Melissanthi Mahut Archives

Review: ‘Meg 2: The Trench,’ starring Jason Statham, Wu Jing, Sophia Cai, Page Kennedy, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Skyler Samuels and Cliff Curtis

August 3, 2023

by Carla Hay

Jason Statham in “Meg 2: The Trench” (Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)

Directed by Ben Wheatley

Culture Representation: Taking place in China and in or near the Pacific Ocean, the sci-fi action film “Meg 2: The Trench” (a sequel to 2018’s “The Meg”) features a predominantly white and Asian cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Latinos) representing the middle-class, working-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Deep sea diver Jonas Taylor and his colleagues once again battle deadly creatures in or near the Pacific Ocean.

Culture Audience: “Meg 2: The Trench” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and “The Meg,” but “Meg 2: The Trench” replaces the campy fun of “The Meg” with an onslaught of terrible filmmaking.

Jason Statham and Sophia Cai in “Meg 2: The Trench” (Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)

Even by low standards of stupid movies about animal attacks, “Meg 2: The Trench” is among the lowest of the low when it comes to idiocy. The movie also goes into a weird tangent of showing dinosaurs as much as sharks. “Meg 2: The Trench” (a sequel to 2018’s “The Meg”) is one of those moronic movies where people are supposed to be 25,000 feet underwater in the ocean, but they are able to survive without oxygen tanks and helmets. At one point, this vital survival equipment is discarded by the movie’s chief “hero” because this equipment just gets in his way when he was to travel across the ocean floor.

Apparently, getting “the bends” (getting injured from rising to the surface too quickly after being deep underwater) doesn’t exist in this world either. In “Meg 2: The Trench,” people who were 25,000 feat underwater are able to rise to the surface with no physical side effects. And apparently, face makeup stays intact for the women in the movie, despite all the life-threatening chases they go through underwater and above water. “Meg 2: The Trench” is based on Steve Alten’s 1999 novel “The Trench,” which is by far much better than the obnoxiously inept movie version of the book.

Directed atrociously by Ben Wheatley, “Meg 2: The Trench” is a giant mess of incoherence, with film editing so sloppy, it’s mind-numbing. Characters are “trapped” in one scene, but then in the next scene, the characters are suddenly “free,” with the movie quickly skipping over the details of how they escaped. One minute these people are stuck 25,000 feet underwater. The next minute, the survivors are in a canoe, with no signs of having medical problems from their ordeal. The movie doesn’t even bother to show them in wet clothes after rising from deep within the ocean.

The movie’s title character refers to the Megalodon shark (more than 60 feet wide), which is extinct in real life. But in the “Meg” movies, more than one Megaldon shark exists. “The Meg” was based on Alten’s 1997 novel “The Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror.” “Meg 2: The Trench” has very little resemblance to the novel on which it is based, in terms of the human characters. “Meg 2: The Trench” screenwriters Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber and Dean Georgaris butchered “The Trench” novel to come up with this awful screenplay.

In addition to battling Megaldon sharks, the human characters in “Meg 2: The Trench” have to contend with two fictional creatures that attack humans: (1) a giant octopus with the not-so-original name Mega-Octopus and (2) snappers (inspired by a dinosaur called Koreanosaurus) that look a lot like mutant iguanas that are about the size of sea lions. And then there are the movie’s human villains, led by Hilary Driscoll (played by Sienna Guillory), the wealthy CEO of a company that mines the ocean for resources.

“Meg 2: The Trench” takes place in and near China, but the movie was actually filmed in England and Thailand. Warner Bros. Pictures is co-distributing this movie with China-based CMC Pictures. “Meg 2: The Trench” begins by reminding viewers that dinosaurs lived 65 million years ago, but some of these dinosaurs were no match for a Megaldon shark. This opening scene shows a Meg attacking and devouring a smaller-sized dinosaur. In the “Meg” world, several animals that are supposed to be extinct are still alive in the 21st century.

The main protagonist in “The Meg” and “Meg 2: The Trench” is Jonas Taylor (played by Jason Statham), a British diver whose specialty is deep-sea search and rescue. Jonas is also an environmental activist who’s hired to bust up operations that violate environmental laws in large bodies of water. Near the beginning of the movie, Jonas is shown narrowly escaping from a cargo ship, where he was discovered as an intruder. Some goons chase him around the deck. And when Jonas is cornered, he jumps over the ship’s railing and plunges into the water unharmed.

