“The Meg” Chinese Theatrical Poster
Director: Jon Turteltaub
Cast: Jason Statham, Li Bingbing, Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose, Winston Chao, Cliff Curtis, Shuya Sophia Cai, Page Kennedy, Robert Taylor, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson
Running Time: 113 min.
By Paul Bramhall
Let’s just get it out of the way upfront. Yes, The Meg is the movie which puts Jason Statham on equal footing with Jackie Chan. Is there another star out there who’s had the pleasure of starring alongside the likes of Shu Qi, Michelle Yeoh, and Li Bingbing? I think not, and it’s an accolade that’s as good a way to start a review off as any (plus, I have a feeling most other reviews may have skipped mentioning this landmark moment). With that fact laid out on the table, we can focus on the movie itself.
Based on the book of the same name by Steve Alten (which, for full disclosure, I haven’t read), The Meg has been over 20 years in the making, having originally been picked up by Disney in 1997 to be adapted for the big screen. At the time Disney ended up backing down, due to not wanting to compete with rival Warner Brothers Deep Blue Sea (which came out in 1999), and from there the property has been passed from pillar to post. At one point it was going to be directed by Jan De Bont (Speed), and in more recent year’s horror maestro Eli Roth looked like the firm favorite. A director known for his love of gore combined with a story about a giant shark seemed like a match made in heaven, but it was this match which eventually saw Roth jump ship, as he wanted to make it an R-rated bloodbath (literally) while maintaining the original $150 million budget. The studio was going to let him have both.
Skip forward to 2018, and The Meg is finally unleashed in the form of a co-production between the U.S. and China, with 3 Ninjas director Jon Turteltaub at the helm. Go figure. Stepping into the lead role of expert diver Jonas Taylor is British tough guy Jason Statham, a fitting choice considering he represented England in the diving category during the 1990 Commonwealth Games. The gruff Brit makes for a welcome sight as the lead, in what’s essentially a summer blockbuster movie for (almost) the whole family. For those wondering, the final rating it was slapped with was PG-13, so that should answer the question of if they went for blood or budget.
The plot, for what it’s worth, kicks off with Statham rescuing a submarine in an unexplored part of the Mariana Trench, one that’s under attack from a large unidentified force (hint: it’s a megalodon). Forced to leave half of his crew behind, 5 years later and he’s become an alcoholic recluse in Thailand, having failed to convince those he was accountable to that a prehistoric shark was responsible for the attack. However when a state-of-the-art underwater research facility loses contact with a sub exploring a similar area, containing a team which includes Statham’s ex-wife, he’s identified as the one person who has the skills to save them. Despite his promise to never dive again, knowing his ex-wife is in danger gets the better of him, and soon he’s enroute to the facility in a race against time to save the crew.
Had the whole movie revolved around Jason Statham versus a giant prehistoric shark, The Meg could have been a fun (big budget) B-movie. As it is, The Meg still feels more like a B-movie than anything else, and it’s one that comes lumbered with a revolving cast of interchangeable characters. Rainn Wilson plays the ruthless millionaire who only cares about the bottom line, Cliff Curtis is the guy who keeps cool under pressure, Page Kennedy is the loud black guy, and Ruby Rose plays the smart female who’s also kind of edgy, like she always does. Of course being a Chinese co-production, we also have Zhong Kui: Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal co-stars Winston Chao and Li Bingbing, as a father and daughter duo that run the facility.
In fairness, Li Bingbing is the closest thing to a co-lead The Meg has, and becomes the love interest that begins to soften Statham’s world weary heart. Yes, you may be thinking that the reason he accepted this mission was because of his ex-wife, but don’t worry about that. At one point, his ex-wife even encourages him to start a relationship with Bingbing, it’s a win-win! Bingbing herself has been doing the rounds lately in a number of co-productions, with roles in the likes of The Forbidden Kingdom, Resident Evil: Retribution and Transformers: Age of Extinction. I’m not sure if The Meg can top her career highlight of fighting against an ancient Chinese mummy alongside Kelsey Grammer in Guardians of the Tomb, but it comes pretty close.
