"Meg versus Man isn't a fight ... it's a slaughter."
Hello everyone!
No, seriously.
Although, 'never say never' is probably one of those sayings you should learn to live by, and I remember when I was a kid I tended to even follow it, but it seems I managed to forget since becoming an adult.
Of course I said never to this movie. Any SANE person would say never to this movie! I still have nightmares about the bloody In the Heart of the Sea.
And then what happened was I had to eat my big, fat never, because once the movie actually rolled around, I couldn't get up and walk away even if I tried.
I'm talking about the one and only, of course.
You might be thinking this is SO out of my ballpark considering the usual movie reviews I do on this channel.
Well, friends, you'd be right on that count.
I accidentally saw the first released trailer for this movie on Instagram (a 30 second preview, and it was more than enough) and swore to myself I wouldn't watch it. I swore to my father I would NEVER watch the movie, but he was welcome to do so, I'd even buy it for him if he wanted. Side note, my dad has a thing for big ass sharks trying to eat the world for lunch. Can you tell he loves Jaws?
Anyway.
Naturally, then, if I was so vehemently against The Meg, I'd end up sitting with my whole family in our living room watching it on the big screen. And I have to admit the experience itself was fun - we don't get together a lot nowadays - but I could have done without the giant shark.
Moving on to the actual movie.
We are in a submarine somewhere deep, DEEP under the ocean surface, where the one and only Jason Statham aka Jonas Taylor is trying to rescue the sub's crew with his deep water rescue team. And you know, things might have even gone their way all to the top if not for the rather disturbing bump against the sunken sub.
When you're that deep under the ass of the world, if something bumps you, YOU KNOW IT'S BAD.
Jonas makes the only call he can, which is leave two of his best friends and divers behind to detach the rescue sub with the crew he got onto it, right before the nuclear submarine gets caved in from one side and explodes.
This is some years before our story starts, however, and while Jonas is happily drinking beer in Thailand somewhere, an obnoxious billionaire Morris (there's always one in every movie like this) lands on Mana One, which is a research facility right above the Marianas trench. He's coming to investigate the work scientists are doing here, and to be present when they launch a submarine into the trench proper.
Doctors Zhang and Suyin (father and daughter, Winston Chao and Li Bingbing, respectively) are trying to prove a theory that what the world believes to be the bottom of the trench isn't actually the bottom - but a freezing cold thermocline cloud which is keeping anything below where it should be.
Aka down below.
A sub is about to go investigate, piloted by none other than Lori, Jonas's ex-wife, and everyone watches with baited breath as they go through the cline and down even deeper (I'm trying to figure out if we already have science that would allow humans to survive that deep and at those pressures, but ignore me), finding an entire new world and ecosystem waiting for them.
And a big ass SOMETHING that cuts the connection to the sub.
As Lori's last words were JONAS WAS RIGHT, Zhang and Mac, one of Jonas's good friends, travel to Thailand to get Jonas, who originally says no, until he hears his wife is trapped on the sub.
Well, ex-wife, but that's semantics.
He's going to go down there to get her out, even though the facility's resident doctor, Heller, tries to convince Suyin that the man is crazy and that's why two of his men died during that fateful rescue mission, though neither he nor Suyin can account for what happened to their sub, then.
Convinced she needs to do something, Suyin sets off for a rescue of her own, and Jonas follows right on her tail after wrestling with some underwater inner demons (and again I'm trying to figure out how he can descend that deep that fast, since shouldn't it be dangerous? Let's just roll with it). He's just in time to rescue Suyin, too, because she got into a big of a pickle.
As in, she first got attacked by a colossal squid trying to eat her, before something else ate the squid.
Qui-Gon Jinn: There's always a bigger fish.
And as the audiences all go bug-eyed, the BIG ASS MEGALODON SHARK CHOMPS ITS WAY THROUGH THE SQUID AND THEN GOES AFTER SUYIN BECAUSE, HELLO, HER LIGHTS IRRITATE IT.
Qui-Gon Jinn: BIGGER FISH! BIGGER FISH!!!
Jonas distracts the Meg and orders Suyin out of there, while he goes to free the trio in the original sub. Unfortunately, the Meg is back for more, and Masi Oka, who everyone thought was supposed to be somewhere in Africa as per Hawaii Five-0, sacrifices himself so his two team mates and Jonas can escape back to the surface.
