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The Life and Mind of DamnBlackHeart
This is to help me stay actively writing. So expect to see rants, tips on writing, thoughts on subjects, me complaining of boredom, reviews, anime, movies, video games, conventions, tv shows and whatever life throws at me.
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Movie Review: The Meg (2018) |
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The Meg is a 2018 science fiction thriller film directed by Jon Turteltaub with a screenplay by Dean Georgaris, Jon Hoeber, and Erich Hoeber, based on the 1997 book Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror by Steve Alten. The film stars Jason Statham, Li Bingbing, Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose, Winston Chao, and Cliff Curtis, and follows a group of scientists who encounter a 75-foot-long (23 m) Megalodonshark while on a rescue mission at the floor of the Pacific Ocean. [x]
I disagree with most of the movie critics about The Meg. It’s a monster shark B-movie that is above average, not below it. If I have to give it a score it would be 6/10 because it definitely deserves a higher score than Sharknado (which has an 82% on Rotten Tomatoes with an Audience Score of 33%). It’s not trying to be Jaws, though it does has some scenes that play homage to it and Deep Blue Sea.
It’s just a fun and entertaining summer blockbuster. The kind that’s great for a date-night or to escape reality for an hour and half. Of course it’s not going to be perfect, but compared to other B-movies it’s a lot better and you can see that they’ve put some effort into making it decent. If you’re going in expecting a serious cinematic masterpiece you’ll be disappointed, but if you’re also expecting something ridiculously cheesy you’ll be disappointed too. The Meg sits perfectly in the middle of both.
It’s unrealistic, but at the same time not as stupid (especially if you suspend your belief) that it almost seems convincing. The characters are sometimes idiots (such as lacking cautiousness), but again it wouldn’t be as fun if they were sensible. They could’ve been developed a bit more (or have better dialogue), but that’s not the focus of the film so to me it wasn’t that much of a problem or too noticeable that it interfered with my enjoyment.
The action was exciting, and the CGI was pretty good. I suppose if they didn’t have to toned it down to fit the PG-13 rating it would have been even better. Actually, it would probably turned into a horror-thriller film that half the critics expected it to be (especially with amount of times they keep trying to compare it to Jaws). They didn’t go in that route, because it wouldn’t have drawn in a wide range of audiences. After all, this is an American-Chinese co-production with the goal of breaking into a new movie market from both sides. It’s not easy, especially when China has a long history of censorship and banning not just local, but international films that they deemed unsuitable for release. While America has issues in not having enough diversity, especially the lack of Asians in leading roles (or they whitewash the few characters that were canonically Asian).
The Meg doesn’t demonize sharks as I thought it would have. It’s a refreshing change. Their first thought was to study it since it is a prehistoric creature. However, they didn’t explore that option as much as I would’ve liked. Only because the choice was taken from them by someone else. If they did, they would’ve realized that it would’ve been too dangerous to keep around. It would’ve disrupt the entire marine ecosystem. Megalodon is extremely large with just as large of an appetite that it would’ve eaten the entire sea life into extinction.
They also bought up the horror of the shark-fin trade. How greedy humans are just for a bowl of shark fin soup, which they slice the fin off and throw the poor shark back into the ocean to die. They make it clear that it’s illegal and a terrible thing that humans to do to them. Heck, at some point in the film the sharks even help to save the day.
 DamnBlackHeart · Sun Aug 12, 2018 @ 09:03pm · 0 Comments |
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