New meg. Old chum.
Meg 2: The Trench is a 2023 Science Fiction Action Kaiju film and a sequel to 2018’s The Meg, based upon the novel The Trench by Steve Alten. It is directed by Ben Wheatley and stars Jason Statham, Wu Jing, Sienna Guillory, Cliff Curtis, Skyler Samuels, Page Kennedy, Shuya Sophia Cai, and Sergio Peris-Mencheta.
Adapting Alten’s Meg follow-up novel, The Trench, the film sees Jonas Taylor (Statham) leading a dangerous expedition to the trench that housed the megalodon sharks that menaced him and his allies in the past. While there, he and his crew have an unexpected confrontation with a rogue mining operation, causing a pack of the sharks to escape to the sea. Now, Jonas and company must escape the trench and put a stop not only to the Megs but the mercenary humans as well. The film released on August 4, 2023.
Previews: Trailer 1
Meg 2: The Trench includes examples of the following:
- Adapted Out:
- Sadly, the Kronosaurs from the equivalent Steve Alten book are removed in favour of the smaller Snappers - an effective menace to the characters on land but far from the challenge to the giant sharks the Kronosaurs were.
- Likewise, Benedict and Celeste Singer and Michael Maren don't make an appearance as the main villains. That role is filled by Driscoll, Jess, and Montes.
- Always a Bigger Fish: The prehistoric opening features a steady escalation of this trope: a dragonfly is eaten by a small lizard, which is eaten by a much larger Snapper, which is eaten by a huge Tyrannosaurus, which is finally eaten by a giant Megalodon.
- Ambiguous Situation: In the final encounter with Haiqi, Jiuming is certain he sent her away on his own, but Jonas observes that it's more likely she's chasing the nearby dolphins. The fact that she recognized him does hint at the former though.
- Ankle Drag: Driscoll's final moments consist of a Snapper dragging her kicking and screaming from her helicopter by one of her ankles and into some nearby brush where it and its fellows start feasting on her.
- Artistic License – Biology:
- Keeping a megalodon in captivity. Great white sharks have barely been kept in captivity, and never for very long before the animal's health significantly deteriorated. Great whites often refuse to eat while caged, and they're used to swimming free in the open ocean; nearly any enclosure it would be feasible to design and build would be too small for an adult great white to have sufficient room. Assuming megalodons are as behaviorally similar to great whites as they are structurally similar, a megalodon would die in captivity in short order, either starving or injuring itself against its containment barriers.
- The Megs being able to survive swimming at the surface just as well at the ocean floor is already pushing realism, but the Snappers being portrayed as equally agile running on land as swimming 25,000 feet below sea-level is plainly ludicrous.
- No, you cannot just "breathe all of the air out of your skull" and be able to free-swim at 25,000 feet below sea level wearing no suit. But since the movie's premise is already 100% scientifically impossible, the film just leans into its own absurdity with this particular subplot and expects the audience to take it in stride.
- Keeping a megalodon in captivity. Great white sharks
- Asshole Victim:
- Jess, who betrayed her team and showed no remorse for causing the deaths of Lance, Sal, and Curtis, gets swallowed whole by a Meg after assuring herself that she was behind Meg-proof glass.
- The Casanova Wannabe at the resort gets snatched up by the giant octopus after trying to hide behind the two women he was previously hitting on.
- Bad Boss: Montes thinks nothing of blowing up his own men purely to cover his own tracks.
- Bait-and-Switch: The trailer and the actual film features the prologue, set in prehistoric times, with the former featuring title cards talking about how one species ruled the planet. There is a shot of several creatures fleeing a Tyrannosaurus rex on a beach… right before a meg appears from the sea and eats it.
- Behemoth Battle: Between one of the megs (Haiqi) and an equally huge octopus/kraken with Haiqi coming out the victor.
- Big Bad Ensemble: Aside from the three escaped megs, Jonas also has to contend with mercenaries led by Hillary Driscoll, with Montes as The Heavy for the mercenary group.
- Big Damn Heroes: When Jiuming is trapped in the tentacles of the octopus and it's reeling him in for the kill, Haiqi shows up just in time and attacks it unprovoked, letting him escape.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Jess starts out as an affable Mana One tech whom everyone seems to get along with; about halfway through she reveals herself as The Mole, working alongside Driscoll and Montes to illegally mine the trench for rare minerals, showing no remorse when her actions get Lance, Sal, and Curtis killed, and actively trying to murder Jonas and his surviving crew after her attempt to strand them fails.
