Let’s be honest. We don’t walk into Meg 2 expecting the plot to blow us out of the water. We want those Megalodons to chomp their way through some wooden decks, steel ships, and calcium-rich bones. And of course, we hope Jason Statham finds a way to one-up punching a prehistoric shark. Of course, Meg 2 - The Trench has all of this, but it cramps them all to a fantastically bonkers last half hour that just about manages to wake us up from an exposition-induced slumber.
A few years after Statham’s Jonas Taylor last punched a Megalodon back to its time period, he is now an ocean conservationist who doesn’t shy away from drop-kicking sailors who dump toxic waste into the sea. These might seem like just another reason to showcase Statham’s suave stunt skills. But there is a nice tie-up with a primary plot point later in the film that made me appreciate the writing of the film. However, barring a handful of such flourishes, Meg 2: The Trench largely stays in unsalvageable territory because it forgets why people came to watch the film in the first place.
Why waste time manufacturing cardboard antagonists, who are just trigger-happy upgrades of Captain Planet villains? The entire first two acts are focussed on capturing the expanse of the ocean, and repetitive action sequences featuring the monsters of the sea. Unfortunately, the build-ups to these stunt sequences are plain boring. Despite having the likes of Wu Jing and Statham himself, the stunts somehow feel flat when it is not involving sharks, prehistoric lizards, and a really really really large octopus.
The film starts with Wu Jing’s ocean institute rearing a Meg in captivity. As always, the characters forget the first rule of such films. Take, for instance, a Mummy film. What should you do when you get a centuries-old sarcophagus? The only right answer is to leave it alone. Similarly, there is a thermocline that seemingly lets the ocean monsters live in their own world without entering ours. So what should be done? Nothing, right... but no, they go full dynamite on it, to create a pathway that finds these two worlds meeting. Once again, the film should have picked up the pace here, and we must be regaling ourselves by seeing Statham and Co literally swimming with the sharks. But we wait a bit too long for that to happen, and whatever happens in that time isn’t entertaining either.
There is the garden variety double-crossing, the love of green money over greenery, Statham and Jing wriggling out of impossible situations with their speed and athleticism, and a few deaths that seem to have no bearing on either the audience or even the characters. This disengagement from the happenings on screen is hugely detrimental to our consumption of an already wafer-thin storyline. There is a lot of exposition about the problems of the ocean. There are a lot of gadgets that are actually super cool but don’t really do anything that makes us go wow! But director Ben Wheatley never quite goes for the punch. Despite going so deep into the ocean, the writing is superficial at best for the longest time. A lot of talent is wasted, and it becomes even more pronounced when everything comes together in the last half hour.
When we see Page Kennedy, Cliff Curtis, Jing, and Statham revel in the last act in both the comedy and action, everything that preceded feels even more like a criminal waste of talent. There is a brief moment of poignancy involving Jing and Meg, and it is impressive how the writing subverts this too to deliver a strong comedic punch. The last act is a different beast altogether, and the laughs keep on coming as much as the prehistoric monsters finding their way into a ‘fun Island’ off the coast of China. There are references to Jaws, Jurassic Park, and other classics of the genre, and it makes you wonder why this wasn’t the vibe of the entire film.
While I understand the importance of talking about ocean conservation, the ill effects of mining, and how the world is not enough to hold both humans and these Megalodons, I didn’t walk into Meg 2 to be blown away by the plot. I wanted to see more Megalodons and more Statham-Shark conflict. Yes, he jetskis away from the mouth of a Meg. Yes, he harpoons them and even kicks them in their face. Yes, he dropkicks an antagonist right into the mouth of a flying shark. But these kicks, these jumps, and the
harpooning happen so late into the film that When Statham meets Shark, we are all just sleepy in Seattle.
Director: Ben Wheatley
Cast: Jason Statham, Wu Jing, Page Kennedy, Cliff Curtis