Movie Review: The Meg

Let’s talk about The Meg, the movie based on Steve Alten’s Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror.

First, I was excited about this movie from the time I heard about it. Despite my misgivings regarding Alten’s political discussions on his author page – something I *highly* discourage -, The Meg Trilogy is some of his finest work, and his only series I’ve found so far where he doesn’t go off the deep end with Book 2. (In the Meg series, he waits until Book 4 for that, but even then it could be sold as setting up a new trilogy – that he has yet to continue – over truly “going off the deep end”.) The scene with the young girl I immediately knew was never in the book, but the rest of the early promotion stuff looked pretty close. The casting of Jason Statham as Jonas Taylor was about as close to spot on as I think you can get at the moment with well known lead actors, and I was happy about it. The particular experience at the theater closest to my house was ruined by a large group of people immediately behind me who could not stop talking throughout the movie, including cracking jokes during what were meant to be some of the more serious and terrifying moments. One example: When the Meg first shows up at the underwater hallway where the girl is playing alone in the trailer, it is clearly meant as a terrifying moment of the movie. And the people behind me loudly said “Hello, I’m Bruce”, from Finding Nemo. Hilarious, actually, but took me completely out of the terrifying aspect of that scene.

Now, as a generic late summer shark attack movie, Meg is perfectly fine. Kind of an updated Jaws, really. If you like this type of movie, you’ll like this one. If you despise this type of movie, you’ll despise this one, and if you’re ambivalent about them… well, you might actually like this one.

HOWEVER, with this specific title, I’m looking for a specific tale. One that I read numerous times after my aunt gave me a copy not long after it came out in paperback, thinking I might like it. While I waited a few years (the cover was fairly bland at the time), I did eventually read it… and every book in the series that would come later. Multiple times. And it turns out while watching this movie that I actually remembered more details than I thought I did, what with my last re-read of this trilogy being roughly a decade (and several hundred, maybe even low thousands, books ago). And at a spoiler free level, I’ll say this: For those in my position, you’re better off approaching this movie as fans of Star Trek: The Original Series have to approach the latest Star Trek movies: You’re going to get the same basic tale, but it is going to be completely repackaged and this repackaging seems to possibly preclude some side plots.

Here’s the trailer for the movie. WARNING: WE BE TALKING SPOILERS BELOW THE TRAILER.

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