ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

JAWS 4: This time it's worse than personal . . . it's prehistoric!

Okay, I just made up that tagline, but the producers of this semi-successful Jaws wannabe didn't do much better with their ad campaign, not to mention the movie they produced. The movie made a little over $500 million on a budget a bit under $200 million, but the critics were less than kind, so the movie isn't considered a big success.

However, it did well enough that the studio is planning a sequel, so if you saw it and the plot left some intriguing unanswered question you're just itchin' to have answered, hang in there!

The Meg 2 is on the way!


___________ THE MEG - Official Trailer #1 [HD]


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Recently I watched a DVD of The Meg from Netflix, and the movie started off really well!

That's the good news.

The story has a good beginning which takes place in an amazing undersea research center with well-designed sets and props — all very futuristic — and an original premise involving a previously undiscovered section of the Mariana Trench that's concealed beneath a cloud of hydrogen sulfide which forms a thermocline ("a thin layer in a large body of fluid, in which temperatures change more rapidly with depth than they do in the layers above or below").

In the movie, this is presented as a cloudy layer of super-cold water that prevents us from seeing what's below it, and which also prevents the marine life living between it and the ocean floor (like the megalodon and a giant squid) from getting out.

The extremely cold water that separate the two warmer layers above it and below it serves as a barrier between the two.

Damn, that's a great idea! The movie really had me at that point._

So, we've got a futuristic underwater habitat and a A Lost World on the sea floor!

Cool!

And when two absolutely gorgeous deep sea ocean mini-subs penetrate the thermocline and encounter the megalodon and the giant squid, we get some wonderful CG special effects!

But when the mini-subs travel back up through the thermocline, they draw some of the warmer water below it up into the super-cold water, and the megalodon is able to use this temporary column of warmer water to escape into the ocean above!

Wow! Solid science and a good science fiction story, plus a cast that's very likable. And the relationships are believable and enjoyable.

What could possibly go wrong with this movie?

Well, I don't really know what happened, but it's almost at if the talented screenwriter who wrote the first 45 minutes died . . . and an idiot took over, screwing everything up from then on.

Yes. THAT'S the bad news.

Okay, guys, we all know how some movies create likable characters we disparately hope won't die, and when some of them do, we're all sad.

Sadly, this isn't one of those movies . . .

Despite the fact that the actors were clearly talented and undeniable attractive, the director somehow managed to slowly reduce our "give-a-damn" quotient concerning who lived and who died until we finally knew exactly who was going to get eaten next . . . and we were delighted when it happened!

Don't get me wrong,guys, the "shark food" count wasn't all that high among the main characters, but near the end when the megalodon swims into an insanely crowded beach in the Sanya Bay on the Chinese mainland, we start wondering if this prehistoric shark could somehow shit people out it's ass as fast as it ate them!

That's the only explanation for the way this monster could open its mouth and plow through the swimming crowd like a motor boat, gobbling up swimmers, plastic rafts, paddle boats, and anything else that would fit into a set of jaws the size of a garage door!

By the time the "exciting climax" arrives, we aren't excited at all, and the method used to kill this monster is for the macho hero to poke it in the eye with a poison-tipped spear.

Right . . .

Consider that in comparison to Roy Scheider's rifle-shot bullseye on an oxygen tank wedged between Jaw's massive molars to blow the damn shark into fish food, and you'll see why this movie was like an aquarium compared to Sea World!

And then (get this) a few hundred sharks of every imaginable species suddenly appear and start eating the dead megalodon!

At that point I rolled my eyes so hard in disbelief that I was a white-eyed zombie for the next ten minutes.

If any of you folks decide to watch this movie, you'll actually enjoy it, because I've just told you when to figuratively duck to avoid getting hit squarely by the lousy filmmaking. In fact, now that you know what to expect, you won't suffer the pangs of bitter disappointment which I did as this promising movie went from —

"Wow, this is gonna be great!"

— to —

"Damn, this movie sucks!"

Man, I really HATE IT when that happens.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[tmlindsey]

You mean there's not another Oscar-worthy performance by Jason Statham?!

_________ Greg Morton - Statham/Stallone/Schwarzenegger

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"Have you never wondered what it would be like to walk between the ticks and tocks of Time?"