But what about the megalodon itself? In fairness, the beast of the deep makes for a surprisingly tensionless threat. Even when it’s initially identified, we simply get a scene in which Statham announces “It’s a megalodon”, and nobody acts particularly shocked or terrified. It’s almost as if the cast knew they’re in a movie called The Meg, so the scene didn’t call for any surprise reactions or, dare I say it, acting. This kind of non-reaction essentially summarises the first hour. It all feels rather flat and lifeless, as the crew explore the dark recesses of the ocean, and we get to watch what looks like an early 2000’s IMAX Under The Sea short film. It’s only when the megalodon escapes the deepest depths of the ocean and into more familiar waters that proceedings (literally) brighten up, and we’re treated to what feels like a series of shark genre vignettes.
As much fun as it is to watch Jason Statham being pulled through the water on a rope while being pursued by the hungry shark, or Li Bingbing trapped in a shark cage stuck inside its jaws, there’s also the unmistakable fact that the megalodon is nothing more than CGI. With the huge budget The Meg has behind it, you’d think at least a few million of it could have been spent on some practical shark effects. You only need to type “megalodon” in IMDB to see there’s been a heap of similar movies in the last 15 years (of which my favorite title has to be 2015’s Mega Shark vs. Kolossus), all of which rely on sub-standard CGI. You can’t replace in-shot practical effects, and I can’t help but think The Meg squandered an opportunity by opting to just make a better CGI version of all those shark flicks clogging up the DTV shelves.
For those looking for some blood soaked mayhem, you’ll also have to stick with those DTV shark movies, as you won’t find it here. Outside of some whale blubber (ok, and one briefly sighted severed arm), The Meg is a toothless affair when it comes to the business of kills, which let’s face it, is half the reason for making a shark movie in the first place. Director Turteltaub and star Statham have been surprisingly vocal about their dissatisfaction at the lack of gore on display, as apparently more was shot, but most of it has been cut for the theatrical release. Here’s hoping we’ll get an unrated home video release, but taken in its current form, the megalodon may have an impressive mouthful of teeth, but we don’t get to see them do a whole lot.
More than any of the above though, what threw me off the most with The Meg was how quaint the script is. There are clunky lines throughout, and some of the exchanges are bizarrely polite. One character is pulled out of the water just seconds away from being eaten alive, and their exact exchange consists of the rescued character saying “Thank you”, and the rescuer replying “You’re welcome.” Then they both go on to continue with whatever it was they were doing before. It’s weird. It gets weirder though. In one scene the crew come across the wreckage of a boat, and the water is scattered with small sharks that have their fins missing. A whole scene is then dedicated to Bingbing and Chao explaining that the sharks have had their fins cut off to make shark fin soup, and what a terrible waste of life it is. I get it, if Li Bingbing doesn’t want to eat shark fin soup, then maybe her fans won’t either. But really, in the middle of The Meg!?
The Chinese investment fully shows itself during the finale, set on a crowded beach in China, the shallow water makes for a fun ending as the shark causes havoc amongst the various water sports and swimmers, sometimes feeling like we’ve stepped into another movie altogether. To its credit, it’s also one of the few scenes in which the comedy actually works. Indeed, The Meg is far from perfect, but any shark flick that throws in a finale that includes exploding helicopters, a wedding, a Yorkshire Terrier, a guy in a zorb, and Jason Statham spouting lines like “I’m gonna make it bleed”, at least deserves some good will. In Jaws they may have needed a bigger boat, and if Turteltaub doesn’t want his movie to sink without a trace, The Meg might need one too.
Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 5.5/10
In the book, it’s a Japanese family the hero becomes involved with.
I guess that would have given us Rinko Kikuchi as Statham’s co-star if they decided to stay faithful to the book.
Part of the problem with Eli Roth’s version was also he wanted to play the lead role, not the American but the Statham role
Nobody picks up on the strange choice of a Mandarin version of Hey Mickey, when Statham is reintroduced in Thailand?
