The Meg: Just Another Movie
Director: Jon Turteltaub
Cast: Jason Statham, Ruby Rose, Li Bingbing, Rainn Wilson, Cliff Curtis, Robert Taylor
Genre: Monster Movie/ Thriller
Runtime: 1h 52m
Rating: 2/5
Jason Statham’s The Meg, despite being a monster movie, lacks the terrifying and ‘holy shit!’ moments that we expect from such a movie. With the exception of a few scenes (three to be precise), the movie offers next to nothing. In a movie that has a giant 23-meter prehistoric apex predator terrorizing the cast, the terror, amazingly, fails to permeate to the audience onlooking a giant silver screen.
As a mysterious giant creature, supposedly a Megladon— thought to be extinct millions of years ago, attacks a deep-sea submersible, leaving it disabled and trapping the crew at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, the research team stationed in “Mana One” are in a race against time to rescue the crew. As such, they enlist the help of the now-retired deep-sea rescue diver Jonas Taylor, the only person to have ever undertaken such a mission. This story by Steve Alten is as formulaic as they come. And add to this the forced romance between Statham’s Jason Taylor and Li Bingbing’s Suyin which is apparent from the word go, you will be forced to think how did the screenplay even get a pass.
The characterization isn’t The Meg’s strong suit either. The characters are generic and shallow. They are there only because a movie needs characters. Of the leading cast, Jason Statham’s Jonas Tylor is as Jason Statham as he can be. He has been playing this same role forever and even Tom Cruise doesn’t do Tom Cruise all the time. Statham needs to give it a rest. Following in the view of the movie, Rainn Wilson’s Jack Morris is a typical bad guy investor/owner. The other characters are just there as I already mentioned. Ruby Rose’s Jaxx Herd is an engineer, Li Bingbing’s Suyin is a shark specialist. This is all I have to say about the characters, although Suyin’s daughter Meiyang was a scene-stealer. But then when a cute little girl steals the show in a movie about a prehistoric apex predator, the less said the better.
At this point, I’m wondering what else should I talk about. Should I talk about the inconsistency of the plot? I would, but it was not engaging enough for me to notice the flaws. I should, perhaps, talk about the visual effects but visual effects alone does not make a movie.
In conclusion, The Meg is one of those movies, which has no significance whatsoever. It is just there.
Sudarshan Rajbhandari
