Fan reactions mixed after release of trailer for upcoming Meg 2: The Trench
Is Jason Statham gonna need an even bigger boat, or is it a case of I’ll get me coat? Shark film fans at The Daily Jaws have been giving their initial reactions to the trailer for the Ben Wheatley directed Meg 2: The Trench. Like the comments that greeted the first film, they are good, bad and indifferent.
Let’s just say the Meg 2 trailer is very noisy and very busy and seemingly the person who put the music to the visuals never saw an inch of the film.
Damian Storer on Facebook said: “Nowadays, it’s just bigger, faster, bigger again, faster again, no real story depth, just noise and movements.”
Which for some, like David Lerouw Lascurain on Facebook, it is just exactly what they are after. He said: “Looks like dumb, over the top entertainment with mediocre SFX – but yeah a fun family thrill ride.”
There is a shot in the trailer for this monster shark sequel to The Meg (2018) that shows three giant megalodon shark fins racing towards a packed beach.
And – according to one of the characters – the film features the biggest megalodon even known, continuing that great tradition of shark film sequels upping the ante with a bigger shark, which happened in both JAWS 2 (1978) and JAWS 3D (1983).
Three giant sharks emerge at one point – you had me at hello dorsal fins – but it also looks like the Mariana Trench of the title has also unleashed a giant snake and a giant octopus, which has a whiff of over-egging the villain quota, just as some superhero films have done in the past.
All of which could mean we are going to get a bigger bloat of a sequel, so let’s hope it isn’t throwing more stuff at the film hoping some of it might stick. Perhaps if they didn’t have to do the CG on those sideshow beasts they could have concentrated more on the sharks, which don’t look any better than the original released five years ago.
At one point in the trailer, which is full of plenty of slow mo carnage , Jonas Taylor (a returning Jason Statham) pushes a 60 feet long meg back with his foot, so this certainly has one foot in the absurd shark spectacular rather than the more serious teeth of the likes of JAWS (1975) and The Shallows (2016).
For me, Jason Chambers on Facebook put it best, when he said: I’m sure this will be zany and fun…which is fine. I’ll watch…But…how ‘bout someone make a genuinely scary shark movie? You don’t have to top Jaws (it will never happen), but you can do your own thing and make something good.”
Think of it owing more to the likes of Sharknado and Kong Vs Godzilla, doing for monster shark movies what The Fast and the Furious has done for car and heist movies.
And for some, that is all they are after, Lorraine Miller saying: “Totally unbelievable, but it’s gonna be fun watching it.”
Meg 2: The Trench, I like some of the spectacle on show – with nice nods back to the original at times, including the return of Pippin which is the Meg 2 equivalent of the Jaguar driver from Speed turning up in Speed 2: Cruise Control – Pippin not to be mixed up with Pipit from JAWS, of course.
It just all looks a tad cartoonish at times in the action stakes, which probably makes for a fun afternoon at the cinema, but is unlikely to warrant or sustain repeat viewings.
Many fans of the original Steve Alten book have been placed to see the opening of the trailer that sees a T-Rex get taken down my a megalodon, which is how the original book opened.
That was echoed by Sean Patrick, who said: “Looks more enjoyably dumb than the first. And it’s nice to see them capitalize on the opening of the first book. Finally lives up to Steve Alten’s original pitch: Jurassic Park.”
Let’s hope there are far more crowd-pleasing moments like this which haven’t yet reached the surface.
Although, not all Alten fans are quite so optimistic, Dale King adding: “Looks awful. The books deserve better.”
Are you looking forward to Meg 2: The Trench or are you not prepared to go through that hell again?
Check out the trailer here.
Words by Dean Newman
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