The Meg was a field workplace smash, but it surely had the potential to be rather more. Right here’s how The Meg 2 can develop into a full-fledged horror movie.
The Meg wasn’t as horrifying because it may have been, however a sequel can simply resolve that. The Meg, directed by Jon Turteltaub and partially based mostly on Steve Alten’s sci-fi horror novel Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror, has lastly emerged from improvement purgatory after greater than 20 years in limbo.
The movie was an action-packed summer time blockbuster that remodeled $530 million worldwide, as one would anticipate from the idea of Jason Statham combating an enormous shark. The Meg, then again, had the potential to develop into one other landmark within the “killing shark” horror subgenre, which can nonetheless be used within the sequel.
The Meg follows Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham), a rescue diver on the hunt for the Carcharodon Megalodon, a prehistoric 80-foot predator that murdered a member of his crew 5 years earlier than. In fact, Jonas is apprehensive to confront the beast as soon as extra, however he accepts the job when his ex-wife, Lori (Jessica McNamee), turns into misplaced within the Mariana Trench.
Jonas Taylor joins millionaire Jack Morris (Rainn Wilson), Dr. Minway Zhang (Winston Chao), and oceanographer Suyin (Li Bingbing) on a rescue mission that swiftly turns into a tough survival journey. Happily for Lori and the whole Chinese language coast, Jonas defeats the Megalodon earlier than leaving its carcass for lesser sharks to feast on.
Regardless of being a movie workplace success and receiving beneficial opinions regardless of its weird premise, The Meg wasn’t fairly as memorable as Steven Spielberg’s horror basic Jaws, or as wealthy in mythology because the ever-expanding MonsterVerse (in any other case often called the Godzilla franchise). It is a massive flaw in a movie with a lot franchise potential. In spite of everything, the Kaiju action/horror sub-genre isn’t as populous because the superhero or haunted home sub-genres.
The Most Severe Errors Made by Meg
All of The Meg’s issues stem from its insecurity in its personal notion. Sure, the truth that it was finally launched after such a prolonged wait was an achievement in itself, however the saturation of VFX-heavy Hollywood blockbusters is forcing large-scale movies to have a extra distinctive aesthetic.
Most viewers didn’t discover The Meg terrifying sufficient to categorise it as a horror movie, nor did they discover it hilarious sufficient to categorise it as a satire of catastrophe movies. It was action-packed and outrageous, but it surely lacked the self-awareness of Jason Statham’s action hero escapades within the Quick & Livid movies. In sum, The Meg performed it too secure to be remembered by audiences till the subsequent aquatic monster movie arrives out.
That is most evident in The Meg’s PG-13 classification. It stands to purpose {that a} movie that includes a shark dozens of instances bigger than Jaws’ legendary Bruce could be extra graphic.
Blood and gore don’t need to be gratuitous or disgusting like within the Piranha movies, however having the liberty to point out an ominous floating limb or a grisly on-screen loss of life is a robust device that may serve the plot in quite a lot of methods, corresponding to establishing how unrelenting the shark is or how no character is actually secure. Think about Deep Blue Sea and the infamous second through which the shark seems out of nowhere and drags Russell Franklin (Samuel L. Jackson) into the ocean.
The Meg’s most blatant flaw is that it doesn’t take a agency stand on its horror roots. Crawl adopts a fundamental strategy based mostly on the notion of a looming beast in a selected spot, Open Water employs discovered video to create a gripping survival thriller, and The Reef employs real shark footage to spice up the sense of actuality.
All of those movies selected a dependable weapon for instilling terror and stayed with it, establishing a definite horror type. The Meg’s closest device was its high-octane action, however different from a couple of perfunctory leap scares which can be inherent in deep-sea movies, it didn’t resemble any kind of horror.
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