Meanwhile, the other “alpha male” in “Meg 2: The Trench” is Jiuming Zhang (played by Wu Jing), the director of the Zhang Oceanic Institute in Hainan, China. His domineering father is well-known oceanographer Minway Zhang (played by Winston Chao), who’s not in “Meg 2: The Trench,” but he was in “The Meg.” Even though Jiuming is a respected oceanographer in his own right, Jiuming feels like he’s living in his father’s shadow. Jonas and two of his closest colleagues—dependable James “Mac” Mackreides (played by Cliff Curtis) and sassy Rigas (played by Melissanthi Mahut)—attend a reception where Hilary is honoring Jiuming, whom she wants to work with to find parts of the ocean that will be lucrative for her company.

As shown in “The Meg,” Minway and his oceanographer daughter Suyin Zhang (played by Li Bingbing) supervised an exploratory mission in the Mariana Trench (located in the western Pacific Ocean, near Asia), with Jonas on board for the mission, which turned out to be a deadly disaster involving attacking Megalon sharks. The vessel used in this fatal mission was the Mana One, which also doubled as an underwater research facility where single mother Suyin lived with her 8-year-old inquisitive daughter Meiying (played by Sophia Cai)—because nothing says “family bonding” like having an underage kid along for the ride in a dangerous underwater mission.

In “Meg 2: The Trench,” Suyin is now deceased. Meiying (also played by Cai), who is now 14 years old, is under the guardianship of Jonas, who treats Meiying like a daughter. Meiying wants to become an oceanographer, just like her mother, uncle and grandfather. “You need to take me seriously as a scientist,” Meiying tells Jonas when he says she can’t go with him on his next exploratory mission. And you know what that means: Meiying sneaks on the submarine where Jonas and his crew are doing their mission, once again in the Mariana Trench.

At the Mana One Research Center, the control room that is monitoring this mission is being operated by managing researcher Mac, level-headed engineer Jess (played by Skyler Samuels) and wisecracking engineer DJ (played by Page Kennedy), who is written like a buffoon and is saddled with some of the worst “jokes” in the movie. Mac and DJ were also in “The Meg,” so they already have an established bond. Most of the Mana One supporting characters who are new to “Meg 2: The Trench” are bland and have forgettable personalities.

Jonas is leading two submarines for his mission, which is going 25,000 feet underwater in the Mariana Trench. The submarine with Jonas on board also has Jiuming, surprise passenger Meying and crew members Rigas, Curtis (played by Whoopie Van Raam) and Sal (played by Kiran Sonia Sawar) and Lance (played by Felix Mayr). Viewers don’t really get to know the people in the other submarine, so you know what that means in a movie where groups of people can get killed at the same time.

Something goes terribly wrong when giant rocks surge through the ocean in a collision that crashes both submarines. Guess which ancient and monstrous shark caused this disruption? The submarine with Jonas and his crew is damaged but has no fatalities. There are no survivors on the other submarine, which has been completely demolished.

Making matters worse, although Jonas can communicate by radio to the Mana One Research Center’s control room, the control room’s radar to detect the sunken submarine is no longer working. Mac soon finds out that the radar’s system has been hacked into and destroyed. The people trapped underwater are running out of oxygen. Jonas makes the risky decision to walk the three kilometers (approximately 1.9 miles) across the trench to see if he can find anything to help them get back up to the surface.

A lot of people might think that “Meg 2: The Trench” takes place mostly underwater. They’ll be surprised to find out that at least half of the movie takes place on land, where there are more monstrous and human-killing creatures: the snappers. In typical villain fashion, Hilary has a chief henchman doing a lot of her dirty work. His name is Montes (played by Sergio Peris-Mencheta), who has a grudge against Jonas that is revealed in the movie.

Much of the last third of “Meg 2: The Trench” takes place in the South Seas, on Fun Island, which has a popular resort called Club Paradise. Fun Island is populated by numerous snappers, but apparently the people at Club Paradise had no idea until one particular day when the snappers attack. And let’s not forget that Mega-Octopus is lurking around too.

