BEFORE: August is coming to a close, which means I'll count up the format totals for the month tomorrow and then reveal my linking plan for September on Sunday, and man, it's a doozy. But first we've got Labor Day weekend, which is going to account for half of this Jason Statham chain - man, he's been in a lot of movies, and I guess I just haven't been paying attention, or else I'm just actively avoiding any movies from the "Fast & Furious" franchise. But even if I never watch any of those, Statham still has quite the filmography to draw from.
But yeah, get outside this weekend if you can, if it's not too hot, I personally don't like the beach - too hot, too sunny, too sandy and too many things can kill you. Case in point, giant sharks. Or even regular sharks, I'm not really fond of them either. I don't swim so even if I WERE to go to the beach, there's very little chance I'll be attacked or killed by a shark, it would take a really wild aquarium accident for me to die that way, but other than the aquarium in Mystic, CT, I don't think I've been to an aquarium in a long time, either.
Jason Statham carries over again from "Expend4bles". I had the "Meg" films on my horror list, but there are very few connections to other horror movies (Rainn Wilson's in one, but that's about it) so I can't really schedule this film during October, because I've got an intro but not an outro AND I just finished making the schedule for this year's horror chain, and I've got no room for the two "Meg" films, so they'll have to go here and act as summer-themed beach films. They're taking up space on the DVR, so I don't want to re-schedule them, I just want to get rid of them, good or bad.
THE PLOT: A group of scientists exploring the Marianas Trench encounter the largest marine predator that has ever existed - the Megalodon.
AFTER: Of course you can't make any shark film without referencing "Jaws", and really, for many years, the "Jaws" movies were all we had by way of shark entertainment. OK, "Deep Blue Sea", it's on my list but even harder to link to. And "Open Water" is even harder than THAT. OK, so there's a few, like "48 Meters Down" and "The Shallows" and "The Reef", but they're all so under my radar. Then came the "Sharknado" films, but come on, I'd really have to be DESPERATE to consider watching those. Even I have standards - not many, but a few. Now a few TV channels have "Shark Week", but I guess I missed it, it was back in July. Makes sense, everyone wants to go to the beach, regular broadcast channels are in reruns then, the only new TV is game shows and late-night shows that month.
(EDIT: I found a list of 180 shark movies on IMDB. Most of them look like trash. Way WAY down on the list are titles like "Jurassic Shark" and "Raiders of the Lost Shark", also "Spring Break Shark Attack" and "Jersey Shore Shark Attack", so the one thing I know for sure is that makers of shark moves simply have no shame at all. None. "Roboshark"? "Sharkenstein"? "Shark Exorcist"? Now they're just making me mad. Come on, no "Zero Shark Thirty" or "The Shark Knight Rises"? "The Shark Crystal"? "Gorky Shark"? "Sharks & Recreation"? I can do this all day.)
We've kind of come full circle, though, because this is really just "Jaws" again only bigger. The deep-sea exploration of the Marianas Trench reveals a very thin layer of ice on the bottom, and a whole other, deeper part of the ocean under that, cut off from the rest of the ocean for possibly millions of years, that's the reasoning behind how the believed-to-be-extinct species of megalodon sharks can still be around, only, umm, if they're so big, what did they all EAT for those millions of years? AHA, gotcha! OK, maybe giant squids - the megalodons apparently love calamari, even in a raw state. (Me, I don't eat a lot of octopus or squid, but if there's some takoyaki on the menu, man, let me at it.) And then when Meg gets loose, she gets to sample whale, and it's a whole new taste sensation - not very PC, but apparently delicious.
Jason Statham plays Jonas Taylor, a diving expert who's trained for deep-sea rescue, and I honestly did not even know that was a thing. In the opening sequence he's seen rescuing seamen from a sunken vessel, maybe a submarine, he comes down with HIS submarine and a couple of his crew, and they search the sunken sub for survivors. However, something out in the deep ocean makes contact with the linked vessels, and he's forced to cut the mission short, and leave a couple men behind, because SOMETHING is putting pressure on the sub and forcing it to collapse. Care to bet what it is? (Spoiler alert, it's on the poster.)