- Boom, Headshot!: Jonas kills one of the Megs in this manner with an explosive javelin.
- Bond One-Liner: After Montes is devoured by the meg, Jonas says, "See ya later, chum."
- But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Montes guesses (accurately) that Jonas doesn't even remember putting him in prison for two years. Jonas snarks that he's dealt with a lot of scumbags and can't remember them all.Jonas: There's a million assholes in this world. It's hard to remember them all.
- Call-Back: Just like the last film, a tiny dog called Pippin features, forced to deal with marauding sealife. And it survives a second time.
- Canon Foreigner: The giant octopus and the Snappers are invented for the movie; none of the books had any creatures like them.
- Cartoon Creature: One of the new beasties in the film are salamander-like creatures called Snappers. Unlike the megalodon, the giant octopus, or any of the prehistoric animals in the novels, these are a completely made-up animal with zero basis to anything that actually existed in real life, although they vaguely resemble the Jurassic marine crocodile Dakosaurus.
- Chekhov's Gun: Downplayed with DJ's pistol with poisoned bullets. One would think it would see some sort of use against the sharks, but never does. It does, however, save Meiying from one of the marine reptiles at the end.
- Cold-Blooded Whatever: The Snappers are predatory, semi-aquatic creatures which resemble an amalgamation of fish, amphibian, and reptile traits, such as a vaguely monitor lizard-like body shape, shark-like jaws and gills, fish-like scales, a flattened crocodile-like tail, and salamander-like heads and body markings, and being equally at home underwater as on land.
- Conveyor Belt o' Doom: During a fight with Montes, Jonas briefly becomes trapped on a conveyor belt leading to a rock grinder.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Driscoll is introduced as a financier who has partnered with Jiuming's company to continue exploring the trench and its unique biosphere from Mana One. Turns out she's directing a rogue mining operation behind Jiuming's back and is willing to kill Jonas and his team to keep it a secret.
- Cruel and Unusual Death:
- Montes dies after Jonas actually kicks him into the Meg's mouth, complete with a shot of his legs twitching as the shark chomps down on them. Sal suffers a similar fate early on, ironically while throwing herself into the Meg's path to save someone else, and it's made worse by the fact that it happens several thousand feet underwater so she would have suffered bariatric compression trauma when the Meg bit through her suit.
- Curtis meets her end after a sea creature damages her dive helmet while at depth, causing her skull to violently implode inside the helmet.
- Depth Deception: Used to emphasize the size of the giant Meg in the trailer. You get an overhead shot of the Meg about to attack a ship and right when the shark gets to the size the others would be breaching it doesn't, and simply gets larger and closer.
- Didn't Think This Through: When Jonas and his team inadvertently catch sight of Montes' illegal mining operation at the bottom of the trench, he chooses to destroy all evidence and kill both Jonas and his teammates via detonating bombs. They cause a massive rockslide, but also disturb the mating megalodons, causing one to attack his submersible and leaving him stuck at the bottom of the trench as well.
- Door Dumb: When the team reaches the escape pod room of the rogue mining operation, Jiuming and Jonas try to pry the door open but they are unable to. Meijing then presses the button to open it and the door turns out to open by sliding downwards instead of upwards.
- Dragon Their Feet: Montes outlives Driscoll and is subsequently the last human antagonist to be dealt with by Jonas.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Meiying's mother Suyin has died in the interval between the two films, with Jonas Promoted to Parent as a result. It's never explained exactly what happened, just that she'd passed in 2021.note
- Ecocidal Antagonist: The human Big Bad of the film, Hillary Driscoll, is a Corrupt Corporate Executive who is mining the Lost World beneath the Marianas Trench for rare-earth minerals and gleefully tells Jonas and his team that as long as nobody exposes the mining operation, she can keep it going for years due to how inhospitable the trench is until there is literally nothing left. Jonas' Batman Cold Open in this film shows he has spent the years in between films chasing after these kind of criminals to expose them, with him obtaining evidence of people planning to dump nuclear waste on international waters. One of the goons to the executive is also quite eager to kill Jonas because he spent time in jail as a result of one of Jonas' operations.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Montes appears to genuinely love his partner in crime and girlfriend, Jess, and is pretty broken-up about her death at the hands of a Meg.
- Explosive Decompression: Inverted both ways. Curtis's helmet implodes, compressing around her skull after taking integral damage at depth and it happens gradually enough that she survives the journey back to the station and her companions are forced to watch it happen while Jiuming futilely tries to reassure her.