Club Paradise social director Coco (played by Sui Fong Ivy Tsui), who was a bride in “The Meg,” has her constant companion with her: a Yorkshire Terrier named Pippin. This dog is used as comic relief in the movie and in the marketing campaign for “Meg 2: The Trench.” But in actuality, the dog’s screen time in “Meg 2: The Trench” is less than 10 minutes. It’s “bait and switch” manipulation.

There are so many cringeworthy and eye-rolling things about “Meg 2: The Trench,” it’s as if the filmmakers decided to take everything that people dislike about mindless action flicks and put all of it into this movie. People don’t mind cheesy dialogue if it’s done with the right tone, but “Meg 2: The Trench” can’t even have fun with its foolishness. When one of the villains gets killed by shark, Jonas utters, “See you later, chum.” (If you don’t know the sea creature definition for chum, look it up.) It’s supposed to be the biggest joke in the movie, but this “joke” just falls flat.

Needless to say, between the unfocused direction, the horrible film editing, the mediocre-to-terrible acting, and the junkpile screenplay, “Meg 2: The Trench” is not the type of bad movie that’s somewhat entertaining to watch. It’s just a series of awkwardly cobbled-together scenes where action sequences look jumbled and the visual effects often look amateurish. “Meg 2: The Trench” soon becomes a blur of nonsense, because this movie just doesn’t care about having a good story. If you want action movies to at least have a good story, then you shouldn’t care to see “Meg 2: The Trench.”

Warner Bros. Pictures will release “Meg 2: The Trench” on August 4, 2023.

Review: ‘Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga,’ starring Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams

June 26, 2020

by Carla Hay

Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams in “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga” (Photo by John Wilson/Netflix)

Culture Representation: Taking place in Iceland and Scotland, the musical comedy “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga” has a predominantly white cast (with some black people, Asians and Latinos) representing the middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: An Icelandic male/female pop-music duo called Fire Saga aspire to on the annual Eurovision Song Contest, but they come up against naysayers in their home country as well as competitors from other countries.

Culture Audience: “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga” will appeal primarily to fans of stars Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams, as well as to people who like good-natured satires of fame seekers and hokey TV talent contests.

Dan Stevens in “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga” (Photo by John Wilson/Netflix)

“Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga” is an entertaining parody of the famous annual Eurovision Song Contest that feels retro and contemporary at the same time. The contest, which began in 1956 and is televised in numerous countries, has singers (usually performing pop music) competing from different countries around the world, as a sort of an Olympics for aspiring music stars. Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams portray the earnest but naïve Lars Erickssong and Sigrit Ericksdottir, a musical duo from Iceland who perform under the stage name Fire Saga. Ferrell, who co-wrote the original screenplay with Andrew Steele, is one of the producers of this comedy. And it’s one of Ferrell’s best movies in years.

Although “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga” (directed by David Dobkin) takes place in the present day, a lot of the musical sensibilities and costumes seem to be stuck in a previous decade, especially the 1980s or 1990s. The movie’s running joke, although not explicitly stated, is that certain parts of Europe are “behind the times” in pop music, because these countries rarely produce groundbreaking pop superstars on a worldwide level. Therefore, the performers who represent these countries at Eurovision are often ridiculed by Eurovision haters for looking and sounding outdated.

The trailer for “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga” already shows that Fire Saga made it to the contest. Therefore, the first third of this 123-minute movie has no suspense, since it’s all about the obstacles that Fire Saga encounters in the quest to make it to Eurovision. Iceland has never had a Eurovision winner, so that immediately makes Fire Saga the ultimate underdog act.

The movie begins in Húsavík, Iceland, on April 6, 1974, when a pre-teen Lars (played by Alfie Melia), his stern widower father Erick (played by Pierce Brosnan) and other members of the family are watching Eurovision in the living room. The Swedish pop group ABBA is performing “Waterloo,” and Lars is transfixed. (ABBA won Eurovision that year and has remained Eurovision’s most famous winning act.)

