A Familiar Fin in the Water—Thoughts on The Meg (2018)

 Note that this piece contains full spoilers for the film in the title.

 

Although I’m someone who has a fear of the ocean and the things that might live in it, I don’t remember The Meg ever tapping into those feelings as well in the actual movie as it does in its posters, like this one, which are, to be fair, kind of indistinguishable from the most baseline of imagery you can find on Google by searching for “thalassophobia.” I didn’t go into The Meg expecting it to be particularly scary and so wasn’t too disappointed about how little it tickled that exact part of my brain, but this could be said to be another potential failing of the film.

 

Just like there are actually two “megs” (megalodon sharks) in The Meg, with one somewhat larger than the other one, so too are there almost two different movies operating at once, and while the two sharks are more or less aligned in their goals (eat people and animals) up until one devours the defeated carcass of the other, The Meg’s two halves never quite gel together, and I wouldn’t even say one devours the other. Instead, they visibly struggle with one another throughout, resulting in a film that never quite manages to satisfy fully in either one way or the other.

Put simply, this whole set-up—of an abnormally large ancient breed of shark freed from containment deep beneath the ocean by too-curious scientific venture—feels like a movie I would have watched casually “because it was on” on the Syfy network years ago. While The Meg has its genuinely good, entertaining, and even creative moments, there is so much here that screams B-to-C-movie creature feature (the drunken protagonist who’s the best at what he does being dragged back into his old life and who’s maybe just a little too gruff and bad-ass-coded to be believable as a human being, the joke-making singular Black character, what almost looks like reused animation of a shark fin prowling across the screen some distance away in the water…) but executed at a level where what could have been enjoyable-enough cheese in the form of an afternoon-wasting not-quite-spectacle with a painfully obvious, painfully low VFX budget has to instead deal with the fact that it’s at risk, owing to the relatively high quality of its acting and visual effects and so on, of being taken seriously, whether it likes it or not.

I know this particular film is based on a novel and maybe deserves to be taken a little more seriously on the basis of even just potential merit versus something that was slapped together for some version of “Shark Week,” but there’s simply no getting around the fact that, perhaps unfairly (certainly to films like the culturally-significant Jaws and maybe to this one), anyone who watches this film but has even a passing familiarity with the glut of shark rampage dramas out there is going to recognize this story before it’s even been fully told. There’s a pleasure in anticipating all your favorite bits like there always is in such low-impact fare, like the inevitable attack on a crowded beach showcasing vacation excess, but the fact that The Meg feels so familiar just further enhances the sense of dissonance that I mentioned before. Maybe, in the end, it’s just too high-priced-looking for what it is: It's very recognizable as a deeply goofy premise—an impression the trailers and the movie itself might actually be trying to cultivate, at least to a degree—but it also has an execution too competent for its own good (maybe). The overall shape of the thing is unmistakably that of a silly shark attack story, but a closer look at the particulars makes you doubt those intentions.

The themes here—of self-sacrifice, of celebrating the people you did save over giving up on life over the ones you couldn’t, of not meddling with the natural order of things—are all so familiar that they hardly need dissecting. I wouldn’t call the film visually interesting on the whole either, though it seems competent. I will admit that the earliest encounters with the big shark, where it’s on-radar but otherwise not shown directly (while it rams and damages various underwater machinery), certainly reminded me of those Syfy movies, but The Meg has the money to actually put the beast onscreen plenty after the rescue mission that takes up maybe a third of the runtime but that probably would have been stretched for the duration if this was one of those cheaper takes on the same basic idea. Instead, The Meg distinguishes itself with its ability to set up and indulge in several different set pieces that, again, make its altogether higher pedigree clear. If one is a Discerning shark attack movie viewer, then this one certainly presents a compelling argument for choosing it over the store brand (the “we have The Meg at home” of lesser shark attack movies, in internet meme terms), and there might be some actual fun to be had with it, even if you’ve seen too many giant shark flicks already.

