Meiying
“You must be the crazy guy.”
My review of MEG might be slightly unfair due to the amount of time I’ve waited for this movie, and how nit picky I probably got because it’s my favorite book of all time about one of my favorite creatures of all time. I’m going to try to work through this with as little spoilers as possible. It’s also going to sound like I absolutely hated this movie, but I promise I didn’t hate it I just didn’t love it.
Similar to Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, this film had a really strong opening, unfortunately not the opening chapter in the book with the T-Rex vs. Megalodon, but using the flashback scene instead I thought really helped establish Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) for the rest of the film. Unfortunately, his character is the only one I really seemed to care about during the entire film, whenever characters would die I felt like I didn’t care as much as I should have.
Based on the trailer and TV spots we got, I was expecting and hoping for a fun movie with a heart similar to the new Jumanji except with scary moments and a giant shark. Not taking itself too seriously and almost being self aware that it is a fairly corny movie. In my opinion, I think that would have worked a lot better than what we got, I think it took itself a little too seriously for what it was, but I do give it props for making me jump several times.
My other main issue with it is I feel that it resolved itself too fast. I think it should have been around an extra 30 minutes longer than it was, because the ending felt really rushed and so much was happening at the same time. Although it could be the pacing of the movie that was the issue, because it felt fairly rushed from the minute the Megalodon shows up. (These next couple of issues I had is me being super nit-picky because I love sharks) Dead sharks floating in the water (in reality they’re so dense they sink straight down), and whenever the Megalodon’s dorsal fin would surface, there was no caudal fin (tail) sticking up behind it which is how it looks when sharks swim close to the surface took away from the realism for me personally, but that’s me being very detail picky and I don’t think it’ll subtract from the film experience for anybody else.
Now this movie did have 2 significantly strong scenes (besides the opening) that if it would have continued with the quality of those select scenes, I probably would have put it in my top 3 for the year. I enjoyed being scared because I wasn’t expecting to be, Charles laughed at me every time I jumped. This movie also did something unexpected, which was portray sharks in a positive light, and even brought up shark finning, shark fin soup, and the serious impact it has. I was not expecting that at all in a giant shark film, and that left me impressed.
The VFX were really good, especially seeing the Meg in shallow water in bright lighting, even on closeups of its body were really good. The little girl actress did an amazing job in her role, although I wish more had been done with her character, kid actors (especially that young) being as good as she was seems like a rare thing in films. The last positive thing I took away from the film was the urge to learn how to dive into the water like Jason Statham, because literally every time he did it, it was the coolest dive I’ve ever seen in my life.
Don’t make the mistake I did by going into this film with fairly high expectation, because in the end it is a giant shark/monster movie, and it’s going to have the corny-ness of those types of films. As a movie in general I’m going to give MEG a 6/10, but as far as shark movies go, I’ll give it a 9/10 (Sharknado being 1, Jaws being 10). It wasn’t horrible, the parts that were good were very very good, I just didn’t care for the parts in between. It’s definitely an enjoyable movie overall, a good one to sit and just watch where you don’t have to think too much, but don’t expect much when it comes to storytelling.“
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