The Meg is here, to give the genre back its teeth
In the 43 years since Jaws scared a generation of cinemagoers out of the water and took a $470 million bite out of the box office, few shark movies have made much of a splash.
The Meg lunges out of the deep with the aim of giving the genre back its teeth with a two-million-year-old megalodon five times the size of a great white.
“When you’re a kid, you think there’s a monster under your bed or in your closet, and monsters haunt us. They’re there in our darkest dreams,” said actor Rainn Wilson, who plays Jack Morris, a tech billionaire who funds an underwater observation programme.
“They are in the Jungian shadow part of ourselves. Humanity’s in some dark times right now and I think the monster movies and postapocalyptic monsters reflect that.”
Jon Turteltaub’s movie stars Jason Statham and Chinese actress Li Bingbing.
A deep-sea submersible – part of an international undersea observation pro- gramme – has been attacked by a massive creature and lies disabled at the bottom of the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean with its crew trapped inside. Former deep-sea rescue diver Jonas Taylor (Statham) is drawn
out of self-imposed exile by a visionary Chinese oceanographer, Dr. Zhang (Winston Chao), against the wishes of his daughter, Suyin (Li), who thinks she can rescue the crew on her own.
But it will take their combined efforts to save the crew, and the ocean itself, from this seemingly unstoppable threat – a prehistoric shark.
Wilson – best known as creepy salesman Dwight in NBC’s The Office – remembers being around 12 years old when he first saw Jaws.
“I remember it really made an indelible impression – it did on a lot of people,” he said during a preview for the movie.
The Meg and all of the other aquatic life seen in the film were brought to life via stateof-the-art CGI, starting with extensive research on the beast’s appearance.
The idea was to create something that looked massive and terrifying but, at the same time, very graceful in the water.
Masi Oka, a former visual effects artist who worked on the Star Wars prequels as well as Mission to Mars, Terminator 3 and many other huge blockbusters, said the technology has improved beyond recognition. “Filmmakers are no longer limited by what you can do, it’s what you can think of,” he said.
As with many recent blockbusters – including The Great Wall, Transformers: Age of Extinction, Furious 7, Skyscraper and Pacific Rim
2 – The Meg has significant Chinese funding, and much of the movie takes place in the Middle Kingdom.
The Hauraki Gulf in northern New Zealand doubled as China’s Pacific coast and much of the shoot took place in huge tanks at the Kumeu Film Studios in Auckland.
But the production moved to China’s Hainan Island for extensive sections of the movie and the beachside city of Sanya provided the setting for a climactic attack involving thousands of extras.
“China is an amazing place – vibrant, colorful and bright. The script called for a densely populated beach, and that’s Sanya Bay,” Turteltaub said.
“It’s not lacking for people, which was heaven for a giant shark movie.”AFP