- Eye Awaken: One beast in the trench does this right behind Lance, and shortly afterwards they hear him screaming in terror. We don’t see what the creature is at the time, but a close-up of the giant octopus’s eye in the climax is identical.
- Fanservice Extra: During the pleasure island sequence, the audience is treated to a number of Chinese women with rather large breasts in swimwear.
- Foreshadowing:
- Early on, Jonas catches sight of Montes at Jiuming's company gala, though he doesn't recognise him. When Montes is revealed as a villain, that he was there at all makes it clear he's working with someone in said company - namely its financier Driscoll and his girlfriend Jess.
- When Driscoll is revealed to be a villain, Jiuming exclaims that "Karma will find you!" She ends up meeting her demise at the jaws of the Snappers, creatures who her operations helped stir up.
- When the main characters first arrive in the trench, they notice lots of cute baby octopi. Soon after, Lance is dispatched by an unseen monster, later revealed to be the parent octopus.
- Genre Savvy: After what happened last film, DJ has become an expert in firearms, hand-to-hand combat and survival, guessing that he'll need all of it in case something happens again. He even happily brags he has a .50 calibre pistol with poisoned bullets "just like Jaws 2!"
- Godzilla Threshold: Jiuming sics the Snappers on Driscoll's unnamed mercenaries while Jonas kicks Montes right into the mouth of the Alpha Meg.
- Hand Cannon: DJ's badass upgrade included him purchasing a .50 Action Express Desert Eagle as a personal sidearm. That beast of a gun makes some good work making mercenaries duck for cover when he blind-fires at them and blowing away Snappers.DJ: [as he blasts Snappers, killing them with one shot] Hell yeah! Get some! Who says a .50 caliber is an impractical round?
- Helicopter Blender: The giant octopus accidentally chops off part of a tentacle that it ignorantly shoves into the blades of a running helicopter. It learns its lesson and grabs lower for the next attempt.
- Hellish Copter: The giant octopus brings down the helicopter Mac stole, just as Jiuming is trying to take Meiying to safety.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Sal pushes Jimmy out of the way as a Meg bares down on both of them, resulting in her death.
- Holding the Floor: During the hostile takeover of Mana One, Jiuming steps out in front of a couple of mercenaries and babbles in Chinese that he knows they're looking for him and that they can't understand Chinese, blatantly telling them that his friend (Jonas) is going to attack them from the side in a language he knows they won't understand.
- Hope Spot: Curtis survives the rest of the journey back to the station after her helmet gets damaged by a Snapper. Tragically, it implodes on her after she enters the airlock but before the decompression process can be completed.
- Idiot Ball: Basically gets passed around the entire cast like an active-hand-grenade game of Hot Potato, but one notable example is Montes responding to the main characters showing up by triggering his team's mining charges prematurely. All this accomplishes is killing his own men and drawing the cast's attention. If he'd waited, they would likely have dismissed his sub as a radar error and left of their own volition.
- Inertial Impalement: The Alhpa wild meg is killed when Jonas draws it towards him at an angle where it basically jumps onto the blade of a crashed helicopter, allowing Jonas to impale the meg through the mouth.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Jiuming stabs a snapper in the side of the head with a broken shovel and stakes an improvised bomb onto the cryptid giant octopus. It does not kill it but likely it was wounded enough for Haiqi who it tried to kill to break free and finish it..
- Jump Scare: Like the first movie, there are several when the megs and other animal antagonists are in open water, which means it's a lot harder to see where they are
and they can attack from any direction. - Just Desserts:
- Jess sells out her team without a second thought and shows no remorse over the deaths of three people. Fittingly, she winds up being Swallowed Whole by one of the Megs. Not to mention she had smugly had assured that the chamber she was in was Meg-proof just beforehand.
- After sneeringly assuring the heroes that no-one gives a shit about her mining the ocean floor, even if it does unleash all manner of megs and worse, Driscoli ends up shredded by the Snappers near the end - creatures from the deep ocean she'd so blithely dismissed.
- Killed Offscreen: Lance gets killed offscreen, only his terrified scream can be heard and his helmet is shown floating lifelessly afterwards.
- And Suyin for that matter. It is incredibly jarring if you have never seen either film and watch them back to back; Suyin's abrupt death is a huge Mood Whiplash for the series and it's strange they didn't just have her on a mission where she couldn't pull away as the actress didn't turn down the role, but was taking time off for mental health. Meiying also doesn't react like a small child who recently lost her mother; she acts as if it's a non-issue and seems way too chipper around Jonas considering she lost her mother and her grandfather not too long ago.
