It’s telling that The Meg director Jon Turteltaub has declared his intention on finally bringing the long-in development adaptation of Steve Alten’s novel to screens was to make “the second best shark movie of all time.” Yes, even in this age of perpetual remakes, reboots and regurgitations, it’s still universally accepted that no movie centred on sharks will ever be better than Jaws, and in a way we might find it quite reassuring that filmmakers still feel that way. Yet while shark movies may have long since set a pinnacle which no one dares to dream they can surpass, on the flip side any filmmaker with a reasonable budget and a half decent cast and script can always reassure themselves that there’s no way in hell their shark movie will be the worst of its kind; after all, we could reel off scores of low-rent CGI shark schlockbusters, most of them the work of the infamous Asylum, that have set the bar embarrassingly low.
Even so, over the decades we have seen a few notable shark flicks (most recently The Shallows and 47 Metres Down) that have managed to find some middle ground between those points, winding up thoroughly entertaining underwater romps in their own right. Is The Meg better than all of these? No, I don’t think so – but, as was inevitable, it is easily the largest-scale film of its type we’ve ever seen, given that in this instance the shark in question is the Megalodon, a gargantuan prehistoric ancestor of the Great White shark, more than three times the size of Spielberg’s Bruce; and a great deal costlier to bring to life, given the film’s reported $150 million budget.
Jason Statham (whose casting represents the most irresistible juxtaposition of larger-than-life hero and improbable animal threat since Samuel L Jackson had to deal with those motherfuckin’ Snakes on that motherfuckin’ Plane) is Jonas Taylor, a rescue diver who we meet in the process of a mission that goes wrong; owing, so Jonas insists, to an attack from an unusually large sea creature. Skipping ahead five years, we meet the crew of a deep sea research station led by scientist Zhang (Winston Chao) and his daughter Suyin (Li Bingbing), who are exploring hitherto uncharted depths of the South China sea. Breaking through to a whole new level beneath what was thought to be the ocean floor, a submersible discovers an incredible, undisturbed ecosystem – but once they get down there, things go south figuratively and literally. Soon enough, communication’s down and life signs are low. It’s time to stage a rescue – but, wouldn’t you know it, only one man has attempted a rescue at that kind of depth before and made it back alive. That man is Jonas, and one of the pilots on the trapped submersible just happens to be his ex-wife Lori (Jessica McNammee). Naturally, the world-weary soul who swore he’d never dive again is promptly brought back on the job, only to come face to face with the same prehistoric mega-shark that ruined his life those years earlier.
Steve Alten’s Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror was first published in 1997, the movie rights were snapped up shortly thereafter, and in the interim Alten has penned a series of sequels fleshing out the world of Jonas Taylor and company, all of which are great fun in a holiday reading kind of way. Devotees of the novels may be a little disheartened by just how fast and loose The Meg plays with the material, shifting the action from the coast of California to China, and radically rewriting the bulk of the supporting players. Even as someone who’s read and enjoyed Alten’s books, I hardly consider these changes a problem*; we might keep in mind that Spielberg’s Jaws jettisons huge amounts of Peter Benchley’s novel, and all for the better. Also in common with Jaws, the deviations from the text make the film a lot less adults-only than it might have been if shot as originally written. Word is that the studio insistence on keeping things PG-13 was the key reason The Meg’s original director Eli Roth jumped ship (pun intended – though, curiously, he went direct to an even more family friendly project, the upcoming The House With A Clock In Its Walls), to be replaced by the more workmanlike Jon Turteltaub, who’s never helmed anything scary before. It’s hardly surprising, then, that The Meg feels more of an action adventure than an underwater horror movie. (Side note there: if, like me, you’re an unabashed fan of Turteltaub’s National Treasure, keep your eyes peeled for a cute little Easter Egg.)
Yet while Jaws will always seem the most immediately obvious frame of reference for any shark-based blockbuster, there are a slew of other oceanic spectaculars that The Meg evokes more directly. The high-tech submersibles on a mission of deep sea discovery, piloted by a ragtag bunch of old friends, are highly reminiscent of James Cameron’s The Abyss. The climactic scenes of pretty young people partying on the water, not knowing they’re about to get eaten, play like an edited for television cut of Alexandre Aja’s Piranha 3D (which would have given things a somewhat circular quality had Roth directed, given he had a small but memorable role in Aja’s film). Meanwhile, the fancy scientific research base funded by an untrustworthy billionaire is straight out of Deep Blue Sea, The Meg’s strongest competition for the title of second best shark movie ever – and, to my money, it’s failed to steal the crown of Renny Harlin’s 1999 B-movie par excellence. A shame, given that the success of that film was largely responsible for The Meg not getting a green light in the late 90s, plunging it into two decades of development hell.
Naturally, there’s plenty of fun to be had watching Jason Statham do his usual grimacing tough guy routine opposite a formidable CGI creation. There’s also an endearing interplay among the cast; while the hoped-for sexual chemistry between Statham and Li Bingbing is never really there, we do get a nice fraternal interplay between Statham and Cliff Curtis as his old buddy Mac. Beyond that, though, the supporting cast including Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose and Page Kennedy are never given much that interesting to do. The main problem is, it’s all just played a little too straight. The marketing campaign, with its slew of tongue in cheek taglines like ‘chomp on this’ and ‘opening wide,’ suggested a film with a knowing sense of absurdity (not unlike Deep Blue Sea), and while there are flashes of that in here, it could have done with a whole lot more humour, a bit more pace, and – even within the confines of the PG-13 – just a splash more blood here and there for it to really hit the mark. Even so, The Meg is enjoyable, undemanding fun, and surely anyone who likes some good old no-brainer action wants to see Jason Statham fight a giant shark at least once.
The Meg is in cinemas now, from Warner Bros.
* The only omission from the novel that really bothers me is that we don’t get to see the prehistoric prologue in which the megalodon takes down a T-Rex. Surely that would have been worth the ticket price alone.