Georgaris previously wrote Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle Of Life, Paycheck (an underrated little scifi film which I actually kind of liked), The Manchurian Candidate (the 2004 remake) and Tristan + Isolde.
The Hobers are working partners who previously wrote Montana, Whiteout, Red, Battleship (!) and Red 2.
Turteltaub has a long history of directing blandly mediocre films. He previously helmed such classics as Think Big, Driving Me Crazy, 3 Ninjas (!), Cool Runnings, While You Were Sleeping, Phenomenon, Instinct, Disney's The Kid, National Treasure, National Treasure: Book Of Secrets, The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Last Vegas. What a body of work!
So how is it? Not bad! I enjoyed it quite a bit, as it was probably the most fun I've had at the cineplex all summer, which speaks volumes about the quality of this year's blockbusters. Everyone involved knows exactly what kind of film they're making— a big budget B-movie. The actors all seem to be enjoying themselves, yet they play it absolutely straight, which definitely helps sell the ridiculous premise.
The movie's based on Meg: A Novel Of Deep Terror by Steve Alten. Amazingly, Alten's somehow managed to pump out a series of SIX sequels, with a seventh reportedly on the way (!). The series consists of The Trench, MEG: Primal Waters, MEG: Hell's Aquarium, MEG: Origins, MEG: Night Stalkers, MEG: Generations and the upcoming MEG: Purgatory. How he's managed to stretch the already thin premise so far, I have no idea.
For some reason, The Meg's had an incredibly long and arduous journey from book to screen. I read the novel when it first came out wayyyy back in 1997, and I can clearly remember the cover was emblazoned with a blurb that screamed, "SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE!" Somehow it took a full TWENTY ONE years for that to actually happen.
Disney purchased the film rights to the book in the late 1990s, but couldn't come up with a satisfactory screenplay. It's a movie about a giant prehistoric shark! How hard could it be to write a script about that? Anyway, the property then languished in Development Hell at the House Of Mouse for several years, until the rights reverted back to author Steve Alten.
New Line then bought the rights in 2005 and decided to give it a go. They tapped Jan de Bont as director, and when he bowed out they approached Guillermo Del Toro. At one point Patrick Stewart was even cast as main character Jonas Taylor (!!!!).
Eventually New Line canceled the film due to budgetary concerns. Ultimately the rights landed at Warner Bros., who finally greenlit it in 2015. They hired Eli Roth as director, but he left the project due to the classic "creative differences" excuse.
The Meg is a Chinese/American co-production, which explains the presence of actors Li Bingbing, Winston Chao and Shuya Sophia Cai in the international cast. Call it insurance. If two countries are gonna bankroll a film, then it makes sense to load the cast with actors from both nations. That way it's sure to be a hit in at least one country!
It's been a whopping 43 years since Jaws premiered, and amazingly that movie still casts a long, long shadow. Even after all this time, filming a shark movie seems like a losing proposition. There's no good way to make a shark film without duplicating what Jaws did four decades ago, and much better.
It's been a whopping 43 years since Jaws premiered, and amazingly that movie still casts a long, long shadow. Even after all this time, filming a shark movie seems like a losing proposition. There's no good way to make a shark film without duplicating what Jaws did four decades ago, and much better.
The producers of The Meg seem to realize this, so they said what the hell and loaded the film with as many shoutouts and homages as possible.
The Meg was originally set to be released simultaneously in America and China in March of 2018. Supposedly this date was picked because it coincided with the week-long Chinese New Year holiday, which would hopefully goose the box office returns there. Eventually it was moved back to an August premiere.
As readers of Bob Canada's BlogWorld know all too well, any time a movie's delayed for any reason, it's a bad, bad sign. Eh, I guess sometimes it works out OK. This is definitely a summer movie, and releasing it in March would have been a boneheaded move.
So far the movie's had a pretty decent run at the American box office, where it's grossed $125 million against its $130 million budget. Not surprisingly, it's done MUCH better overseas, where it's made $348 million, for a worldwide gross of $473 million! That makes The Meg a certified box office smash, and it won't be long before the other six novels make their way to the screen.
So far the movie's had a pretty decent run at the American box office, where it's grossed $125 million against its $130 million budget. Not surprisingly, it's done MUCH better overseas, where it's made $348 million, for a worldwide gross of $473 million! That makes The Meg a certified box office smash, and it won't be long before the other six novels make their way to the screen.
These figures also demonstrate just why the foreign market has become so vital to Hollywood. If the film was only released in America, it'd be a miserable flop with no hope of ever making back its money. With the addition of the increasingly all-important overseas market though, the studio made back their money and then some. Like it or not, the foreign movie market's here to stay!