In that spirit, the antics of Rainn Wilson’s tennis-shoe-and-t-shirt-wearing rich guy human antagonist were pretty good—starting with his dress code and the way he tries to give off the impression of being Just Some Guy, who goes for a hug instead of a handshake, while actually being just a shitty businessman with only his own interests at heart. It nails the look and attitude and the vibe of the modern, very public rich guy desperately seeking the approval, the human credibility, of his ostensible lessers. A pretty fun early beat has Winston Chao’s head scientist character mention the billionaire’s very high investment in the “Mana One” research center (which he will have “wasted” if their theory of a hidden world of sea life below the apparent bottom of the Mariana Trench doesn’t pan out), and the total given is under two billion dollars, which, of course, immediately put me in mind of real-life tennis-shoe-and-t-shirt-wearing rich guy human antagonist Elon Musk spending forty-four billion on a worthless website.

Wilson’s character is, of course, also the King-Kongian idiot who wants to potentially provoke the massive shark they disturb further in the interest of profit (though it coming up to wreak havoc on its own makes the debate moot) and who is so worried about lawsuits from injuries caused by the shark, which he assumes he would be liable for, that he lies about informing the governments of nearby nations about the danger and instead tries to just blow the creature up himself with the help of some cronies and his lawyer. They think they’ve done the deed, but then the smaller sharks that came out to feast on the remains all suddenly disappear, and then the clueless stooge dispatched to get some souvenir teeth comes back and blithely reports that there weren’t any to take. And then rich boy Jack Morris gets ultimately dumped from the boat after telling the fellas to gun it, before then getting chomped in such a way that his right hand, which was grasping onto the grody whale carcass closest to the audience POV, is left exposed and isolated there in the foreground of the shot for a moment.

This whole sequence, from Wilson’s Morris’ sort of wannabe-tactical all-black look to the semi-jerry-rigged explosives and everything else that follows, including one of the men getting splattered with exploded whale matter, reads like it should be a comedy (and I did find it funny), but it’s also a great example of a beat that just doesn’t work so well when so much of the rest of this movie feels like it’s meant to evoke something like real feeling for those lost. This is Morris’ predictable comeuppance for meddling with nature and being so self-absorbed and profit-minded, but it just feels wrong here, tonally and even simply with regard to its position in the film. In his role as human antagonist, for example, the more impactful death for Morris would probably have been at the climax, perhaps in tandem with the beast he was ultimately responsible for awakening.

The main problem is that so much of this movie feels like it’s meant to matter. When protagonist Jonas (Jason Statham) gets back in a sub for the first time, we can assume, since he lost his will to save people deep beneath the surface of the ocean, he gets “stuck” for a bit—unable to descend as we see his nervous face and the dark, watery void, visible through the screens at his feet, that has him so paralyzed. There’s a bit of a standoff here with the control room and Jonas, where, even though we know he will dive (because the story requires it), the movie suggests with the straightest of straightforwardly dramatic framing that He Might Not. I realized after the first or second draft of this piece that what follows below potentially reads as kind of a list of “cool” or “funny” moments that might not quite show off the weird tonal imbalance of The Meg as well as I had intended, so what I want to try to clarify here is that the movie just gives off the impression that these events are to be taken seriously, at critical moments, while then indulging in absurdities or grotesqueries at others that feel untenably at odds with the attempted seriousness.

Jonas’ inner battle as he struggles to make himself submerge isn’t played with a wink and a nudge, despite how predictable of a beat it is. Nor is the love story part of the plot, which includes a scene where the love interest, the very capable scientist Suyin (Li Bingbing), barges into Jonas’ room at one point to apologize for getting angry with him earlier but fails to notice that the man is almost naked, with just a towel around his waist, until she’s already mid-apology and in the middle of the room. Yes, that’s a moment of intended comedy, but the feelings it conveys are handled like the earlier dive, without any indication that this is all supposed to be a joke that the audience is in on. This might as well be the first ever instance of the Oops He’s Actually Wearing A Towel bit ever put to screen as far as The Meg’s tone is concerned. There is no self-awareness apparent in it, none of that low-budget snark. What we’re told by The Meg is that the burgeoning love story matters here, and so, too, do the stakes that rise with the killer shark. But the movie also continues to flirt with gags and concepts, like the death of Morris or of a pair of sweet and innocent whales hanging around in the waters near “Mana One,” that run contrary to that earnestness and that feel like they belong in either a more insufferably meta version of this story and/or one that felt altogether more grindhouse-like.