Did I pick up on it? I had to restrain myself from jumping out of the seat & busting out some moves to it! I guess Turteltaub (or at least the Chinese producers) agreed, since it also plays over the end credits. 😛
The trailers for this movie were nothing but a clever bait and switch job by the studio. The trailers showed us the potential of a fun silly movie because how huge this shark was, we got to see a scene with a helicopter chasing it , a couple of boat/underwater action scenes and it ended with the shark seemingly having a potential ready set smorgasbord at the overcrowded beach area filled with a couple of hundred potential victims just waiting to be picked off.
The trailers set a tone of it being a fun shark movie with a messy slaughter of people.Yes a big budget movie with the fun of the horrible The Asylum studio movies, but with better acting and special effects.Sure my imagination filled in the rest of the blanks and I did hope for a Deep Blue Sea-like movie, a fun easy ride. Sadly this shark movie was so bloodless that I felt anemic after it ended and I’ve never been so bored in my life at the movie theater.
The studio chose to make a shark movie in 2018 without any fun gore, inventive kills, cool stunts, great epic action shots or interesting characters. Why did it become such a lacklustre bland movie?
First of all we’ve got the base crew that hardly does anything noteworthy, they more or less just sit behind their desks and try to look like they’re doing something super important on their workstations. They could have all been switched out with cardboard cutouts, displaying the same range of emotions and importance. They’re just waiting to hear their number being called out and then leave the movie without much noise or fun.They will not be missed.
The crew is also supposedly a bunch of hand-picked super clever technicians/engineers/scientists, but they get so litte screen time that we (the audience) can only take the script’s word that they have said skills, they sure are hardly using all that education to something useful. Or we get a baffling cringeworthy sexual one-liner like the male submarine crew “gave” us as the submarine got in Meg’s hidden territory. These are adult men, seemingly highly educated people are working and making lewd jokes at their female co-worker at the depth of 11000 meters.That’s extremely unprofessional. I’m not a feminist or sjw, but this is just bad juvenile writing.
We also get a weird one-liner from Jason Statham’s character as he gives credit to Ruby Rose’s character for “knowing her stuff” (engineering skills/work) because he checks her out (her cool. edgy “manly” looks is enough ?) and talks a few seconds with her after their very first random meeting in the elevator. She looks “cool” so ergo she must “know her stuff”? Who wrote his horrible dialogue and said:That will do!
This so-called super intelligent team also does so many illogical choices that I constantly wondered if they all faked their diplomas and degrees. They all seem to lack the primal survival instinct that all humans have,avoid danger if possible. Not these clowns, they have jolly trip in these general shark infested waters and aren’t really too bothered with the Meg being a huge threat.The guy staying way too long in the water as a joke was so badly acted and unfun that everyone in the theater just made fun of it because the end of it was so obvious.Are these “intelligent” adult crew people made stupid so kids watching this movie can find something to laugh about?
They lost a submarine and one crewman, they all saw the size of the Meg,it attacked their base, three fishing boats are suddenly sunk and the only logical decision after that was to take the whole crew out in a small boat to GPS tag the Meg?
Who does that? Not normal people.
How about tagging it from the safety of a helicopter? These “intelligent” people do everything wrong, practically trying to put themselves in harms way at every possible chance that can be imagined.
This movie is close to being two hours long, I was bored out of my poor mind after just one hour. I couldn’t exactly leave the theater either as there’s no ticket refund system in my country. I swear this movie made me less smart by watching it. I was first sad that this movie didn’t become the epic shark movie that the trailer teased or myself had hoped for, but reading that it had a total budget of $120-180 million dollars made me angry. What a wasted potential of making a type of movie we rarely get nowadays.
I could have easily written a way better script idea, filled with cool kills and epic shark mayhem for this movie while sitting on the toilet.
End notes.
The cast is boring to watch because the script doesn’t really give anyone any interesting to say or work with in terms of emotional investment. The movies switches between popcorn summer movie fluff with stupid jokes and can suddenly seconds later go full drama with everyone being sad. It happens so suddenly that I feel I’m watching a two hour movie version of something that initially had a total runtime of six hours, but the edit was made by a intern that just doesn’t know the craft. With no real character development throughout the movie I must admit I don’t care that the crew people are dying.
