Movie Review: The Meg

Hey Steemians

I'm a big fan of monster films Godzilla, King Kong, Jaws & Jurrasic Park have been classics in the genre and some of my favourite movies. So when a new one rears its ugly head I'm willing to give it a shot and is why I gave The Meg a shot.

So is this the meg worth diving into or will it be another deep-sea dud? Let's find out shall we

Plot

The movie focuses on a bored billionaire looking for ways to spend his money and decides to fund one of the most elaborate expeditions the world has ever seen. Finding out whats at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of our Ocean.

The team successfully dive deep enough but unknowingly open up a path between a world we know very little about. A massive creature attacks a deep-sea submersible, leaving it disabled and trapping the crew at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. With time running out, rescue diver Jonas Taylor must save the crew and the ocean itself from an unimaginable threat -- a 75-foot-long prehistoric shark known as the Megalodon.

The trailer for The Meg

The postives

The concept is really very good, its intriguing and the way it plays out to set up the movie is great, the CGI is pretty good for the most part and some of the jokes aren't half bad. The acting is ok with Shuya Sophia Cai the stand out performer for me, she was too adorable in this movie. Oh and before I forget there are some decent scares too!

The negatives

After setting up a world where they could have really taken some creative risks, the Meg does nothing more and offers a shallow plot strung together with cool shark action scenes and unnecessary, poorly written characters, there is really very little character development and for a monster of this size, nothing really seemed on the line. The movie seems to lean more to a parody of itself at times as it tries to be a comedy rather than a horror/thriller which I think would have been the better option.

As the movie progresses it starts to get stale and wraps up in the most predictable fashion.

Problems with this movie goes deeper than the Mariana trench

So after watching this movie eat itself in the 3rd act, I decided to do some research, thinking what the hell went wrong with Jason Statham, why would he take on this role? Was he Nicholas Cage kinda broke? How did the director of National Treasure produce this turd? (Btw I loved both National Treasure movies).

So what did my research turned up? Corporate greed and going for mass appeal did this movie a disservice, kind of like what happened with the last reboot of Fantastic 4.

Let's start with Jason Statham's recent interview with Frosty Weintraub. You'll notice Jason tries to be diplomatic, but he has a very hard time concealing the fact that he's not too happy with what the audience got to see:

"The film changed a lot. The script was totally different. There was so many different ... sometimes you just go: How did it happen? How did it go from this to this to this to that? I guess if you have the control to keep it a certain way you would, but you don't. They have so many people deciding on what action stays and what scenes stay. How the characters ... In the end they want to put something at the beginning. The whole thing at the beginning where I spoiler do a rescue on a sub? That was not in the script that I read. That was all brand new stuff. Good or bad, I'm just letting you know. But (originally) there was other stuff at the beginning that was ... I'm, you know. I'm just saying it was radically different."

"I guess in some ways your imagination and your own perception of what it's going to be is its worst enemy. John (Turteltaub)'s interpretation of this is a fun end of summer movie. It's full of humour. He's put his very light-hearted way into it(...). It's a little bit more directed to a different taste of what my own is in terms of I like more gory adult stuff. You go: Where's the effing blood?! It's like, there's a shark. I'm a lot older but I can't speak for what this film could possibly speak to a younger audience. I might have made a film that not many people wanted to see. I'm not a filmmaker."

"I'm sort of an actor that's going to portray a role. I go there but I've learned not to get too attached to your own idea of what something could be. I don't know. As an audience goer, you're spared all of that sort of things that can ruin a movie for you. I think as you're involved in these films you get more and more critical and going: That bit there should have spent more money on the CG. That bit where they should have made that gorier. Where's the other bit that was in the original? You get very critical."

Director Jon Turteltaub had this to add in a recent interview with a horror-oriented film site:

"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. We shot or even did a lot of visual effects for gory scenes. There was some really good shìt that didn't survive to the final cut."

When Turteltaub was asked if he would like to see his own, unrated version released, he said:

"Yes. Mine would have a lot gorier, but funnier, deaths for people. It's just awesome. Killing people in movies is a lot of fun."

Now i'm wondering or kinda hoping theirs a directors cut somewhere I could get a hold of and see the actual movie that teases us with potential in the first act. If you've seen Batman Vs Super Man Directors cut vs the theatrical release you'll know what i'm talking about.

The Chinese approach continues

The studio had way too much infleunce in the end product and you can see a country mile away they are trying to attract the American\Asian and Chinese audience. It's clearly Hollywood's latest gimmick to extract as much cash out of a project as possible.

My rating

Predictable and offers nothing new to the genre. I have to give it a 4 out of 10.

More on the Megalodon

If you would like to know more about this fascinating pre-historic creature then check out this documentary I found on Youtube, offers a pretty cool break down on the history of this mega shark.

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