YMMV / The Meg

• And You Thought It Would Fail: Domestically, the movie's opening weekend made twice the amount box office pundits predicted. It has grossed over $145 million domestically. Globally, it ended up just over $530 million — the film needed $400 to "break even". So it has pretty much succeeded far more than most thought, also making it the second highest grossing shark movie of all time after Jaws.
• Awesome Music: The movie's original soundtrack is surprisingly quite good, courtesy of Harry Gregson- Williams. Case in point, Mana One, which plays during the scene where Morris's helicopter arrives at the Mana One station, and A New World, which plays during the scene where the crew explores the hidden world under the ocean for the first time.
• Cliché Storm: The movie is pretty much your standard over-the-top shark movie but on a modern blockbuster budget.
• Designated Villain: Jack Morris is supposedly meant to be unsympathetic, since he's self-absorbed, greedy and cowardly. However, he saves Jaxx's life and does switch from wanting to exploit the Meg to straight-up killing it, even if his attempt is unsuccessful. At one point, Jaxx bitterly comments about throwing him overboard when he'd saved her life in the scene prior. His death also goes unmourned by anyone. Then again, he actually did not inform the Chinese government, among others, like he said he did before going to confront the meg. Doing so might have prevented the meg from having an all you can eat buffet at the beach.
  • That said, no one believed the heroes when they tried to warn the authorities themselves, so it probably wouldn't have worked anyway.
• Funny Moments:
  • Toshi's That's What She Said-style comment when Lori mentions "insertion."
  • Meiying giving Jonas the nickname Crazy.
  • Just before the Meg shows up, a Roomba is seen with a prop shark fin mounted to its top, with its low profile making the fin resemble a Shark Fin of Doom.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The Monk vs the Meg.
• Idiot Ball: Jonas KNOWS that the Meg is down there and is attacking subs. So upon opening the hatch to the doomed sub rather than do the smart thing and rush the crew to get into his sub he chooses to waste 30 seconds bantering with his ex... which results in Toshi running out of time to escape.
  • Heller attacking Jonas for leaving their friends behind... when they were deep in the doomed sub and it exploded 20 seconds after Jonas sealed the hatch, meaning even if Heller was right and there was no Meg Jonas was STILL correct.
  • Just the fact that upon discovering the Meg has broke through, they decide to go after it, instead of alerting anyone who would have better tools to do the job, they barely manage to kill the first one, nearly causing Suyin to drown, and the second bigger ones sudden appearance causes the deaths of three members of the group in a short space of time, and goes on to kill more people.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Face it, some are just here to see Jason Statham fight a giant prehistoric shark.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Shut up, Meg."^note The films title has invited jokes related to Meg Griffin, most notably that particular line Peter Griffin says towards her.
  • "Shut up, The Meg." ^note  The almost obligatory follow-up comment to the above, since the "The" in the film's title is not present in the novel's.
• Narm Charm: Every positive review has said that the film knows exactly how silly it is but that doesn't stop it from being fun all the same and it fully embraces the fact that it's a film about Jason Statham fighting a giant shark.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The meg slowly approaching the glass and biting down on it, all with a little girl on the other side.
    "There's a monster outside...and it's watching us."
  • The fact the deep ocean allows something as gigantic as the meg to effectively disappear is played for major horror.
  • While Jump Scare moments are present, they aren't the typical "music drains out of a scene then sudden boom of music" type, rather the meg tends to come out of nowhere when it attacks owing to how far underwater it was.
• Nightmare Retardant: It can be hard to take the beach scene seriously; knowing how big the meg is, it'd be nearly impossible for it to get so close unless there's an absurdly massive drop-off it can swim comfortably in without accidentally getting beached.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • The first half of the film in particular has quite a lot of underwater scenes with very bad visibility both for the audience and the characters. Everyone knows the meg is somewhere in the vicinity, but they simply can't see it until the beast is almost right in their faces.
  • As usual for a film about a giant deep-sea monster, some viewers may find it difficult to go anywhere near larger bodies of water after being shown in loving detail the terror that could be lurking there. The Meg has at least one scene that makes this fear particularly poignant: a stand-up paddler merrily making their way across the water near a beautiful beach while the titanic shark passes by below them barely deep enough that its dorsal fin doesn't breach the surface. Hope you didn't have any beach vacation coming up.
• The Scrappy: DJ is annoying, whiny, and unfunny much of the time, despite being intended as comic relief. Not to mention that he’s indirectly responsible for the prank that killed the Wall, a much more likable character who managed to survive the shark attack at the beginning of the film.^note  To be fair, Wall had plenty of time to get out of the water, but chose to stay and goof around in the water. Plus, no one knew there was a 2nd megalodon. So we can't put all the blame on DJ for that Sadly, however, he does not become shark food.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Let's face it, this is the closest we'll ever get to a modern day remake of Jaws. It also helps that it's based on a book just like the film.
• Spiritual Successor: Very much one to 1990s underseas action films such as Deep Rising and Deep Blue Sea.
• So Okay, It's Average: While having much higher production values than other killer shark films, it didn't break any new ground by being quite formulaic, especially regarding the Sorting Algorithm of Mortality and Token Romance subplot. However, the movie itself never pretends to be anything more than an excuse to have Jason Statham fighting a giant shark, and embraces that to its fullest.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Jonas having to leave two of his friends behind in the ill-fated submarine rescue.
  • Toshi getting eaten by the megalodon? He was the first one to die on-screen.
  • Heller's sacrifice to save Jaxx.
  • When Suyin's father dies.
  • If you like whales, the baby humpback getting eaten. Probably after seeing her mother killed.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Sadly, the film doesn't adapt one of the most famous scenes from the original novel, which is a confrontation between a megalodon and a Tyrannosaurus rex. Who wouldn't want to see that on the big screen? Thankfully, it seems like the sequel will bring it back.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: We're meant to root against Morris because he's greedy and selfish, and while he briefly does want to exploit the megalodon for wealth, the guy isn't completely heartless. Namely, Morris saves Jaxx's life after she falls into the water while the meg is near and ultimately tries to kill the shark all by himself. Granted, he lied about alerting the authorities and he was motivated to avoid bad publicity, but since the heroes are also trying to kill the monster shark it is hard to see this as villainous. None of the characters care about Morris after he ends up getting eaten.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Jaxx is intended to come across as snarky yet likable but she can fall more into Jerkass territory. Her opening scene has her rudely refuse to shake Morris's hand despite his money funding the entire project she is working on. She later bitterly suggests feeding him to the Meg to throw it off their trail seemingly out of annoyance for his way of speaking while calling for assistance on his satphone. Note that this is mere minutes after Morris was the one to personally throw a ladder down to the terrified Jaxx and then pull her aboard the ship as a meg was honing in on her. Even worse, it's a cutaway shot when she acts like this, so it seems to do nothing but undermine her as a likable character.

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