SPOILERS IF YOU'VE NEVER SEEN A SHARK MOVIE BEFORE!
The Plot:
We begin with an action packed prologue, as rescue diver Jonas Taylor (played by Jason Statham) attempts to save the crew of a damaged nuclear sub at the bottom of the ocean. As Jonas is helping free one of the survivors, some... thing rams the side of the sub, denting the hull. For no good reason, Jonas is convinced a gigantic creature rammed the ship.
He drags the wounded man back to the rescue ship and recalls the rest of his crew. Unfortunately two of them are trapped behind a flooded compartment. As the sub begins to buckle, Jonas realizes there's no time to save them. Dr. Heller, Jonas' colleague and the movie's Designated Asshole™, insists the men can be rescued. Jonas disagrees and separates the two ships. A split second later, the damaged sub explodes in a massive fireball. Heller glares at Jonas, even though it was obviously the right call.
Heller files a report stating Jonas suffered from pressure-induced psychosis, which caused him to hallucinate a giant creature and led to the deaths of his crewmates. Jonas is disgraced and drummed out of the rescue corps or whatever service he's in.
Five years later, billionaire Jack Morris (played by Rainn Wilson) arrives at the brand new, high tech underwater research lab Mana One. As its primary investor, Morris is there to check up on his investment. He's greeted by Dr. Minway Zhang, the supervisor of the lab, along with his oceanographer daughter Suyin (played by Li Bingbing). Her eight year old daughter Meiying lives and plays on the station as well. There's some amusing banter as Morris tries and fails to greet them in Mandarin.
Morris (and the audience) then meets the rest of the eclectic crew: Jaxx Herd (played by Ruby Rose), Mac Mackreides (played by Cliff Curtis) and DJ (played by Page Kennedy).
Morris is just in time to observe Mana One's primary mission— exploring the Marianas Trench, the deepest point in the ocean. For some reason, Dr. Zhang has a cockamamie theory that the bottom of the Trench isn't solid rock, but is actually a cloud of hydrogen sulfide gas floating above a thermal layer. He's convinced this layer is hiding an even deeper section of the Trench beneath it. None of this makes the least bit of sense, but let's just go with it or we'll be here all day.
Dr. Zhang sends a deep sea submersible to explore the Trench. It's manned by Lori, the pilot, along with scientists Toshi and "The Wall." They reach the "bottom" of the Trench, and sure enough, it really is just a layer of gas. They power through the false bottom and find a brand new, pristine environment beneath it, populated with thousands of bizarre sea creatures.
As they explore this amazing new world, something big is attracted to the ship's lights. Before Lori can shut them off, they're attacked by a massive creature. Mana One loses contact with them.
Zhang and the others discuss how to rescue the submersible crew, and Mac says there's only one man for the job— Jonas. Dr. Heller protests of course, reminding them that Jonas is now a hopeless drunk living in Thailand. Zhang says they have no other choice.
Smash cut to Thailand, where Jonas is now a hopeless drunk. Mac & Zhang arrive and try to talk him into helping rescue the submersible from the bottom of the Trench. He tells them he ain't interested, as he'd done with the rescue biz. Mac then plays his ace, telling him that Lori, who just happens to be Jonas' ex wife, is the pilot of the submersible.
Meanwhile, Suyin can't stand sitting idly by and speeds off in a futuristic underwater glider to try and rescue the submersible. Minutes later Zhang and Mac arrive at Mana One with Jonas in tow. Zhang's furious with Suyin and orders her back to the surface. Just then a giant squid attacks her glider and begins to crush it. Just as her capsule's about to implode, the squid's bitten in half by a ridiculously massive shark.
Jonas orders Suyin to the surface, and he enters the other glider and heads down into the Trench. He docks with the submersible, and Lori's stunned to see him. He loads her and The Wall into his glider. Just then they spot the giant shark, which heads straight toward them.
Toshi sees the shark and realizes he'll never make it into the glider in time, even though it's literally only three feet away. He separates the two ships, sacrificing himself to give the others a chance. He flashes the submersible's lights, which attracts the shark. Jonas and the others watch in horror as the shark chomps on the submersible. It explodes, causing a nearby thermal vent to violently erupt. They head back to the surface.
Back in Mana One, Haller finally realizes Jonas was right about the giant sea creature and apologizes. Meanwhile, Meiying is playing in a corridor, when she gets the feeling she's being watched. She turns around and sees abnormally huge shark, hanging in the water outside the station. It lunges at her and bits the corridor, its gigantic teeth leaving large indentations in the glass. Meiying screams and Jonas, Suyin and Mac come running. Mac examines the bite marks.
