Jason Statham has a lot of enemies, or at least his characters do. There are the human traffickers Mr. Kwai and Darren “Wall Street” Bettencourt in The Transporter, and Statham squares off with corrupt tech executive Derek Danforth in The Beekeeper. There’s also Jose Pablo Cantillo from Crank, who injects him character with poison. Statham’s even fought the likes of Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel in the Fast and Furious franchise.
But no matter how deadly or how muscle-bound Statham’s other enemies are, none are as dangerous as the megalodons he’s done battle with in The Meg and Meg 2: The Trench, the latter of which is currently a global hit on Netflix, sitting at its 8th biggest movie according to Flix Patrol.
Why the Meg movies are great
After deep sea rescue diver Jonas Taylor (Statham) killed the megalodon at the end of the first movie, he’s been working out of the research facility Mana One as part of a team exploring the Mariana Trench, the deepest point in the entire ocean, and where the megalodon emerged from in the first film. Mana One has been studying a female megalodon over the past several years, but things get out of control when they realize its mating season and male megalodons begin to compete for the female’s attention. On top of that, an illegal mining operation stirs up trouble in the trench, causing the crew of Mana One to have to deal with not only three megalodons, but a host of other creatures as well.
What was great about The Meg is that it’s a movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously and director Jon Turteltaub knew what you wanted out of it. You wanted wild shark action, a good-sized body count, and for Statham to somehow defy the odds and triumph over this prehistoric monster. The same is true of its sequel, which director Ben Wheatley also knew had to be a lot bigger than its predecessor. Upping the ante from one megalodon in the first movie to three vicious megalodons during mating season in the sequel explodes this movie to a ridiculously fun scale. Especially memorable is the opening scene, which starts 65 million years ago, showing the food chain of the Cretaceous period, with a variety of extinct creatures eating each other. Finally, it gets to a tyrannosaurus eating some big, prehistoric lizard at the edge of the beach, then a megalodon jumps out of the water, chomps on the dinosaur’s head and drags it into the ocean.
The Meg 2 is more than just giant sharks
But Meg 2 didn’t stop at just megalodons either. Statham and his compatriots also square off against multiple ichthyostega, which are super-fast alligator-sized amphibious creatures which wreak havoc both in the water and at a nearby island resort. But the biggest addition is the giant octopus, which terrorizes people in the ocean and on the island, destroying the boardwalk and snatching at helicopters.
Of course, Statham regards all the creatures with the same steely resolve that we always want and expect from him. From tangling with mobsters in the Transporter series to incomprehensible sea monsters in Meg 2, Statham reacts with the same unflinching self-assuredness. While many of Statham’s characters seem similar in manner and personality, there’s something magnetic about that character’s versatility. We know what we want from him and we don’t want to see him change. Statham seems to know this, which is why his movies are so often satisfying, no matter if his enemy is a mere human being or a giant shark that could take down a T. rex with one bite.
