Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009)

I absolutely adore my wife.  I need to throw this out there, because it plays into this review multiple times; the first one occurring last week after a particularly long and tiring day of work.

 

Wife – “I’m exhausted.  What a horrible day.”

Me – “I hear you.  I’m beat.”

Wife – “You know what I could really go for right now?” (Wife gives me mischievous wink…)

Me – “Absolutely!  Let me queue up Netflix!”

 

5 minutes later, we’re watching Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, and I haven’t been murdered outright.  I absolutely adore my wife.

 

So, Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.  Basically, this movie is about…well, take a second to re-read the title.  Got it?  Congratulations.  You no longer need to see the movie.  Thanks for reading.

 

…Still here?  Apparently, you’re as much of a masochist as my wife and I are, because we watched the whole thing.(1)  Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus begins when Emma, a scientist played by everyone’s favorite 80’s pop star (2) Debbie Deborah Gibson, steals a submarine in order to grin stupidly at some whales up near the polar ice cap.  At the same time, there’s some sort of military experiment going on surrounding a sonar beacon dropped by a helicopter that disturbs the whales, possibly causing them to bump into a glacier and thus free an enormous squid and a huge shark that were frozen there.  Or maybe it was the guy in the helicopter that broke the ice when he strangely crashed into the glacier for no apparent reason.  Or I guess it could have been something else altogether, which leads us to…

 

LESSON #1 – The effect of budgetary constraints on audience comprehension

 

I’m not entirely sure why film-makers try to tackle a subject that clearly requires a ton of special effects with a budget that I probably could have managed with the available balance on my credit cards.  I mean, we’re not talking about Tuesdays With Morrie here.  The problem that you run into in a situation like this is that you have to choose your battles as far as when you can put the money on the screen with a cool CG shot, and when you have to resort to stock footage, crappy (read: cheap) effects, or “trick editing” (and I use the term *very* loosely) to get your point across.  Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus suffers in a huge way because it falls back on all three of these in order to create roughly two actual CG money shots in the whole film.  As a result, we as the audience are often left scratching our heads as to what we just saw. 

 

To further explain, here is the shot sequence of the scene I referenced above-

 

-Shot of helicopter flying

-Close-up of pilot

-Bad CG shot of mini-sub underwater

-Close-up of Emma grinning like an idiot in what looks like the interior of a World-War I-era bomber with a cheap computer gaming joystick screwed to a desk

-Reused shot of helicopter flying 

-Inexplicable close-up of pilots-eye-view of gauges

-Another close-up of Emma grinning

-Stock footage of a pod of blue whales, probably sourced from a Discovery Channel documentary.

-Close-up of pilot

-Same shot of helicopter, with a very obviously (and poorly) digitally-added pod of some sort falling from it into the ocean.  (Quick cut so as to limit amount of on-screen time in which viewers can really see how bad the effect is)

-Close-up of Emma, now looking concerned

-Inexplicable close-up of underwater glacier

-Back to the helicopter footage

-Back to the gauges, only this time printed from the negative in reverse so it looks like the other side of the cockpit

-Back to Emma.  Some dialog about the whales being scared of something.

-Shot of glacier again (same “camera” movement), with bad CG pod-thing transmitting signal overlaid

-Reused shot of whales

-Shot of Emma.  Camera shakes a lot for some reason.

-Again the whales.

-Shot of glacier, now with bad CG avalanche of ice chunks

-Reused shot of helicopter (note – clearly in no discernable distress)

-Close-of pilot again, this time screaming

-Again the whales.

-Ultra-quick, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot of the glacier, with the helicopter badly edited in flying into the glacier, followed by a small orange explosion edited over the helicopter.  (note – no wreckage at all)

-Whales

-Emma in a shaky-camera close-up horror shot

-Vague still shot of shark and octopus frozen under layer of transparent ice

-Ultra-close Emma in horror

-Shot of shark/octopus; bad cracking effect added

-Emma

-Shot of shark/octopus with no ice effect over them; both swim off suddenly with very unnatural acceleration (leading me to believe that this is an “action” shot of them chasing each other that was stopped and then started for the effect)

*CUT TO NEXT SCENE*

 

See?  Was it the whales?  The beacon?  The helicopter?  Why’d the helicopter crash?  What the fuck is Emma grinning for?  What the hell just happened? 

 

Oh, the joys of the budget-less…but I digress.

