Pretty much every scene in The Meg and its sequel Meg 2: The Trench is completely ridiculous. But some sequences are more absurd than others.
- The Meg movies embrace absurdity and ignore physics for the sake of entertaining the audience.
- Jason Statham’s character, Jonas Taylor, is the perfect megalodon slayer and engages in ridiculous hand-to-hand combat with the giant sharks.
- The sequel introduced new absurd elements like a bigger megalodon, a kraken, and dinosaurs, resulting in even more outlandish and entertaining scenes.
Pretty much every scene in The Meg and its sequel Meg 2: The Trench is completely ridiculous and flagrantly ignores the laws of physics, but that’s all part of the fun – and some sequences are more absurd than others. Based on the book series by Steve Alten, The Meg franchise revolves around deep-sea diver Jonas Taylor, played by Jason Statham, and his attempts to vanquish the giant prehistoric sharks that were released by a scientific experiment in the Mariana Trench. From a kraken downing a helicopter to a meg eating a T. rex, The Meg movies are full of delightfully ludicrous moments.
The Meg movies follow the same principle as the Fast & Furious franchise: if the audience is being entertained, then logic doesn’t matter all that much. These films essentially swap out the nitro-boosted cars of the Fast & Furious saga for a bunch of bloodthirsty 75-foot sharks. As both an A-list action movie star and a former member of Britain’s national diving team, the role of a freelance megalodon slayer is the perfect character for Statham. These movies have seen Statham punch a meg in the face, hold one off with his foot, and skewer one on the downed helicopter’s propeller blade.
Related Horror and sci-fi movies set in the deep ocean are often thought of as derivative, but these 10 films turned out to be terrifying trend-setters.
10 A Meg Eats A T. Rex
Meg 2: The Trench is all in on its absurdity from the get-go
The opening scene of Meg 2: The Trench takes audiences back to prehistoric times as a small dinosaur runs onto a beach and gets eaten by a bigger dinosaur, which gets eaten by an even bigger dinosaur, until a T. rex catches up to them at the shoreline – and then a meg emerges from the ocean, clamps its jaws down on the T. rex, and drags it out to sea. This opening shows that the meg has been at the top of the food chain for the entirety of history (and makes that point in the most ludicrous way possible).
9 Jonas Taylor Fights A Meg In Hand-To-Hand Combat (& Wins)
Jonas stabs a meg in the eye
Audiences went into The Meg hoping to see one thing – Jason Statham fighting a megalodon in hand-to-hand combat – and the movie actually delivered. In the climactic battle, Jonas chases the meg out to sea in a little submersible. He manages to wound the meg with the submersible, but it’s no longer drivable, so he hops out and literally punches the meg in the face. Jonas stabs the meg in the eye, which spills its blood and attracts dozens of modern sharks to pick away at its corpse. This is an awesome (if ridiculous) climax for the movie.
8 A Bigger Meg Shows Up
It’s like Peter Griffin’s pitch for Big Jaws
Around the midpoint of the first Meg film, Jonas and his crew manage to capture and kill the meg, seemingly resolving the plot and ending the movie just an hour in. But then, the real threat emerges: an even bigger megalodon bursts through the surface of the ocean and takes a chunk out of the smaller meg’s corpse. The revelation of a bigger meg is similar to Peter Griffin’s pitch for a Jaws sequel about the Orca crew teaming up with the original Jaws to fight “Big Jaws.”
7 Jiuming Fights Dinosaurs With A Shovel
No one in Jurassic Park thought to fight back with a shovel
In Meg 2: The Trench, the megs are the least of anyone’s troubles. The sequel also awakens a kraken and a bunch of dinosaurs. The dinosaurs make it onto the land in packs, so Jonas’ crew isn’t just in danger on the water. When Jiuming is surrounded by vicious, hungry dinosaurs, he decides to fight them off with a shovel, like a real-life game of Whac-A-Mole. No one in any of the Jurassic Park movies thought to pick up a shovel and take a swing at the dinosaurs.