For a better-executed sequence, than Morris’ death, where the drama feels more appropriately at the forefront and where the comedy arises more from the ever-escalating danger (and therefore more subtly), there’s the set piece that takes up a good bit of time after the aforementioned rescue that brings Jonas out of his retirement, where the main cast takes off in a small-ish boat to investigate the destruction of several other boats by the meg. This is a move that doesn’t necessarily make a lot of logical sense but that leads to Jonas, first, tagging the shark, in a tense encounter ending in a chase, before Suyin has her own showdown in a diving cage that leads to a whole lot of mayhem and the loss of several major characters. People and the boat are getting dragged around, characters are going in and out of the water (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not). It’s funny in a tense way, with the seemingly unending stumbles and near-misses functioning both as genuinely dramatic flourishes that also happen to feel comedic primarily because of the sense of mounting risk and the tension the audience feels as they’re forced to confront the question of exactly how long the cast can go on nearly dying before someone actually does.

This culminates in another misbegotten “funny” death when the second, larger shark is finally revealed, devouring one unlucky crew member (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson’s “The Wall”) on its way up and out of the water to snag the body of the deceased smaller shark from where it’s suspended onboard the boat. Ultimately, tonally dissonant or not, this last bit was still a fun and engaging moment for me because I had had the thought that the shark they were tussling with earlier in the sequence seemed smaller than the one we had seen before but had just chalked it up to maybe perspective or a continuity error (maybe some conscious choice made with the design of the creature to make it… easier to manage as a visual effect, to fit onscreen and frame), so having the reveal confirm that what I had noticed was actually significant was a fun, relatively under-stated surprise for the audience.

The anticipated beach attack scene does come, but it’s altogether less trashy than some viewers might want if they’re familiar with the Aquatic Monster Attacks genre of films. Whether this is a result of the movie trying to be more serious, a quirk of having a working relationship with China (a fair amount of Mandarin is spoken onscreen during this film, and the beach itself is in China), or some other, third reason is unknown. There’s still fun to be had here, however, as there are some people rolling around atop the water in big plastic balls that get an obvious pay-off when the shark attacks. And there’s a fake-out when one of the guys hanging out on a platform suspended in the water seems to see something startling, but then it turns out it’s just some hot chicks on their own platform he’s reacting to. Fast-forwarding a bit, gawking news helicopters crash into one another and end up destroying the larger ship the main cast has brought out for their final showdown with the titular meg, in an act that simultaneously functions as more comedy arising from a situation that won’t stop escalating but that also impacts the genuine drama. This crash is what forces everyone who wasn’t already actively fighting the shark into the water, including Suyin’s young daughter, Meiying (Sophia Cai), where they are all essentially defenseless and need saving.

This is where the climax finds Jonas. In the prologue, he had to abandon both friends of his and some of the people he was trying to rescue from a damaged sub deep underwater when they were all attacked by a megalodon. It was this “failure” that drove him to give up his work as a rescue diver. One of his surviving crewmates, Dr. Heller (Robert Taylor), who had once denounced Jonas as having broken under the strain of their job and selfishly doomed other people to die, has already redeemed himself through his own sacrifice to save a new friend, Jaxx (Ruby Rose), during the earlier first encounter with the second meg. At the final confrontation, Jonas once again finds himself with a lot of voices in his ear, a giant shark inbound, and a choice to make. The intended parallel with the earlier scene feels obvious. Before removing his earpiece to launch his final assault on the shark, he even repeats the words of reassurance Suyin spoke to him before—life-affirming words, perhaps ironically, serving as a final farewell and maybe also as a sort of coded “I love you” before Jonas makes what seems like it could be a brave sacrifice for the good of everyone. The explosive he was supposed to fire at the meg before to kill it has malfunctioned. The stage is clearly set for some sort of dramatic finale.

Except! The situation is not the same as before at all. Jonas never chose his own life over anyone else’s. He clearly made the choice he did in the prologue to save the lives of others (the people he’d already rescued, Dr. Heller, and maybe other surviving crewmates). If it had been Jonas alone somehow, he’d probably have risked death to get everyone aboard the rescue sub. Furthermore, during the second deep-sea rescue attempt in the film that serves as the foundation of what could be considered its first act, the choice to leave a man behind (Toshi, played by Masi Oka) is made for Jonas by that man, who chooses to stay behind in a doomed sub to distract the shark so that the others will live. That scene is an appropriate match with the one in the prologue—deep underwater in a rescue sub with someone left to save but an impending impact putting everyone’s lives at risk—but that doesn’t change the context of the third such scene being too different to function as intended. As a result, this climactic “choice” the movie wants us to see as so dramatic now doesn’t even make sense as an echo of what came before, because there is no choice to make. Of course Jonas would give his own life, immediately and gladly, for someone else! That’s never truly been in question from the audience’s perspective, as we’ve always known that Dr. Heller was wrong in his assessment—that Jonas didn’t truly lose his grip and that they all would have been killed by a giant shark twice over if things hadn’t played out the way that they did.

