Whether you love The Meg, hate The Meg, or anything in between, there’s one moment that’s so hilariously amazing, we just had to call it out.
Of course, this moment is a spoiler, so if you plan on seeing the movie (and we think you should), this is your warning.
Much of The Meg’s second act is a long chase scene on the open seas. Jonas (Jason Statham) and his friends mark the enormous shark with a tracking device and decide to go after it. The sequence is bananas and includes all manner of shark action, including shooting the megalodon from the boat, the shark attacking the boat, the shark swimming after Jonas, Jonas narrowly escaping the shark, and more. Eventually, and not surprisingly, the good guys win.
Yup, it’s over. They’ve captured the meg, and you’re sitting there thinking, “That’s it? The movie can’t be over yet. It’s only been like an hour!” This is when the movie starts messing with you. The characters take pictures of the meg. Selfies with the meg. Put their heads in the meg’s mouth. Of course, the shark is going to come back to life and eat them right? Wrong. Even better.
It’s right then that AN EVEN BIGGER MEG JUMPS OVER THE SHIP AND, IN ONE BITE, EATS THE FIRST MEG THAT YOU THOUGHT WAS THE BIG MEG.
I’d apologize for the caps but, really, it’s fucking magnificent. The shark you think is the biggest shark ever gets eaten whole by a shark probably five times its size. That’s when The Meg really puts its foot down. It says, “You thought this was a shark movie? No, this is a shark movie.” It’s like the Crocodile Dundee knife scene of shark movies.
Then, of course, the plot basically starts all over. They defeated one shark fairly easily, so can they defeat an even bigger one? Eventually, the answer is yes, with the help from an even bigger boat, some amazing underwater speeders, and lots of wild action.
And as amazing as that pivot in The Meg is, it’s also a bit of a problem. Once our heroes start going after the new meg, at no point do we feel like that shark, which we know is exponentially larger than the first one, actually is that much larger. I’m sure the visual effects artists made sure it was as they were doing their shots, but it’s not like it really terrorizes any more than the first creature. Plus, just size-wise, it rarely feels as big as we’re lead to believe, except in that one moment where it eats the first shark.
That kind of sucks. And yet, that flaw is just another reason why that one moment of shark-eat-shark action is so excellent. It’s the purest, most bonkers moment, in an already bonkers movie.
The Meg is now in theaters.