Everest - Missione fatale

This program seems promising at first but then Mark Synnott opens his mouth. I was expecting a little more substance from National Geographic. Then again, perhaps they were disappointed, too. Synnott comes off as a rather self indulgent man-child who's been given a camera crew and lots of climbing gear. His commentary is so self-serving, it's ridiculous.

Comparing the unbelievably long line of summit seekers to Malory's and Irvine's experience (I mean, it's basically the same thing, right? And he just wishes he could be up there with them...) in a whiny voice tells you everything you need to know about this "documentary." My advice: give it a miss.

A Selfish summit.

Putting personal ambitions to summit ahead of historical science.

The aim of the expedition was suppose to be to find Irvine's camera. Not to summit and have no strategy/energy to look for Irvine's body or camera.

It seemed as though they had the mountain to themselves in the window they had. Why didn't the take the 'direct route' up to the summit along irvines route.

A more scientific process would have drawn more conclusions than a Nat geo funded summit for a couple of guys who "never had the desire to summit" until it was funded with camera crew.

Save yourself 1hour..

The version found for free on Youtube is called "The Ghosts Above" and is 36 minutes long, but I have watched many such docs with exactly the same fake "goal". This search for a camera from a 1924 climb is actually a idea many climbers have. It's just a cheap way to give your summit a "point". You either do it to push yourself, to do fake "research", or to do some fake historical studies. It's largely just an excuse to climb the mountain and then make a doc about it to earn some profit.

In the "research" docs on Everest you never see any actual research or even measurements. And you also have to wonder what new and crucial research you could even do there as you also summit the mountain?

This doc is a short doc jumping from shot to shot. Some shots are cool, but they last 3-5 seconds and then we see something new. It feels a bit like a Powerpoint slideshow. The music is VERY LOUD. This part is hard to understand music is obviously crucial for these docs. But when it's this loud you can't hear the dialogue or focus on the story. The narration is... super... slow... he... speaks... like... this. It's curious because the interviews have way faster speaking voices even in the death zone where people have a hard time speaking or moving. It's slow on purpose to add some artistic depth to it, but instead the narrator/producer just sounds overly depressed, tired and completely unengaged. It feels like he really didn't want to be there or record the narration which obviously makes you not really want to see his personal journey either.

They talk about how Sherpas carry 3 times more weight than the climbers and you feel like they are talking down to Sherpas as they talk about friendship and respect in extremely on the nose ways. There is no personal connection it's just this "we must respect Sherpas" fakeness. Either way it's an oxygen climb where Sherpas do most of the work so it's pretty much a tourist climb where you just pay to get up. Ropes are fixed, Sherpas work hard, the climbers largely just need to move slowly upward without any thinking or any technical climbing whatsoever. It's still impressive, but it's not quite top climbing you see in many other more groundbreaking docs.

They claim that this is a search mission where they may also summit. But this is a lie. It's a summit. Then at minute 32 one guy unclips himself from the rope then walks a few meters down to look around. We see him maybe go 3 meter away from the rope, that's it. Totally pointless and just for show so that the camera can film him. A drone made for the thin atmosphere could search 10 times the area in the same time. There is no need to unclip yourself when Sherpas tell you not to do it. These are tourist climbers so they ought to listen to the professional guides. But frankly none of them respect Sherpas or listen to them. So it's nothing new.

Before watching this I thought the reviews about them not searching only summitting were relatively harsh. After watching this, I don't know what to say.

This isn't a documentary and I'm really embarrassed for the crew. How come they published this? Are they not ashamed?

I have read The Third Pole by Mark Synnott. It's the book about this expedition and I liked it a lot. If I remember correctly, he describes that they had problems with the sherpas because they wouldn't allow them to search or go off rope and they would only help them go up the mountain, if they summitted. So they had to change their mission, they had to make it look like they want to summit. This made sense to me, especially because there was a notion of the Chinese removing Mallory's and Irvine's bodys etc. But actually summitting wasn't necessary I think, they could've blown their cover the moment they were at the search site and this film makes this as obvious as it can get. Sure, they may had to descend on their own, but who knows if the sherpas would actually left them there on their own.

And why is this whole thing about not being allowed to search for the bodies not covered in this so called documentary? Is it even true? After watching this, I don't know anymore.

The photography is remarkable. The talent and determination of the climbers and crew was also admirable. But it's about 15 minutes too long. We got the message very quickly that we are watching an heroic search for a dead explorer. So don't keep hammering that into us every few minutes. It's also redundant to keep telling us what difficulties the crew had to endure. It sounds like a rationalization to make us feel better about what turned out to be just a massive ego trip.