Following that incident, there's an investigation where he's accused of being crazy or having a psychotic episode, because it would be impossible for there to be a deep-sea creature capable of collapsing a sub. But shortly after Jonas disconnected his sub, the sunken one blew up, so he was right, it was too dangerous to stay there, they all would have died. Why didn't he get credit for at least saving the people that he saved?
Five years later, the billionaire who funded this new deep-sea exploration lab (let's just call him Schmelon Schmusk, no reason) is visiting it for the first time, and he's there when a submersible with three scientists on board goes deeper than ever before, into that new region, and they're attacked by some large creature (bet you saw that one coming, too) and stranded on the ocean floor. Time to call in Jonas Taylor, the world's expert at deep-sea rescue, only he's retired and drunk in Thailand, he doesn't dive any more. But perhaps a visit from some old associates and the emergency situation could coax him out of retirement. Also, of COURSE one of the scientists who needs to be rescued is his ex-wife, of COURSE. What are the odds?
NITPICK POINT: The crew of the sub only has a few hours of oxygen, most likely. But somehow there's time to fly two people to Thailand AND track down a man who's trying very hard to not be found, AND fly back? Sorry, I'm having a hard time believing they could get Jonas back to rescue those people. That clock is ticking the whole time...and how far away is Thailand from the Marianas Trench, anyway? Let's say they were near Guam, that's a six and a half-hour flight, each way. That's thirteen hours at minimum, so I think I'm right.
Anyway, Jonas faces the challenge of distracting the shark and rescuing some of the scientists (hey, two out of three ain't bad) but then the giant Meg follows them out of the trench. Stupid, stupid, people and smart, smart shark? (SMARK?). Meg basically chows down on all the whales and other fish in the nearby area, then starts treating the glass undersea lab like its own personal snack machine. Ohh, don't you hate it when you press the button for an oceanologist and it gets stuck on the way down, then you have to shake the whole lab to get it, or stick your fin inside to knock it down? Very annoying.
Our intrepid team of marine biologists and amateur fishermen start getting picked off one by one, despite the fact that the shark is SO BIG that it really wouldn't consider any human to be filling at all, though maybe we're like peanuts, once the shark starts eating us it just can't stop. Then it heads for a big beach in China where thousands of people are chilling out on inner-tubes, and it's really a full-on Chinese buffet for the Meg. Hey, I get it, I love those too.
But things keep getting more ridiculous, and there are more and more excuses about why they can't just blow up the shark with a bazooka or a grenade or something. Or would that be too much like the classic ending of "Jaws"? So Jonas Taylor has to pretty much fight it hand-to-hand, or hand-to-fin I guess, which is patently beyond ridiculous. OK, he stabs it in the eye at one point and maybe that's a good strategy because even a giant shark needs to see where it's going, but really, the only correct way to deal with a shark this big is to immediately point your sub in the opposite direction, and get as far away from it as possible, for God's sake, don't try to fight it up close!
I'm going to try to be a little kind here tonight, because, really, it's "Jaws" meets "Jurassic Park" and it kind of works on that level, and the only thing people should have against that is that THEY didn't think of it first.
Also starring Li Bingbing, Rainn Wilson (last seen in "Jerry and Marge Go Large"), Cliff Curtis (last heard in "Avatar: The Way of Water"), Winston Chao, Sophia Cai, Ruby Rose (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 2"), Page Kennedy (last seen in "S.W.A.T."), Robert Taylor (last seen in "Kong: Skull Island"), Olafur Darri Olafsson (last seen in "Contraband"), Jessica McNamee (last seen in "CHIPS"), Masi Oka (last seen in "Balls of Fury"), Hongmei Mai, Wei Yi, Vithaya Pansringarm (last seen in "The Hangover Part II"), Rob Kipa-Williams, Tawanda Manyimo (last seen in 'The Rover"), James Gaylyn (last seen in "Avatar"), Andrew Grainger (last seen in "Spy Game"), Ivy Tsui, Jeremy Tan, Teresa Lee.
RATING: 6 out of 10 depth charges
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