Jaws vs The Meg reminds me cows are more deadly than sharks
The Meg fails to instil terror in Aidan Smith or his 11-year-old son in the way Spielberg’s 1975 classic did
Iam a child of Jaws, or more specifically a spotty, quaking teenager. Steven Spielberg’s shark classic sunk its teeth into me at a tender age and has never let go. Sure, I’ve seen more artistic films since, but not one which inspired me to quote their most famous lines to my children. At bathtime the kids have all had to endure their father’s recreation of idyllic waters turning malevolent, prompting the dramatic declaration: “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
Three-quarters of the movie had elapsed before the complacent and tourist-greedy beach resort town took the fanged terror seriously and acknowledged that the great white had just as big an appetite for holidaymakers. It’s taken Hollywood 43 years to take Jaws and films like it seriously, accepting that they might be worthy of Oscars.
The telecast of the Academy Awards is losing viewers faster than a cynical mayor in a Watergate allegory loses bathers. No one tunes in anymore. Well, 26.5 million at the last count still did, but that’s a sprat of a figure compared with the number which used to watch, a real monster from the deep. Specifically, young people don’t seem interested in the ceremony, hence the suggested new category: Best Popular Picture.
Call me cynical but that sounds like a cynical move. It also sounds like a move similar to the removal of trophies and medals from children’s sport. That was a disastrous idea which has resulted in a generation growing up hopelessly uncompetitive. Transferring the “everybody gets a prize” philosophy to the film world, what would an Oscar recognising an arthouse movie’s lyrical beauty be worth if a statuette could also be claimed by blockbusters and schlockbusters, by pot-boilers and bunny-boilers, and by bodicerippers and chainsaw massacres? Even more hideous, what if it was a Richard Curtis flick which was voted Best Popular Picture?
That said, I’m all for pretentiousness being pricked. I’m all for weird and brilliant juxtapositions. For instance, if such a gong was available to Jaws, imagine a gushing, greetin’ luvvie breaking the record for the longest and most mawkish acceptance speech and then being followed onto the stage by Spielberg’s mechanical shark? With respect to the director and his tremendous trio of actors, Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw, the shark was the star of Jaws. Well, at least until audiences got over the fear on the third or fourth viewing of the film and noticed how risibly rubbery it was, chewing on a gas canister like a cigar in the final scenes. And what a pity the shark wasn’t real and capable of hoovering up the front rows of the Oscars’ auditorium.
Jaws would definitely have claimed Best Popular Picture but I don’t think The Meg will. I felt dutybound to lay myself before this summer’s sharksploitation biggie on one of my local multiplex’s leatherette loungers but wasn’t moved or thrilled or amused or impressed by its irony and I certainly wasn’t terrified and nor was my 11-year-old son.
If scaring us to new, knicker-wetting heights or indeed depths was The Meg’s main aim then, in the current climate, the film was always going to have a problem. Audiences these days demand instant gratification and director Jon Turteltaub admits he was under pressure to show his shark – a 75ft prehistoric megalodon – early and often. This is not pressure he’s resisted. As a consequence we quickly become inured to a succession of bodies disappear-