Furthermore, Jonas doesn’t sacrifice himself, and there doesn’t even seem to be much effort made to pretend that he might. True, the explosive is nonviable, so, instead, Jonas uses the ragged, damaged fin of his little personal sub to skim under and slit open the belly of the meg from head to tail as the first step in what we might call a “finishing sequence,” like something performed against a boss monster in a video game. Then, after the enraged and bleeding creature has seized the vehicle and has cracked the glass with its jaws, Jonas kicks his way out and goes to stab it in the eye as it dramatically propels both of them out of the water and into the air. Jonas stabs the shark through the eye in a way and to a depth that (surely!) has to have killed it, but it’s still alive after falling back in the water! And then a multitude of smaller sharks are drawn by the blood and finish the beast off themselves as the modern natural order that had been tampered with and disrupted reasserts itself.

This whole excessive sequence is ridiculous fun but, yet again, goes against what so much of the movie seems to be about, tonally. The story ends, after Jonas and Suyin and Meiying have resolved to take a vacation together, with the camera sinking into the water. At first, I thought there was going to be a little stinger tease of another monster thanks to some ominous rumbling, but, instead, we just get “Fin” (GET IT?!), and then the credits roll.

Maybe The Meg actually only ever wanted to be another Sharknado, but there’s just too much of too high a quality here and that seems intended to be taken seriously for me to say that with any certainty. It seems to aim a little beyond the sprinkling of light comedic moments I would typically associate with a “romp” of this sort, which takes it out of the range where its humor can exist as inoffensive garnish for its drama. To the end, the film feels torn between two impulses—the (maybe) more serious and “scientific” thrills of its source material, and the goofy, lurid and low-budget, lunacy of the many similar big- and small-screen shark attack stories that have premiered since the novel was published in 1997. I could see The Meg being more appealing to me personally if it had picked one of those two directions and really committed to it, versus this sort of back-and-forth action.

The thing of it all is that The Meg, as a movie, is not all that novel. (If you want to deliver exposition, you can just have a child do it because they have no filter, right?) But what it represented back in 2018 and still represents today is, appropriately enough, a reassertion of a natural order that has long been disrupted. What feels like it might finally be the beginning of the slow collapse of the superhero movie juggernaut that has dominated theaters for so many years at this point, due to waning interest, ever rockier film quality, increasingly convoluted canon to take on-board, and even real-world criminal behavior of certain major players, has had some people watching the box office for signs of a diversifying line-up.

The Meg, while a few years old at this point, seems to have made back its budget and then some. It is itself a spiritual sequel in a long and tired line of not very good shark movies—a franchise-like kinship, though not as bad as a “cinematic universe” for all the separate-ness of the component titles—but it now seems to represent a breath of fresh air with its likeable-enough cast and its rousing but familiar plot beats. The dog that seemed sure to be eaten (that should logically have been eaten) and whose impending death was played for something like comedy, lives in the end as a surprise twist. If that’s not the touch of a knowing crowd-pleaser, then I don’t know what is. I, the critic man, think this movie was tonally confused and probably didn’t have as much novelty in it as it arguably should have had for what it is—a Shark Movie in The Year Of Our Lord 2018—but it’s still kind of fun to see what should probably have been just another easily-missed cheesy flick done up in such a high-gloss sort of way, and, therefore, The Meg gets a respectable one-slightly-smaller-megalodon out of two from yours truly.

 

I could easily imagine the button prompts that could have appeared onscreen during Jonas’ final confrontation with the meg if the movie was a video game. In a more consistently irreverent, bombastic, and/or gory take on the story, this finale might have been a delightfully hype capper on the whole film, whereas it currently just feels kind of out of place and even anticlimactic for how poorly it serves as a climax for the meaningful-feeling drama of The Meg.