WHEW.
But we're only halfway through the movie. Which means more fun ahead.
While Jonas (and every sane viewer out there) is trying to convince the ridiculous scientists to watch either Jaws or Jurassic Park or Deep Blue Sea and just kill the Meg now they know it still exists, Suyin's daughter Meiying spots the thing outside the underwater circular hallway under Mana One.
Oh yeah, remember when Jonas and the sub went out of the trench through the cline? There was a bit of an explosion, says Ruby Rose later, and apparenly, the explosion momentarily created a warm tunnel through which the shark could swin without freezing its fins off.
So now it's in the KNOWN oceans.
And considering one bite rocked the entire research station, they need to get rid of it before it decides to go hunting.
But the shark is FAST and hungry and there are three boats waiting for it with Happy Meals, which prompts Jonas and the core team to head out trying to rescue any survivors, though it's like with the Titanic - there ain't nothing there worth saving anymore.
There's a big fin circling, however.
Deciding to poison the shark after tagging it (Shark Week, anyone?) means that first, Jonas goes for a joyride to get the tag onto the shark (and watching the yo-yo game between Statham and the Meg was actually bizarrely hilarious), then Suyin goes into an unbreakable cage to poison the beast.
And you know the king's arrived when all the regular puny sharks skedadle.
Still, the poison takes a bit to activate, and Suyin almost gets eaten, cage and all, if not for the team setting up a trap for the shark and Jonas diving in to rescue her. The guy MUST have a death wish.
Happy that the shark is dead, the team is celebrating and ecstatic and ...
CHOMP.
Oh you thought it was over did you?
THERE'S ANOTHER EVEN BIGGER MOTHER OF ALL SHARKS OUT TO GET YOU!!!
After falling off the sofa and the second shark eating one team member and inadvertedly killing Zhang when it flipped the entire boat over, Morris says SAYONARA BITCHES and lies about calling the authorities, because he wants to kill the shark himself to get souvenirs.
His reward for that stupidity is getting eaten by the shark when the thing tricks them into thinking they killed it, but they actually killed a whale.
Meanwhile, Jonas, Suyin and the rest pay their respects to the dead, which include Heller who sacrified himself so Ruby Rose's character could live, and decide they need to go after the shark, which luckily Morris tagged before dying, so they can kill it BEFORE it descends on an over-crowded Sanya Bay beach.
Can anyone say chow time?
The scenes from above with all the swimmers unaware of the MASSIVE monster just under them were terrifying. And the Meg actually gets a couple of them before our band of misfits lures him away by inviting it to dine on fake whales.
This then turns into a high-speed game of tag with Suyin and Jonas trying to get the beast, resulting in me being convinced Jason Statham is going to pull an Armageddon Bruce Willis when he goes and rips the shark's vulnerable underbelly open. This is then followed by Statham hitching a ride on the Meg itself with a Lara Croft-move of hooking himself on by dagger, and stabbing its eye with a harpoon.
In itself, this might not have killed the thing, but other sharks converge, scenting blood, and go in for the kill by ripping their ancestor apart.
Up top, the team reconvene on a yacht where a Chinese couple has just gotten married (and Jason Statham's face upon seeing a small Yorkie surviving the carnage and still swimming happily is priceless), Meiying happily sits between Jonas and her mother, as the adults (who have been eyeing one another all movie and Suyin also served us an obligatory shirtless Statham scene complete with towel-wrapped lower body) decide they could maybe take a vacation after this.
Together? My money's on yes.
My father, the joker that he is, asked me if I had any nightmares the next morning. I told him I slept like a baby, THANK GOD.
But don't ask me to do this again. Watching a ginormous shark run wild one time was definitely enough.
I would, however, mention that the humour in the movie was quite on point, and I was pleasantly surprised the genetic victim (Page Kennedy) did NOT get eaten first, as usually happens in these movies. But he definitely served as the resident Captain Obvious for the entire team, and for our veiwing pleasure.
If you're into monster movies, this one was DEFINITELY for you.
xx
*images and video not mine
No comments:
Post a Comment