Trailer Review: The Meg

Look out swimmers, surfers, bare buck bathers, parasailers, and all other aquatic revellers.  Something nasty comes from the deep.  Roughly three hundred poorly digitized, razor sharp teeth are fixing to rip through theatres come August 10th and bring the fear of the ocean straight to audiences.  Starring Jason Statham, Ruby Rose, and Rainn Wilson, The Meg brings a giant shark into modern waters to feast on boney humans.

On June 24, 2016, Jaume Collet-Serra's The Shallows was released and showed that a shark movie could, based on an appropriate budget, make money.  Shark movies had their course and haven't really been mainstream, movie theatre entertainment.  B-movie studio The Asylum had sparked a low budget spree of shark films since Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus.  It was a hoot of a movie, and saw a lot of films that came after with crazy plots from Swamp Shark (which I thought was a good deal of fun), to 2-Headed Shark Attack (which is forgettable), to Sharktopus (which was not as fun).  The culmination of all of this was in 2013 when Sharknado became a goofy pop culture event.  Even though there were a lot of shark movies happening, they weren't populating theatres.

After The Shallows came along, all of a sudden sharks were viewed as possible money makers.  I remember seeing an episode of the television show Scorpion (I don't make it a habit to watch that show) where evil sharks were afoot and someone was on a buoy,  just like in The Shallows.  Then we got 47 Meters Down which had a $5.5 million budget and was a profitable endeavour.  This summer, we have the largest of the large in a megalodon.  Humans are on the menu, and the trailer shows that this shark takes no prisoners.

The trailer uses an unusual music choice to let us know that this movie is going to be aiming at being fun and not taking itself super seriously.  That's a good thing, because the special effects do not look special at all.  There have been a lot of schlocky shark movies made, and I have seen a pile of them.  Judging from the trailer, having fun may be about all this movie has going for it.

A number of the shark attack scenes in the trailer are over the top looking, and, if you have seen Shark Attack 3 (and I highly recommend that you do), nothing will seem original about this movie.  We have Jason Statham thrown in there as the man to battle the shark, but will he be better at it than professional shark wrangler Thomas Jane from Deep Blue Sea?  That remains to be seen, but Statham can have a great presence in the right roles.  There isn't much of him talking shown in the trailer to let us get an idea if this is one of those roles that he will excel at.

According to Wikipedia, The Meg has a budget of $150 million.  I so hope that is off by a factor of ten.  Fifteen million is about as high as the budget for a movie like this should be, and the effects look like they came in at that price tag.  If the number on Wikipedia is right, then I think someone may have been in an altered state at the studio when this thing got green lit.  Well, a bit of research found a Forbes article that confirmed that huge budget.  I am honestly shocked and beside myself.  First of all, that is way too much money to throw at a b-looking flick such as this.  Second of all, where the heck did that budget go?  This is some Adam Sandler style money spending going on right here with presumably very little to show for it.

This isn't quite a trailer review.  It has morphed, and I apologize.  There is a chance, from what the trailer showed, that there may be some fun adventure to be had in this movie.  What it is, though, is the exact kind of movie that was popular five to nine years ago, movies on a cheap budget that were made for video or the Syfy channel.  Yes, there have been two examples of successful shark movies in theatres the past two years, but both of those movies combined didn't make enough to earn a profit for The Meg.  I smell a disaster washing up on shore on August 10th.

The Expendables 3

A number of years ago, at Wrestlemania 17, fans of the performance art of sweaty men pushing and pummelling each other (and indeed I was at the time a great fan) were treated to the ‘Gimmick Battle Royal,’ which was a blast from the past exhibit.  Wrestlers of old, all of whom were bathed in complete, unabashed gimmick.  It was a spectacle, because this was a concept that had become a bit of a laugh and shame inducing aspect when looking back at the history of wrestling.  However, seeing a light-hearted remembrance to it at Wrestlemania 17 brought out the nostalgia and made it ever so joyous to behold.  We had Duke ‘The Dumpster’ Droese (a garbage man), The Repo Man (no explanation required), Doink the Clown (once again, I need not explain), and the pinacle of hopeless gimmicks, The Gobbeldy Gooker (a dancing and unbelievable excited Thanksgiving Turkey).

It was enjoyable for the moment.  The wrestling was awful, but that had nothing to do with the enjoyment which was based on smiling and remembering how silly all of this was.  If they did it a second and third time, the novelty would be long gone and it would need to be actually entertaining for it to work.  Such is the case with The Expendables, which came out in 2010 and is now on its third instalment.  I fondly remember seeing it with a good friend, and getting giddy about all of these names from the past being thrown onto the screen in one action packed adventure.  To be honest, the action, script, and directing were not that great.  It was the un-measurable  power of nostalgia that left me walking away giving it a delightful three stars.

And onward does time march, four years the further and one sequel come and gone.  Novelty and nostalgia have now vanished.  It happened the first time, and it is no longer just fun in of itself to see these names on the screen at the same time.  The film’s shoulders must carry the weight of projecting a passable product.  What amazes me with this movie is that fact that it seems completely unaware that perhaps the ‘if we build it, they will come’ philosophy will not always work.  Just because it is crammed to capacity with well recognizable names does not mean it will be worthy of the masses.

The film itself is built on unsparing dialogue and characters, a barely serviceable script, and action sequences that are patched together with little cohesion, making it hard to really follow the part of the movie that should be the most fun.  As well as packing lots of weaponry, Sylvester Stallone and his crew march their way into battle wielding unforgivably poor blue screen effects, as well as digitally created aircraft and explosions that are just only one level above The Asylum (the studio who brought us Sharknado).  The rumoured budget is $90 million, and one has to believe that the majority went to pay the large cast instead of creating a movie that felt like it was produced by a major Hollywood studio.

In the film, Stallone’s team of elder gents of arms (including Jason Statham - who is really not that old, Dolf Lungren, Randy Couture, Wesley Snipes, and Terry Crews) run into a roadblock in an attempt to accomplish a poorly planned mission.  I did learn from this movie that if you are ever going to break into a heavily guarded area, you just need to proceed in the open with guns drawn at a pace slightly quicker than a meandering skulking.  I was also taught that to avoid being seen by passing vehicles, all one needs to do is stand with their back flat against a wall that faces directly towards the threat.

Not being able to accomplish the mission, which they never really seemed intent on doing if we are basing it off of their actions when the stuff goes down, Stallone sends the members of his team on their way.  His reasoning is that this is a young man’s game, a realization that he obviously did not come to while looking in a mirror.  Armed with a new group of unknown and unseasoned actors (with one of them having an IMDB bio boast of his existence on Dancing With The Stars), they go on to tackle dangers and be heroes.  For not having a lot of recognition, it is the younger group of soldiers who bring a shade of life to the film.  In the case of the UFC woman’s champion Ronda Rousey, she was able to shine at moments of personality and flair.  However, the ball was dropped when she was given a weighty dramatic context that was at this point out of her element.

Maybe that is the biggest problem with the movie… so many people do not feel like they are actually given opportunity for their personalities to be properly brought to light and infuse some energy is this bullet riddled film.  Wesley Snipes and Antonio Banderas grabbed their roles and ran with them, bringing some of the only moments of joy that I had while watching it, wishing that the others had done the same.  If neither your time nor your money is expendable, save yourself the time and just Google the synopsis and you get all you need from that.

Rating - 1 out of 4 stars