 

Moving on with the plot, there’s a bunch of stuff happening.  We get a bad scene of some guys on an oil rig in the middle of the ocean.  One guy is (no joke) telling the others how he’s excited to be finally retiring so that he can head home to his wife and tend the garden, with no more of this “high-seas danger”.  Queue shaky camera effect.  People grab railings and pretend the rig is shaking.  Close-ups of screaming.  Ultra-quick shot of CG octopus tendrils coming out of the water around a stock footage shot of the oil rig, followed by a close-up of the octopus’ eye for some reason. 

 

Now we’re on a beach.  Emma is sneaking on to a “crime scene” by using a Jedi mind trick on a guard.  (Emma – “Gee, I sure hate these late night calls!  Interrupted watching the game for this!”  Guard [looks suspiciously at Emma for two seconds] – “Heh…I know what you mean!  Go on in.”)  It turns out to be a giant blue whale that was chewed on by something really freaking huge.  Emma manages to extract a three-foot tooth from the carcass, and then somehow sneaks it out of the site, which is being guarded for some reason by the army.  Why?  Good question!  Next Scene!

 

We’re in a jumbo jet somewhere over the Pacific.  There’s a very nervous dude inside who doesn’t like the rough ride.  As the plane shakes, he looks scared, and then makes the comment (no joke!), “I’m just nervous…I’m getting married tomorrow!”  The dude looks out the window, and exclaims, “HOLY…!”  Cut to giant shark hurtling through the air, mouth open wide, right at his window.  Cut to…you guessed it.  Next scene.

 

Now we’re on “LEAD U.S. DESTROYER, PACIFIC OCEAN.”  We know this, because it says so in the caption on the bottom of the screen.  Which leads me to…

 

LESSON #2 – Military History (Or: I’m a huge dork.)

 

In the first place, it’s really amusing that the director didn’t instruct the editing team to use a real U.S. Navy destroyer (“U.S.S Bainbridge, Pacific Ocean”) or make up a name (“U.S.S Wacky D, Pacific Ocean”), but instead had them just put “Lead U.S. Destroyer.”  Nothing like setting the scene in a realistic way. 

 

Now, I’ve managed to become interested in history in the last few years, especially as it applies to the military.  As such, I was instantly irritated when they flashed to the stock footage of what is supposed to be the “Lead U.S. Destroyer”.  This is a U.S Navy Destroyer:

 

 

 

And this is what the stock footage was of:

 

 

This is an Iowa-class battleship, one of the largest warships ever built.  In specific, you can even see the giant “63” on the side of the bow, signifying the U.S.S. Missouri.  That’s a bit of a mismatch to put it lightly; To the non-military dorks out there, it would be like putting this onscreen:

 

 

“Passenger Ferry, Lake Champlain”

 

Anyway, we’re in a scene where the “destroyer” has somehow managed to find the Giant Shark, and is attacking it.  The destroyer “fires” on the shark.(And I put that in quotes because we see some guy push a button, and the camera shakes and we hear a “Boom!” sound, but don’t actually see the guns go off.)  The shark disappears from radar, and the captain declares, ‘Target Destroyed!” with a smug grin.  Jump to a bad point of view shot of something closing in on the bottom of the “destroyer”, followed by one of the sailors saying, “Captain…it’s back!”  Cut back to shot of bottom of boat.  Close-up of captain somberly saying “My God…”  Cut to shot of giant shark, which looks suspiciously like the shot of the shark flying toward the jumbo jet, only this time with the background painted blue and some little bubble effects added.  Cut to shaky camera shot inside the “destroyer.”  Men are diving all over the place.  Cut to the most absolutely-stunning footage of a giant CG shark, rendered in beautiful high definition, tearing the boat into pieces in glorious slow-motion.

 

Just kidding.  They cut to next scene without showing anything. 

 

Moving on, a bunch of other stuff happens.  Emma goes to find her college professor, a marine biologist and ex-Navy submarine pilot named Lamar who was discharged for “running a nuclear submarine aground in order to avoid a pod of dolphins.”  They don’t explain why the guy is full-blooded Irish, which is only important because the Irish Navy has never contained any nuclear submarines.  Some other scientist from Japan named Seiji shows up as well, at which point my wife says, ‘She’s hooking up with that dude.” 

 

My wife is prescient.  Or this movie is stupid.  Or possibly both.