This is a 1/5 for me, will never see again. I would rather rent a new Sharknado movie than another Meg movie. This movie has a big budget,they can’t excuse the end product.
Meg made better.
The Meg could have been THE best if they made it a serious, horror movie as the first Jaws. Don’t show the shark until the very end, but let us get some terrifying kills by other creatures from the new deep waters and general horror from the start.Later on either Jason Statham or Li Bingbing loose a few family members and one of them go out of their way to revenge them while the other person is desperately trying to stop the revenger, thus suddenly both being forced into the same fight for survival.Then the rest of the crew die horrific deaths by accidents or by Meg destroying their base. I would like a horrific bleak ending with nice unexpected deaths and preferably the death of the adorable girl being a accidental victim.
If they want to go crazy popcorn summer movie they could just do gore and kills like the movies Deep Blue Sea and Pianaha 3D. They could have made crazy shark stunts, like the Meg jumping out of water taking down helicopters, killing plenty of random people in different boats, seeing Jason Statham fighting and driving away from the Meg using a jetski and it ending in an all out gore mayhem as Meg makes its way to the beach with hundreds of people. Perhaps at one point we get to see Jason Statham riding the Meg like the sandworms in the 80’s movie Dune.The Meg ends up dead in a insane massive explosion with chunks of bloody meat raining down after Jason Statham fights the shark with a Apache helicopter or tank. The End!
Another fine Bramhall review! I agree with basically all points you laid out in your review, man. Especially the screenplay notes. So polite, so… meh. It’s a shockingly unrewarding movie that, on paper at least, seems like it should be a total blast. Jason Statham vs. giant shark. How do you make that a dull movie?
I did read the book. Probably more than once. And the first couple sequels. I was a big Steve Alten fan in my teens. I’m not surprised that the movie went PG-13 because of the budget necessities but I am shocked that they basically removed all of the book’s teeth. It’s a very pulpy novel. Hard R violence, sex, language, etc. I figured they’d tone it down some but not THAT much. The story, for what it’s worth, also changed dramatically. And the shark was much cooler in the book as it was all white and seemed to glow like other deep sea fish are known to do. The shark in the movie looks drab by comparison.
One of the things that’s most disappointing regarding the film in terms of being an adaptation is that Alten’s Meg sparked a new interest in megalodon. All of those meg movies that SyFy and Asylum have been making owe a great deal to the book’s popularity. And so it’s a bummer that the story that started all of that ends up playing… not much different than the movies that it inspired, all of which were made at probably more than half the cost.
Right on Kyle, I’d heard about the tone of the book being much more adult orientated, so it doesn’t surprise me that fans of the novel would most likely hate the big screen version. It’s ironic that the PG-13 allowed it the bigger budget, but at the same time it was budget constraints that prevented the special fx crew from making the megalodon the kind of deep sea translucent color it’s described as being in the book. Who knows, maybe the Asylum guys will come along and make a version using an inflatable transparent plastic shark, and it’ll end up looking more like it was supposed to.
Ok, I guess I’m the only one here who liked the movie, and thus should be pelted.
Considering the film’s PG-13 rating I’m not sure why people were disappointed in the film’s violence levels. If a more violent version was filmed before the edits, I’m sure it will suffice. I compare this to the theatrical cut of Die Hard 4 as opposed to the unrated version where it’s still serviceable.
As far as the movie being “bloodless” is concerned, there was still a decent amount of it such as The Meg’s prey, and the final battle with Statham.
Eli Roth would have been terrible for this movie since he would object the same douchebag characterizations and gross-out cheap thrills like in Cabin Fever and the Hostel films. I’m glad that didn’t work out.
I kind of view The Meg as a giant monster/kaiju film. Those films weren’t particularly “gory,” so this movie could get away with it as well.
In fact, much like with Gorgo, Tarantula, and War of the Gargantuas, I felt like this movie embraced its “quality B-film” sensibilities where the cast was having fun, and the thrills were basic but good popcorn entertainment.
All in all, I’d say The Meg is just as good as Deep Blue Sea.
It’s comments like this which are responsible for movies like ‘Deep Blue Sea 2’ being made! 😛
Really? I didn’t think I was enough of an audience. 😩