- Kraken and Leviathan: A giant octopus plays a role as a secondary creature antagonist, menacing the team on the ocean floor, then escaping the thermocline to wreak havoc on the surface.
- Let's Get Dangerous!: When held at gunpoint by a couple of mercenaries, DJ breaks out some karate moves and beats them senseless in short order. Justified, as he mentions he learned how to fight after the events of the first film.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Does Jiuming have a bond with Haiqi, the meg raised in captivity? He thinks so, given it sheers away from eating him at the end, but Jonas just thinks it altered course to chase after a school of dolphins. Jury's still out, but there is the fact Haiqi attacks the giant octopus unprovoked and in doing so saves Jiuming's life...
- Misplaced Wildlife: Aside from the sequel carrying on the premise from the first movie that Megalodon have survived into the 21st century, the opening prologue set 65 million years ago is clearly playing for Rule of Cool with a Meg shown hunting a T. Rex due to the fact that these two species never coexisted. While sharks did exist on earth before and at the same time as the dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex along with all other non-avian dinosaurs went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period 43 million years before Megalodon occupied the earth. This actually gets Lampshaded in revised editions of the first novel which has this being a fictional scenario as part of a presentation by Jonas.
- Mix-and-Match Critter: The Snappers combine the traits and appearances of several prehistoric reptiles and amphibians, particularly Icthyostega, Postosuchus and Dakosaurus.
- Moody Trailer Cover Song: The first trailer uses a version of Heart's "Barracuda" with a percussion-heavy edit for the suspenseful sequences.
- Mythology Gag: The opening scene with the Tyrannosaurus Rex being attacked by the Megalodon is a reference to both the prologue of the original book as well as the cover of said book which shows it happening.
- Nature Is Not Nice: A point made by the prologue which shows a number of carnivorous insects, animals and fish eating each other in steadily greater size.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: When Jonas and his allies flee Mana One in a dinghy, some of the mercenaries give chase in the other dingy, but since the mercenaries used the engine while their targets were rowing, the mercs attract the attention of one of the newly-escaped megs, leaving Jonas's allies with more time to row to safety.
- Oblivious to Their Own Description: The obnoxious Casanova Wannabe who keeps harassing women at Fun Island for their affection with phony pickup tactics complains to a business associate on the phone for ruining his vacation yelling "Who ruins paradise for other people?!" with the same women staring at him for disturbing their peace. After hanging up, he asks them to rub oil on him.
- Oh, Crap!: Driscoll has this when she gets dragged off by a Snapper lizard.
- Plot Hole: Why in God's name was there a Meg sized hole in her enclosure? Even if that's how they got her inside the enclosure, a single metal grate?! That's what they thought would prevent her from leaving? It should've been filled in with cement or reinforced a thousand times over. Plus, if it was that easy to leave her enclosure, why the hell didn't she do it sooner? And how was there no surveillance or any alarms related to her leaving the enclosure?
- There is another, smaller plothole too, but it does at least have a Rule of Scary to explain it: when Jiuming is testing the meg's loyalty to him, at one point they all ask where it is. It was introduced earlier in the scene that she has a tracker on and they have radar and other observational equipment other than trying to see where she is in the tank by naked eye. The only reason nobody simply glances at a screen to see where she is happens to be for the cheap jumpscare they're building towards.
- Poisoned Weapons: DJ made custom poison-tipped bullets for his gun just in case. Doesn't see use against the sharks, but does bring down some Snappers.
- Powered Armor: Jonas and his team brave the trench with armored diving suits with hydraulic strength enhancements after Montes' explosives lead to their subs being destroyed. Of course, that leads to some of them becoming monster chow and the suits won't hold up under millions of tons of water pressure if they get damaged as Curtis tragically discovers.
- Redshirt Army: The mercs are a villainous variant. They're pretty much useless at trying to capture or kill the heroes, and get easily dispatched by either the Snappers or the Megs.
- Remember the New Guy?:
- Jess is treated as someone who has been with the team for a very long time yet was only introduced in this film.
- Rigas acts as if she were part of the first film, referencing its events. Fitting as it seems she was originally supposed to be Jax.
- Sequel Escalation: Not only is the main meg explicitly said to be the biggest anyone's ever seen, it hunts with two others in a pack. There's also the series' first non-meg creature in the form of a giant octopus. Human villains, in the form of Montes, Jess and Driscoli also feature.
