English actor Jason Statham and Chinese actress Li Bingbing team up in The Meg, an American-Chinese co-production film with a monster-shark theme. Check out the extended trailer…
Directed by Jon Turteltaub, the movie is loosely based on a 1997 book Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror by Steve Alten. The cast also includes Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose, Winston Chao, and Cliff Curtis. Scheduled to release in the United States and China in August 2018.
The plot is about a group of scientists who discovered a 95-foot-long prehistoric shark called megalodon (hence the name MEG) – thought to be long extinct – two hundred miles off the Chinese coast. They have to stop the shark before it attacks the beach but looks like Meggy makes it anyway.
I love watching monster movies, the teaser doesn’t look too exciting but I’ll give it a go regardless. Most of these monster films have nothing new, you know what you will get before stepping into the cinema.
BTW, megalodon was a real thing that extinct millions of years ago. Fossil remains suggest that this giant shark reached a maximum length of 18 meters (59 ft) with the average size being 10.5 meters (34 ft); the movie version is obviously larger than that. Read more about megalodon on Wiki.
Update and verdict
The Meg is a stupid movie, but not a bad one. The characters are weak, the dialogues are poor, and there are so many dumb moments from start to finish. The action sequences and visual effects are fine though, it’s a half-decent film if you have the right expectation.
Cast performances are limited by character settings and scripts. Not sure if they can do any better, but the actors are not the highlight in most monster movies anyway.
The film has a total worldwide gross of $527.8 million as of October 2018, a huge box office success. A sequel is in early stages of development. No news about casting yet, but I remember reading somewhere that Statham would be interested if the first film is commercially successful, which it is.
On side note, Statham was a member of Britain’s national swimming squad for 12 years, specialised in diving. That probably helps a bit with the water action scenes.
