The Queen Mary 2 begins as a bet by Carnival Corporation chairman Micky Arison, who commits to building the largest ocean liner ever constructed at a time when transatlantic passenger ships had mostly given way to airplanes and cruise ships built for calm water rather than open ocean. This film follows the engineering behind that decision at the Chantiers de l'Atlantique shipyard in Saint-Nazaire, France, where thousands of workers assemble a hull over 1,100 feet long and 236 feet high, with a gross tonnage above 148,000, in just over two years. Footage tracks the specific problems a true ocean liner poses that a cruise ship never faces: hull plating thick enough to punch through North Atlantic swells, stabilizers sized for genuine storms, and a power plant built to hold liner speeds for days at a stretch. The ship launches for Cunard in 2003, and the film treats her less as a luxury product than as a structural argument that the classic ocean liner could still be built, and built bigger than ever.