- Sequel Hook: While the wild megs and giant octopus are disposed of, Haiqi the meg survives, is still in surface waters and may be pregnant. All of this is noted by the gang at the end, but they're too weary to do anything about it after surviving everything else.
- Sequel Non-Entity: Out of the returning characters from the previous movie, there is no mention of Jaxx at all.
- Shoot Your Mate: When Jonas and his allies discover the secret base in the trench, Jess reveals her allegiance by remotely ejecting two of the escape pods and claiming she will let at least Meiying take the third pod to the surface if Rigas shoots Jonas in the heart. Jonas is willing to die to save Meiying, but Rigas ultimately can't bring herself to do it.
- Shout-Out:
- The Tyrannosaurus Rex seen in the opening sequence is a dead ringer for the T-Rexes from Jurassic Park, right down to the color scheme. The Megalodon breaching up behind it and dragging it down into the depths is a rather obvious riff on the Indominus' death scene in Jurassic World (which is itself a riff on the Liopleurodon being introduced snatching a large theropod in Walking with Dinosaurs, although it was ultimately based on a scene from Steve Alten's original book, which predates both). There are other references to Jurassic Park as well, particularly the Snapper attack on Montes and his mercenaries being reminiscent of the raptors hunting Muldoon, and the treacherous human villain being Eaten Alive in their getaway vehicle.
- Appropriately for the second film in the series, the ending seems inspired by Jaws 2, with the hero distracting the shark from attacking those he cares about by slapping the water with an object (a paddle there, a broken helicopter blade here) to lure it in for the death blow.
- Swallowed Whole:
- Quite a few of the victims of the various Megs, as with the previous film, especially the tourist couple in the paddle-boat, but special mention goes to Jess, who declared that the rig's underwater chamber she was in as Meg-proof mere seconds before one busted through and devoured her.
- There's quite a disturbing shot during the Fun Island attack sequences where we see the perspective of the holiday-makers the shark has swallowed from inside its mouth. It's bloodless, but also definite Nightmare Fuel as those people are seconds away from being actually swallowed into oblivion.
- Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Jonas' love interest Suyin has passed away between the first movie and this one. The circumstances are left vague but Jonas is now raising her daughter himself.
- Tempting Fate: Twice.
- First, when Meiying stows away in the submersible she claims there's nothing to worry about, as Jonas has done 25 dives like this and everything has gone fine. Less than a minute later, Haiqi the meg turns up and everything goes to hell.
- Later, Jess talks to her boss Driscoli about how the rig's underwater chamber she is in is completely "Meg-proof", tapping on the glass to illustrate her point. Not even seconds later, the meg breaks through the glass and eats her.
- Took a Level in Badass: Since the previous film, DJ has become an expert in firearms, hand-to-hand combat, survival tactics, and has learned how to swim.
- Trailers Always Spoil: Jess getting eaten after thinking she was safe behind Meg-proof glass is featured in the trailer. Downplayed, in that this doesn't spoil the fact she's The Mole trying to kill Jonas and the others.
- Traitor Shot: While Mac and DJ talk about The Mole who has been sabotaging the equipment and the camera systems on Mana One, the camera lingers on Jess.
- Villain Ball:
- Montes decides, rather than simply send a call to have his mercenaries take over Mana One (which would be easy what with his lover Jess there as a traitor) to kill Jonas and co before they arrive to instead blow up his own men to try and cover his tracks. This results in Jonas and his crew investigating his secret base as well as allowing the Megs and other sea creatures to escape, all of which end up killing him and the rest of his allies.
- Jess and Driscol deciding to taunt Jonas and his friends, which means that when they manage to escape their death trap rather than simply continuing on pretending to be their allies they are forced to escalate things.
- Driscol deciding to go with her mercenaries to Fun Island. Not only does she have no combat training but she is dressed more for a party than a battle. As a result she is utterly unprepared for the Snappers.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The rest of the crew of Mana One is shown to be rounded up by the mercenaries and locked in their rooms. After Jonas and his group leave Mana One the mercenaries all follow and nothing is ever brought up about the imprisoned workers. Not helped is that thanks to the attack of Jess Mana One now has a massive breach and is unstable.
- The Worf Effect: The film uses the prologue from the first novel, where a Tyrannosaurus is snatched up and devoured by a megalodon to show how much bigger and more powerful the shark is (even though the two animals lived millions of years apart in real life).Note
- You Do Not Want To Know: This is Jonas's respons to Jiuming asking what happened in the first movie.
- Your Head A-Splode: Curtis's fate after her helmet gets too damaged.
