Ryan Shoots First: Meg 2: The Trench

I’m sure you are familiar with the term “jumping the shark”, well Meg 2 jumps the shark figuratively, literally, and in just about any other way you can think of. I’m not joking Jason Statham actually jumps over a shark… a few sharks actually. It is saying something considering some of the absurdity of the first film. It is in no way factual and is straight pure popcorn fun, so to jump THAT shark takes something special. Meg 2 gives you more of everything, more megs, more action, more kills… but also more cheese, more overwriting, and more terrible acting. There is some staggeringly bad acting in this film. The majority of the lines seem to be ADR and there is a lot of that “actor says line when off-screen cause it was added alter” stuff going on. Again, that is saying something considering the first film wasn’t exactly a modern thespian classic. I missed Ruby Rose… that’s how bad. 

I feel I am qualified to deliver this criticism as I was a fan of the first film since day one, and while there were parts I enjoyed about The Trench, especially when it has Megs in it, it just seemed to forget what it was. One of the joys in the secret sauce of the first movie was that as outrageous as it was it knew it 100%. It leaned into it and seemed to be giving a wink to the audience. We were all in on it and were just there for the show. Meg 2 still has that in moments but particularly the first half is bogged down and lacks that self-awareness. We get a little bit of everything, there is a survivor story, an action film, a corporate espionage hostile takeover story, a monster movie, and then a little Jurassic World. The second half felt a lot more like the original with just a little more jazz and then I started enjoying myself quite a bit more. One thing that stuck out almost immediately is within the first 2 minutes Jason Statham has a fight scene, he had zero fight scenes in the original. Not soon after he is shot at and shoots back, he shoots zero guns in the first. It’s almost like they thought “Hey we have Jason Statham, why isn’t he doing Jason Statham things?”. I suppose that thought process will work for some I’m sure but I distinctively remember enjoying in the first how they find ways to make him have action moments but in the context of the film, not falling back on figuring out a way to shoehorn baddies into it for him to punch. Made it even cooler when he flew up and gutted a Meg with his bare hands. 

One other aspect that was cranked from the first film that somewhat took me out of the film was the heavy influence on the Chinese audiences. The first film was financed largely by an Asian studio but it was relatively tame. Some shooting locations and characters but you understood and it was fine. This outing goes way further, it’s a little jarring when in the middle of the film we spend 5 minutes in a resort with none of our main characters, with some overdub and again bad acting. Jing Wu as well takes on a major role in the movie almost equally any escapade Statham does and plays as almost a joke about how eager is to die for everyone else. 

I do need to take a moment and give some kudos in one area. I mentioned the second half comes back to the pack a little and one way it greatly improves on Meg 1 is in the kills. If you go back to my review or even our recent discussion of The Meg on the Bulletproof Podcast, I mentioned how really for a movie about a giant shark, not many people get eaten. Well, Meg 2 fixes that in some fun ways. Maybe it’s morbid that seeing a shark eat people in a shark film is what got me back into the mood and enjoying myself.

I’m not sure what exactly I expected from Meg 2 but it seemed to suffer a bit from sequel fever and the need to make everything bigger and badder. In that effort, it lost a little of its soul and while it did seem to find it in the back half by the time it got me back in that place the credits were rolling. In the same way, those early Jurassic Park sequels took the attention away from the animals and put too much on humans e Meg 2 joins that long history. Meg 2 definitely requires a bigger boat than the first but sadly that boat is overloaded and it just can’t shovel water out fast enough.