The crew then meets In the control room, where Mac says the creature that attacked the station is a 70 foot long Megalodon— an ancient prehistoric shark thought to be extinct for millions of years. It's been trapped at the bottom of the Trench all this time due to the ice cold layer of hydrogen sulfide. Unfortunately, the erupting thermal vent created a column of superheated water through the layer, allowing the Meg to swim to the surface. Sure, why not?
Just then the crew receives word that several ships that have disappeared in the area. Zhang's certain the Meg's responsible, and says they have to stop it before it kills again. The whole crew then boards a large ship and hunts for the Meg. They find it swimming along the surface, and decide to shoot it with a poisoned harpoon. Unfortunately it'll be long gone by the time they're ready, so Morris suggests tagging it with a tracker so they can keep an eye on it.
Jonas volunteers to tag it, swimming calmly into the water so as not to attract its attention. He manages to attach the tracker to its fin, but naturally the Meg notices and begins heading for him. He swims back to the ship in a panic, and is pulled out of the water a split second before the shark's massive jaws snap shut.
Suyin volunteers to enter a polycarbonate shark cage to kill the Meg with a poison harpoon. It goes about as well as you'd imagine, as the giant shark grabs the cage and dives into the depths with it. Of course Suyin's oxygen mask is damaged, threatening to drown her. Jonas leaps into the water and pulls Suyin from the cage a second before it sinks to the bottom. The shark heads right toward the two of them, but fortunately the poison finally takes effect and kills it.
When Suyin wakes she sees the crew's somehow suspended the massive shark above the deck of the ship with a tiny crane. They celebrate their victory, until
Zhang is injured by falling debris, while The Wall is eaten by the Meg. Jaxx and Heller try to make their way back to the capsized ship, as the Meg begins heading right for them. Heller sacrifices himself (there seems to be a lot of that in this movie) by splashing around in the water, to give Jaxx a chance to get away. He's immediately eaten by the Meg as well. Mac recovers the ship's two escape boats, and the survivors head back to Mana One. Unfortunately Zhang dies along the way.
Back at the station, Morris announces he's informed various local governments about the Meg, and the situation's now out of their hands. He then makes a hasty retreat in a chopper. Later that night he and his men take a boat out to locate the Meg and drop depth charges on it. Morris hopes to kill it before its victims begin suing him and his company.
They spot the Meg and successfully blow it up. Morris asks a crewman to grab a shark tooth for his desk, but they realize they just killed a whale. Suddenly the Meg surfaces and the boat accelerates, throwing Morris overboard. He clings to the whale carcass, as the Meg surfaces and eats him. Jesus, how often does this thing eat?
Back at the station, Mac discovers Morris lied about informing the authorities. They track the Meg and discover it's heading right for Sanya Bay in China, one of the most crowded beaches in the world (natch). They try to warn the city that a giant prehistoric shark is on its way, but oddly enough, no one believes them. The crew decides it's up to them to kill the Meg and save the beach-goers.
Cut to the Meg as it approaches Sanya Bay and begins chowing down on hapless swimmers. Seems like it wouldn't be hungry after already devouring at least three main cast members and a whale, but whatever. The swimmers panic and try to make it back to shore before the giant shark can swallow them whole. They don't all make it.
Fortunately the Mana One crew's able to lure the Meg away from the beach by playing whale sounds in the water. As the shark heads toward the ship, Jonas and Suyin rig the gliders with torpedoes they got from god knows where.
They launch the gliders and begin their attack. The Meg chases after Jonas, who leads it toward Suyin. She fires her torpedo, but unfortunately the prehistoric shark's hide is so tough it bounces right off. Jonas tries to fire his. but of course the mechanism jams, as is the law in scripts like this.
Topside, several news choppers attempt to film the underwater action (?), and end up flying into one another. One of the doomed choppers crashes into the Mana One ship, as the crew jumps into the ocean (again!). Jonas apparently sees this happen somehow, and tells Suyin to head for the surface to rescue the survivors.
The Meg swings around and heads toward Jonas. He flies right at it, tilting his glider so the wing slices open the shark's belly. The enraged Meg then begins chomping on the glider, forcing Jonas to exit in the nick of time.
He grabs a harpoon from the glider wreckage and stabs the shark in the eye. For some reason Jonas holds onto the harpoon as the shark jumps high out of the water, taking him along with it. He rams the spear deeper into its brain, and the Meg dies in mid air and crashes back into the water.
