions about accuracy. But even if high-flying scenes depict true events, fickle audiences can still believe they're fake. The joke-filled, tough-guy worker banter will undoubtedly remind some of Bruce Willis' gang of oil-drilling roughnecks from Armageddon. There were parts of Deepwater Horizon where I half-expected The Rock to arrive with his rescue helicopter from San Andreas, or the kaiju from Pacific Rim to break through the trembling ocean floor.
To adapt it, Berg leans into these Hollywood-friendly moments, and risks disrespecting the men who lost their lives in this tragedy.
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A movie like Deepwater Horizon walks a tricky tonal line: on one hand, newspaper coverage of the real-life incident crackles like an explosive action movie. Like many moments in director Peter Berg's disaster film, it's exciting, terrifying, emotionally overwhelming, and a little over the top. He follows with a climatic jump of his own, dodging fire and debris as he plummets hundreds of feet into the ocean below. He gives an inspirational pep talk to a terrified young female crew member named Andrea ( Jane the Virgin's Gina Rodriguez), then throws her off the rig. Left behind on a giant burning oil rig, electronics technician Mike Williams, played with everyman restraint by Mark Wahlberg, looks down at the flaming water of the Gulf of Mexico with fear in his eyes. ĭeepwater Horizon ends with a moment of extreme heroism. The ecosystem is expected to take years to recover.Warning: this post contains spoilers for the movie Deepwater Horizon. The Deepwater Horizon incident ended up being the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry, and recent studies have found the pollution has lead to deformities in fish stocks in the area. The impact of the spill is still being felt, though. Darkly, BP's shares actually rose after the report, reportedly based on the fact it wasn't solely responsible for the disaster.
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However, it ultimately determined BP made "a series of decisions that complicated cementing operations, added risk, and may have contributed to the ultimate failure of the cement job", which in turn allowed such a catastrophic volume of oil to flood the ocean. The final report into the Deepwater disaster found BP was most to blame, though also held Transocean and contractor Halliburton to account - the latter for laying faulty cement in the well to begin with. The leak was plugged on July 15 and eventually, on September 19 the well was declared "officially dead" by US Coast Guard admiral Thad Allen, after cement was pumped in through a relief well. Other efforts to control the spill included controlled burns, setting the seas on fire, while skipper ships attempted to scoop the oil out of the water. Oil gushed out of the well for a staggering 87 days, as repeated attempts to plug the hole failed.
The sludge spread, affecting beaches, wetlands, and wildlife. The resulting oil spill saw around 780,000 cubic meters of oil gush into the waters, impacting 180,000 square kilometers of ocean. Mike Williams, an electronics technician (and Wahlberg's character in the cinematic take on the events) later testified he had raised concerns about safety. However, US federal data revealed that "three of every four incidents that triggered federal investigations into safety and other problems on deepwater drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico since 2008 have been on rigs operated by Transocean." In an irony fit for the big screen, executives were onboard Deepwater on 20 April when the explosions wracked the vessel, celebrating seven straight years without serious accidents.
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