As Lars dances along to ABBA performing on TV, he announces to his family that someday, he’s going to be a contestant on Eurovision. Several people scoff at the idea, including Erick, who says he’d rather be dead than to have his son sing and dance on Eurovision. Well, you know what that means.

About 45 years later, Lars is still living with his father, who makes a living as a fisherman, while Lars has a job giving parking tickets. Lars and his musical partner Sigrit (who is a music teacher) are longtime friends. They are singers and multi-instrumentalists, but they’ve been floundering in the dead-end local music scene. Fire Saga’s music “career” consists of rehearsing in the basement of Erick’s house and performing at a small local bar.

A running joke in the movie is that the patrons of this bar don’t want to hear any Fire Saga original songs (such as the trash-tastic “Volcano Man”) and would rather hear Fire Saga perform a very childish, nonsensical tune called “Jaja Ding Dong.” The audience is so fanatical about “Jaja Ding Dong” that they will often demand that Fire Saga perform it more than once in a single set. Is it any wonder that Lars and Sigrit think Eurovision will be their ticket out of this backwards town?

Erick isn’t the only one who thinks Lars is a loser and that it’s a delusional lost cause for Fire Saga to be on Eurovision. Sigrit’s single mother Helka (played by Elin Petersdottir) vehemently disapproves of Sigrit chasing this dream and tells Sigrit that she’s wasting her time with Lars. Although it’s not shown in the movie, it’s mentioned that Sigrit used to be mute as a child, until she met Lars and he helped her find her voice through music. And Lars and Sigrit have been friends ever since.

But now that they’re adults, Sigrit wants to be more than friends with Lars, because she’s secretly in love with him. Lars has the maturity level of a teenager (like most characters Farrell tends to play), so Lars is completely oblivious to Sigrit’s true feelings for him. As if to make the point that Lars and Sigrit don’t exude sexual chemistry with each other, throughout the movie, people who meet Lars and Sigrit for the first time mistakenly assume that Lars and Sigrit are brother and sister. Later in the story, when Sigrit and Lars almost kiss romantically, he stops it from happening because he says they can’t ruin their work relationship with a romance, and they have to stay focused on winning Eurovision.

But getting to Eurovision won’t be so easy. First, Fire Saga has to win the Icelandic Song Contest. Neils Brongus (played by Ólafur Darri Ólafsson), the president of Icelandic Public Television, leads a committee in charge of deciding who will be contestants in the Icelandic Song Contest. And he already has a favorite to win: Katiana Lindsdottir (played by Demi Lovato), from Kefalvik, a ready-made pop star with a powerful singing voice.

Neils tells his assembled team after watching Katiana’s audition video: “Without being dramatic, I think it might be the best audition tape we ever had in the history of the Icelandic Song Contest.” (In the movie, Lovato sings the original song “In the Mirror.”) Compared to Katiana, Fire Saga looks like a bad joke.

Meanwhile, Victor Karlsson (played by Mikael Persbrandt), governor of Central Bank of Iceland, is worried about a contestant from Iceland winning Eurovision, which has a tradition of the winning contestant’s country hosting the contest in the following year. Victor fears that Iceland doesn’t have the infrastructure to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of people who would come to Iceland for Eurovision. And he thinks that all those visitors during a short period of time could bankrupt Iceland.

Therefore, Victor is not enthusiastic about Katiana or anyone from Iceland winning Eurovision. When Victor expresses his concerns to Neils and the team at Icelandic Public Television, the rest of the group immediately shoots down Victor’s pessimistic prediction, because they think Eurovision coming to Iceland would be great for the Icelandic economy.

Lars’ dream of wining Eurovision becomes even more desperate when he finds himself homeless. His father Erick is having serious financial problems and has a choice to sell his house or sell his boat. Since Erick needs his boat for his fisherman income, he decides to sell the house.

Meanwhile, Sigrit has a quirk that Lars finds a little irritating: She believes in elves and thinks that elves can grant wishes. A recurring joke in the movie is that she visits a group of tiny houses built for elves and offers food and other gifts to the unseen creatures, as a way to entice them to grant her wishes. Two of her biggest wishes are to win Eurovision and to get together with Lars and start a family with him.