 

 Special Forces bust in, and kidnap the group, bringing them to a secret military base, where we meet some racist jerk who wears turtlenecks under sport coats named Allan (played authentically and totally not forced at all by Lorenzo Lamas.)  Allan is somehow allowed to be in control of the U.S counter-shark-and-octopus team.  I say, “Why not?”   He informs the team that they need to come up with a way to “take out” the two beasts.  There’s then a prolonged scene set to rocking music that shows the three scientists repeatedly mixing different-color liquids in a lab, frowning, and trying different colors.  (My wife, a microbiologist by trade, was instantly as offended as I was at the “destroyer” thing…)  Soon enough, Emma and Seiji, exhausted at the end of a day in a VERY closely-supervised lab, manage to sneak off and hook up in a broom closet.  Seiji says some vaguely half-science, half-Eastern philosophy bullshit about attraction and pheromones in an attempt to woo Emma (3) , when suddenly she jumps up and exclaims, “That’s it!” while pointing a finger into the air and doing her best impression of Inspector Cleuseau.  Cut to another shot (again set to rocking music!) of her mixing some neon-green liquid in a test-tube and smiling to the nodded approval of the other two scientists (presumably the professor ducked out for coffee while she and the other guy got nice with each other.  Or maybe he likes to watch…)

 

So the plan is to lure the shark into San Francisco Bay and the octopus into Tokyo Bay using pheromones (again, if it took getting some ass to come up with the pheromone plan, what were they trying to mix up in the lab before?), whereupon the respective countries will dispatch the creatures with Naval firepower.  After a touching goodbye/BS Eastern philosophy “our destinies will reunite us” crap, Seiji heads off to Japan to kick octo-ass, while the US launches the shark attack.  At this point, I turn to my wife and say, “At what point do they just make the two fight each-other?” 

 

I am prescient.  Or the movie is stupid.  Or definitely both. 

 

Of course, this ends typically.  After several pieces of stock footage pulled from the U.S Department Of Transportation showing cars going over the Golden Gate Bridge, we again see that shot of the shark jumping up out of the water.  Here, the director splurged, with a fairly satisfying CG shot of the shark taking down the entire middle of the bridge span in one bite.  (It was a really quick shot, though.)  The Navy doesn’t look kindly on wildlife consuming national treasures, and opens fire.

 

This time, they got it right; we see stock footage of a circa-WWII Naval destroyer sitting anchored somewhere, kinda like this tub:

 

 

We see the shark deep underwater, going after the pheromone.  The captain (incidentally, the same captain from the first ship!) yells “Fire!”.  There’s a bad little CG flash added to the tiny gun on the front of the ship; apparently, unguided 5” cannon shells are good for attacking sharks that are doing 500 knots underwater.  Cut to the shark, and a little explosion happens near him.  Repeat that sequence about seventeen times.  The shark finally figures out there’s no Giant Lady Shark waiting for him, gets mad, and goes after the ship.  (Quite literally, cut and paste the attack scene I described earlier in here.)  Back to the drawing board!

 

LESSON #3 – Wife Adoration

 

While we’re watching this scene, my wife suddenly says, “That’s stupid.”

 

Thinking to myself “This entire movie is stupid”, I ask what she means.

 

She replies, “Look at the captain’s uniform.  He’s wearing a pin on his chest identifying him as a submarine commander, not a destroyer captain."  I look closer, and she’s right. 

 

I give her a mischievous wink.        

 

Anyway, we’re in the home stretch!  Seiji explains that the octopus is immune to the missiles and other advanced weaponry the Japanese threw at it.  Allan looks very confused and asks what a “missile” is.  Emma comes up with the (totally shocking and completely not expected) plan to make the two fight it to the death.  She makes a passionate statement about how “their hate for each other is the only thing that can transcend their nature!”, and the entire scientific community around the world gives Emma the finger.  Off the teams go to lure the two to each other, and I’d say more, but I don’t want to give the whole movie away.

 

…Fuck it, actually.  You don’t really plan on watching this pile, and I was just trying to get out of reliving it any further.  To sum it up, basically there’s some more ships getting attacked but not actually shown on screen, a CG fight scene that starts with the octopus grabbing the shark, the shark biting off a tentacle, and the octopus taking off, only to be chased by the shark, with the whole thing repeating exactly (sometimes with the shot reversed to look like a different angle.)  Eventually, the entire Navy is decimated except (miraculously) for the two boats that Emma and Lamar, and Seiji are on, and the footage of the shark and squid moving is suddenly stopped and covered by what looks like a cloud of ink, prompting Emma to say, “It’s over.  They killed each-other.”  I can only assume she’s referring to the director and producer after watching the final cut of the film together, or perhaps the test-audience while attempting to escape the theater.

 

There it is.  On a scale of one to ten, I give Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus the finger.

 

 

 

(1) And by “whole thing”, I mean “We mostly didn’t fast-forward.”

(2) Almost everyone.  I preferred Tiffany.

(3) He should have gone for “Your Playboy spread was bangin’!”