Don. Megalodon. License to chew.
The Meg is a fun and wild ride that pits man versus prehistoric beast. There’s not a lot new from this film, unless the excess of believability counts.
Before Viewing
This trailer shows a giant shark, a megalodon, attacking an underwater research station off the coast of China. It’s a big shark, HUGE! And if it’s not attacking the station, then it’s going after the scientist’s boat, or the hundreds of humans in the waters off the beach. Though not stated explicitly, it seems like only one man can stop it: Jason Statham. He’s after The Meg! Let’s dive in!
Presented below is the trailer for the film.
The Meg title card.
After Viewing
In a brief prologue five years before the events of the film, Jonas (Jason Statham) is the lead on a rescue mission to save sailors trapped on a submarine at the bottom of the ocean. Something goes wrong and he loses two of his friends in an accident. In the present day, 200 miles off the coast of Shanghai, China, the research station Mana One is looking for a trench on the bottom of the ocean, deeper than the Mariana Trench. The project is being led by Zhang (Winston Chao) who sends a submersible, The Origin, down to investigate.
The trench is separated from the rest of the ocean by a thermocline which keeps a whole host of new species inside it. The scientists, including Zhang’s daughter Suyin (Li Bingbing) are ecstatic at the new discovery. However, something attacks and damages the sub, stranding three scientists. Zhang and Mac (Cliff Curtis) fly to Thailand where Jonas is drinking his days away and let him know his ex-wife Lori (Jessica McNamee) is one of the trapped people.
Jonas agrees to help, and manages to save two of three scientists from whatever is down there. A short while later Suyin’s daughter Meiying (Sophia Cai) is shocked when a giant shark attacks the side of the underwater dome. They realize it’s a megalodon, an ancient type of giant shark thought to be extinct. Jonas and a number of the crew take a boat to try and stop it. Suyin goes into a shark cage with a toxin and is able to inject the Meg with the poison. Unfortunately she is almost swallowed before Jonas saves her, again.
Morris, Zhang, Mac, Jonas, Jaxx, and a random assistant all are about to have the worst day. Some more than others.
After a few tense moments the Meg dies and they hoist it aboard the ship. They suddenly realize that this is not the same one that attacked the station, and a larger Meg jumps over the boat grabbing and eating the smaller one. The Wall (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) and Doctor Heller (Robert Taylor) are killed in the attack. Zhang also dies shortly after of injuries sustained by the Meg. The tech millionaire paying for the station, Morris (Rainn Wilson), apologies to the station team and lets them know he’s called in evacuation ships and notified surrounding countries of the Meg.
As Morris leaves with his mercenary team, they follow the homing beacon on the larger Meg, dropping depth charges from his helicopter to blow it up. His boat gets close and they realize it’s actually a whale they’ve killed. Morris falls off the boat and is eaten. The team realizes that Morris didn’t actually call anyone, having tried to avoid a lawsuit by killing it himself. They see the shark swimming toward Sanya Beach, the most densely packed beach in the area. Jaxx (Ruby Rose) rigs a speaker to play a whale song to lure the Meg from the beach.
Everyone works to rig the last two submarines with missiles capable of blowing up the beast. Jonas and Suyin will be driving them as the rest of the crew watches, including DJ (Page Kennedy) who has admitted he can’t swim. The Meg begins to attack people at the beach before being lured away. News helicopters follow the action but crash into one another and onto the team’s boat, forcing everyone into the water. After a prolonged battle, Jonas manages to slice the Meg open with part of his submersible, and then stab it in the eye with a spear. The blood attracts normal sized sharks that devour the colossal beast. And everyone goes home happy, including Jonas and Suyin who are now a couple.
“Because in case what happened down there wasn’t clear to you, Man vs. Meg isn’t a fight. It’s a slaughter.” – Jonas Taylor
Holy Jaws! That’s a big shark. But unfortunately not big enough.
“The Meg is not a horror movie,” or at least so I was told. I responded that Jaws is definitely a horror film. And since The Meg is just a bigger and badder version of Bruce the Shark, this is totally a horror film. Maybe this is just a week of questionable and unconventional horror films, with my viewings of Troll and Heavenly Creatures as early examples. Certainly it’s up to individuals to determine if movies match up with their own internal definitions of what a horror film is. For The Meg, there’s definitely plenty of shocking or terrifying moments, especially for viewers that are already frightened of the water.