Through a series of unpredictable events, Fire Saga ends up representing Iceland at Eurovision, which is being held in Edinburgh, Scotland. How the usually hapless Fire Saga got to Eurovision wasn’t necessarily because Fire Saga was voted the best act, so Iceland’s support is lukewarm at best. Still, Iceland has given Fire Saga enough support that the country has hired a creative team to help Fire Saga win with Fire Saga’s chosen song “Double Trouble.”

The artistic director of this creative team is the very fussy and flamboyant Kevin Swain (played by Jamie Demetriou, in a scene-stealing performance), who sometimes clashes with the creative vision that Lars and Sigrit have for Fire Saga. During Eurovision rehearsals, Lars and Sirgit also meet another flamboyant character: Russian contestant Alexander Lemtov (played by Dan Stevens), a singer who flaunts his wealth and gives the impression that he will sleep with anyone to get them to do what he wants. Alexander’s Eurovision song is called “Lion of Love,” and his bombastic performance of the song includes a homoerotic choreography with male backup dancers wearing skintight gold lamé pants.

Alexander (whose frosted 1980s hairdo is reminiscent of George Michael in his Wham! days) immediately sets his sights on Sigrit to target as a sexual conquest. Meanwhile, Lars attracts the amorous attention of Greek contestant Mita Xenakis (played by Melissanthi Mahut), a singer who’s like a cross between Ariana Grande and Cher. Not surprisingly, some jealousy situations ensue.

In between all of the backstage drama and hilariously tacky performances, the movie has a standout musical ensemble number that takes place at a contestant party thrown by Alexander. In this scene, numerous contestants (including Lars, Sigrit, Alexander and Mita) do an extravagant medley of Cher’s “Believe,” Madonna’s “Ray of Light,” ABBA’s “Waterloo” and the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling.”

Savan Kotecha, the musical director for this movie, assembled the team that wrote the film’s original songs that were deliberately kitschy. His background in writing and producing hits for real-life pop stars serves this movie very well. Among the hits that Kotecha co-written and co-produced include The Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face,” Grande’s “God Is a Woman,” One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful” and Lovato’s “Confident.” The musical score by Atli Örvarsson complements the pop tunes without being overbearing.

The movie’s Eurovision performance scenes, which includes footage from real Eurovision arena shows, are among the comedic highlights of the film. Just when you think an act couldn’t get campier or more pompous, another one comes along to surpass it. Graham Norton (portraying himself) adds an element of satirical realism with his cameo as the sardonic TV commentator for Eurovision.

For “Eurovision Song Contest,” McAdams and Ferrell have reunited with their “Wedding Crashers” director Dobkin, whose previous experience as a music-video director is an asset for this musical movie. As for the singing in the movie, Lovato and Mahut are professional singers in real life, so they did their own vocals. Adams’ vocals were either her own or a combination of McAdams and those of Swedish singer Molly Sandé. Alexander’s operatic singing vocals were provided by Erik Mjönes.

“Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga” has plenty of lowbrow jokes that are actually laugh-out-loud funny. For example, there are several penis jokes and jokes about naked men in the movie. The jokes are crude but not offensive. In one scene, Lars comments: “I think of my penis like a Volvo—solid, sturdy, dependable, but not going to turn any heads.” Comedy is all about delivery, and Ferrell delivers the line in such a good natured, self-deprecating way, that it will make people laugh.

The movie doesn’t just poke fun at tacky aspiring pop stars from Europe. Americans are also the butt of many jokes in the film. During the course of the movie, Lars and Sigrit keep encountering the same group of college-age American tourists. Lars makes it known that he dislikes Americans, by taunting the tourists with the worst “ugly American” stereotypes. His insults aren’t too far off from how many non-Americans perceive Americans.

Make no mistake: “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga” is by no means an Oscar-worthy movie. (Ferrell has never starred in that type of movie anyway.) But it is a cut above some of the stinkers that Ferrell has been headlining in recent years. At its heart, “Eurovision Song Contest” has a sentimentality to it that just might win people over in the way that Fire Saga earnestly tries to charm audiences—not by being the most talented but by being their unapologetically corny selves.

Netflix premiered “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga” on June 26, 2020.