Suddenly dozens of normal sized sharks are attracted by the Meg's blood, and begin ripping it apart. Jonas is rescued by Suyin, and they and the rest of the Mana One crew are picked up by a wedding yacht. Jonas says he needs a vacation, and Meiying suggests he and Suyin take one together.
fin.
Thoughts:
• As I mentioned above, The Meg is based on the novel Meg: A Novel Of Deep Terror. The film's a mildly faithful adaptation, that follows the basic plot of the book.
In the novel, Jonas Taylor's a paleontologist and marine biologist (because those two disciplines always go hand in hand, right?). He goes on a top secret mission for the U.S. Navy, to confirm the existence of a Megalodon at the bottom of the ocean.
He spots one, but the Navy doesn't believe him (?) and he's disgraced and discredited.
Years later, he revisits the Marianas Trench to prove he was right. He finds a couple of Megs, one of which is a pregnant female. A freak accident causes the female to be hoisted through a protective layer of cold water to the surface.
Jonas then has to destroy the Meg before she gives birth. Eventually he boards a submersible and drives it right down the Meg's throat, killing it. She gives birth right before she dies, and Jonas is able to capture the newborn before it escapes.
The film jettisons the pregnancy angle, adds a slew of different characters and changes many of the details. Still, it gets the bare-bones outline right.
• The book begins with a prologue set in the late Cretaceous Period. In it, a ferocious T-Rex chases a herd of smaller dinosaurs along a beach. One runs into the water to try and escape. As the T-Rex wades in after it, a massive Megalodon surfaces, grabs it and pulls it under.
It's pretty obvious why the novel starts with this scene. Remember that Jurassic Park came out just four years prior to this book, and the movie's awesome T-Rex attack was still fresh in the public's mind. So what better way for the author to demonstrate how badass the Megalodon (the star of his novel) was than to have it eat a T-Rex?
By the way, I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't point out the fact that Megalodons and T-Rexes never coexisted. The Meg appeared about 40 million years after the T-Rex (and all other dinosaurs) became extinct. Whoops!
That's what you get when you take two decades to make a damn shark movie!
• I'm assuming Jonas' name is a play on "Jonah And The Whale?"
• ALL movies contain plot holes— it's just inevitable. Most are minor though, and can easily be hand-waved away. Not so with The Meg! It features a plot hole so massive it threatens to sink the entire movie (no pun intended).
See, in the opening prologue, Jonas rescues the crew of a doomed sub at the bottom of the ocean. The sub is repeatedly rammed by something so powerful it dents the hull. For no good reason, Jonas is convinced a massive creature did the banging. No one believes him of course, but five years later we discover he was right and a Meg really did ram the sub.
But wait... after the prologue, we find out the Meg and its progeny are trapped below a layer of hydrogen sulfide deep below the false bottom of the Marianas Trench. There's no way they can possibly pierce the layer by themselves and escape.
So how can the hell could the Meg have been the one banging on the sub?
There are three explanations here: The Meg swam out from under the layer, hit the sub and then sneaked back in, there's a SECOND, unknown sea monster out there that attacked the ship, or the screenwriters set up a set of rules but then had to violate them in order for the film to happen.
• During the prologue, two of Jonas' men are trapped in the doomed sub. Dr. Heller says there's still time and insists Jonas go back for them. Jonas disagrees, and makes the tough call to abandon the men in order to save a dozen or more.
Dr. Heller denounces Jonas for this, going so far as to diagnose him with pressure sickness.
What's Heller's problem? Literally five seconds after Jonas detached from the damaged sub, it exploded in a fiery ball. If he'd taken Heller's advice and tried to save the two crewmen, EVERYONE would have died. How the hell does Heller not realize that? Answer: The film needed a human antagonist to cause problems for Jonas, and Heller won the draw.
• I liked this movie quite a bit, but even I have to admit its "science" is laughably outrageous.
The film's "scientists" theorize that the Marianas Trench, which is the deepest point on Earth, actually has a false bottom of hydrogen sulfide, and is much deeper than originally thought. Um... no. We've sent many a probe to the bottom of the Trench, and none of them encountered a cloud somehow masquerading as solid ground.
We're then told that the Megalodon actually lives BELOW the Trench. OK, the Marianas Trench is 36,000 feet deep (almost SEVEN miles!), and the pressure at that depth is 15,759 psi. Since the Megalodon actually lives below the Trench, it's logical to assume the pressure there would likely be even higher.
Yeah, there's no way a shark of ANY size could live at that depth. Their bodies just aren't made for it, and the pressure would squash them into two dimensions. The only way a shark could survive down there is if it somehow adapted its body to the extreme conditions. But then it wouldn't look like a shark anymore!