As with Jaws, The Meg is based on a book called Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror by Steve Alten. The novel sounds a bit more like Jurassic Park (without the genetic creation of dinosaurs), where a creature that doesn’t belong to the modern world is suddenly rediscovered and sows panic and destruction. The book series led to six sequel novels, with a seventh on its way in 2024. And like with Jaws, it creates terror in an environment where humans are definitely not superior, with creatures lurking nearby, but invisible in the dark waters. The film also has several homages to Spielberg’s film such as the boat being pulled backwards by the Meg via the crane (much like the shark pulled the Orca backwards when attached to the barrel), the Meg pulling the floating docks like Bruce pulled the barrels, and the heroes hanging the dead Meg on their boat before realizing they have the wrong shark–identified by the bite radius in the same way Hooper realized the wrong shark was caught in Amity.
Some viewers might laugh off the absurdity of the film, and there’s a hearty suspension of disbelief needed to keep Jonas from nudging into the realm of absurd superhero. But that may be just part of a long line of absurd films about killer sharks. The 1999 film Deep Blue Sea, produced to compete with The Abyss and Deep Rising, was one of the original “bad-shark” films (possibly also counting Jaws 3D and Jaws: The Revenge). But with lower budget films released to streaming services like Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus (and its three sequels) and Sharknado (with its FIVE sequels), audiences seem to enjoy some of the absurdity. Fortunately, The Meg doesn’t make itself as unbelievable as the titles listed above.
Jonas comforts Suyin after saving her a second time.
At its heart, The Meg is probably more of an action film. Jason Statham is known as an action hero from his work in The Transporter and Fast & Furious series’, and he is the “one man” who can do the things he does. Let’s just say he has a very particular set of skills. The film creates some interesting hi-tech and racy looking submersibles, which look like a cross between Star Wars vehicles and actual underwater submersibles. They provide an action-oriented and raucous ending to the film as the vehicles fire missiles at the Meg and race around it, attempting to stay out of its jaws.
One thing The Meg does is definitely play against some of the more common tropes of the action and horror genre. Most notable is the lack of lots of deaths from the killer. A couple characters die at the start of the film due to the depressurization of the submarine, but only five characters (of a large cast) die throughout the film. Toshi (Masi Oka) and Doctor Heller both sacrifice themselves to save their crewmates, while Zhang succumbs to his injuries. Morris gets his comeuppance as the human “villain” in the piece, after a nice fake out where he thinks he has been spared. Only The Wall’s death seems like one that was predicated as he was swimming in the ocean prematurely after catching the first Meg. You just know that something is going to happen to him! The film also doesn’t kill the one black character, DJ, as expected–specifically due to the fact that he can’t swim and doesn’t like the ocean. He seems like a perfect candidate, but is surprisingly spared.
Thematically the film deals, rather overtly, with the side effects of survivor’s guilt. Jonas spends five years drinking in Thailand after losing his friends in the accident at the beginning of the film. It’s something he deals with throughout the film, and attempts to help Suyin through. She has only started processing the loss of Toshi and her father, and the potential loss of others including her daughter. Jonas begins to realize that he can’t hide away from the potential pain with the people he might lose. It doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t try to save people, especially since he’s so skilled with rescue operations. Overall, The Meg is a lot of fun and not too scary. The characters are likable and the action entertaining, while the creature is unpredictable. It also sets up the possibilities for a sequel, which was released a little earlier this year.
It’s like a shark swimming through a bowl of fruit loops. This shot gives a sense of how large the Meg actually is.
Assorted Musings
- One of the whales that hangs out near the Mana One facility is named Gracie. This is probably a nod to Gracie, one of the humpback whales in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
- As a clever tip of the hat to the leading shark, the film ends with the tag “FIN” instead of the words “The End,” which is both French for ‘finish’ as well as a reference to the shark fin that they were always trying to attach the tracker to.
- The submersibles for Mana One are named The Origin and Evolution, referencing Charles Darwin and his work, The Origin of The Species about evolutionary changes.
Having grown up on comics, television and film, “Jovial” Jay feels destined to host podcasts and write blogs related to the union of these nerdy pursuits. Among his other pursuits he administrates and edits stories at the two largest Star Wars fan sites on the ‘net (Rebelscum.com, TheForce.net), and co-hosts the Jedi Journals podcast over at the ForceCast network.