By the way, author Steve Alten seemed to realize that sharks would have to adapt in order to live at such extreme depths. The Megalodons in his novel have white, nearly translucent skin— a side effect of living in the inky darkness of the ocean floor. Unfortunately the filmmakers couldn't get their CGI Megs' skin to look realistic, so they said screw it and made 'em gray like the sharks we all know and love.
In addition to the pressure problem, the water at the bottom of the Trench is far too cold to support any kind of shark. And while there is life in the Trench, it's far too small and scarce to support such a massive creature.
Also, I freely admit I'm not a scientist, but... if a shark lived at the bottom of the ocean and then zoomed to the surface, wouldn't it explode long before it got there?
Contrary to how it sounds, I'm not bothered by any of this. It's fun, action packed B-movie schlock that doesn't take itself seriously, so I'm willing to give it a pass on the wonky science.
No one ever mentions when the film's happening, but their tech definitely looks a few years more advanced than what we have now.
• When Jonas first arrives at Mana One, he hops into a glider and hightails it to the bottom of the Trench to rescue his ex-wife Lori and her crew. Mac tells him to slow down, as he's descending too fast and will suffer from pressure sickness. Right on cue, Jonas' nose starts bleeding.
Sorry, but it doesn't work like that. You only get the bends when you breath compressed air, such as in a scuba tank, and ascend too quickly. The air inside a sub (or in this case one of the gliders) is NOT pressurized, and is maintained at normal surface levels. In effect, Jonas is sitting inside a ball of air at normal pressure, and wouldn't be affected by depth.
• Boy, that Meg sure is hungry. It eats a giant squid, then once it gets to the surface it attacks several boats and chows down on their crews. It then eats at least three of the main cast before heading to Sanya Bay, where it swallows dozens more swimmers.
I get that it's big and it needs to consume a lot of energy, but Jesus! Surely it doesn't need to eat non-stop!
• After the Meg's loosed on the surface, the Mana One crew manage to inject it with poison, killing it. They then use a crane to hoist the massive shark out of the water and onto their ship.
• In the third act, the crew lures the Meg away from the Sanya Bay by playing sounds of wounded whales over a loudspeaker.
Wait, how would it know what a whale even sounded like? It's spent its entire life deep below the false bottom of the Marianas Trench, far, far away from any whale.
I suppose you could argue that even if whales can't swim to the bottom, their calls might be able to reverberate that far. It seems like a pretty big if though.
• As the Meg enters Sanya Bay, a Yorkie named Pippin falls off a yacht and is nearly eaten. I'm assuming its name is an homage to Jaws, which featured a dog named "Pippit" that may or may not have been eaten by the shark.
• As I watched the film, I kept feeling that something was missing. It finally dawned on me during the Sanya Bay attack— The Meg is practically bloodless! Jaws contained far more blood and gore, and it came out way back in 1975! What the hell?
Blame director Jon Turteltaub for the lack of violence. In a recent interview with Bloody Disgusting, Turteltaub admitted he deliberately went for a PG-13 rating instead of an R, in order to reach a wider audience.
Said Turteltaub, "I am so disappointed the film wasn’t more bloody or disgusting. My wife is glad about it and I’m glad my kids can see the movie, but the number of really horrifying, disgusting and bloody deaths we had lined up that we didn’t get to do is tragic. There was some really good sh*t that didn’t survive to the final cut."
If true, that's very disappointing. Obviously people don't go to movies like The Meg for the complex plotline or the sophisticated character drama. They're there to see blood, gore and over the top shark mayhem! It's downright silly to aim for a PG-13 rating when you're making a movie about a giant shark that constantly eats people!
Let's hope there's an R-rated Director's Cut when the film makes it to blu ray!
• The movie ends with a cutesy caption that simply reads, "fin." This of course is French for "End," which I'm sure sailed far, FAR over the heads of 95% of the audience members. It's also a pun, since the movie's about a giant shark. Get it? Sharks? Fins? Eh? EH?
Unfortunately this little bon mot doesn't quite work. The French "fin" is actually pronounced more like "fahn" or "fuhn," which completely destroys the joke. Do the filmmakers know how it's actually pronounced? I'm gonna say no.
The Meg is a big budget B-movie, and a perfect example of action schlock. It's also a heck of a lot of fun, and one of the very few bright spots in another summer of dreadful bombs. It won't win any awards for its writing or acting, but it's highly entertaining, and isn't that a movie's job? I give it a good solid B.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.