No, I wasn't Kidding About Watching "Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus"

"Ten million years ago, they were frozen in mid-combat."

Yes, folks, a prehistoric shark and octopus were evidently... flash-frozen like Alaskan tuna... and now, due to some sort of inexplicable group whale suicide that results in an avalanche, they are back to fuck up the Pacific and drive two nautical geeks to fuck.

How big are they? you ask. Watch the trailer. No, you did not imagine the last frame, in which the shark jumps out of the water to eat a 747 full of newlyweds and unbaptized babies. Nor did you imagine (and this is my favorite moment) the shark taking a bite out of the Golden Gate bridge. And you thought earthquakes made California dangerous.

The film has Lorenzo Lamas, who some of you may remember as Reno Raines from the 1992-1997 television series, Renegade, which, plotwise, was akin to The Fugitive, only with more white trash. And also there was more open-vest, slow-mo pouring water over his strong jawline and chiseled torso. Others of you may remember Lamas from his illustrious horror sequel and/or TV movie career.

In his winning "phone it in style", Lamas plays a self-described "equal opportunity racist" and Unspecified Government Dude (USD). After a brief and highly convenient character... development is too strong a word, so let's just call it introduction of the Hot Blond Nautical Woman Emma (played, oddly enough, by a washed-up Debbie Gibson), Lamas the USD gathers Emma, her Irish mentor, and a Japanese nautical scientist, Seiji who, we are led to believe by the instant moony eye-contact with Hot Blond Emma, has a certain "geek-sheik" appeal. They are held together in what one IMDB critic describes as a "high school chemistry laboratory" and made to figure out a solution. 

So there we have it: Hot Blond Scientist and Geek-Sheik Scientist bond over this very tender and meaningful scene:

---

Seiji Shimada: How are you holding up under pressure?
Emma MacNeil: It's not easy being brilliant under armed guard
Seiji Shimada: From what I know you're no stranger to pressure. Joyriding in an experimental sub in an ice floe seems kind of tense.
Emma MacNeil: Yeah well, I was always drawn to the water. Always felt like a part of it.
Seiji Shimada: Me too.
Emma MacNeil: It didn't matter how rough or stormy or how big the waves were, they never scared me.
Seiji Shimada: Me too. My family were all fisherman, lived on the water, lived
[meaningful pause]
Seiji Shimada: *because* of the water. They all wanted me to follow in their footsteps.
Emma MacNeil: Why didn't you?
Seiji Shimada: Too much death. I saw a dolphin caught in the net when I was a kid I couldn't free it. The panic in it's eyes. The helplessness. That was it.
Emma MacNeil: I never got past putting the worm on the hook.
[Seiji laughs and then they kiss]
Emma MacNeil: I'm going to go take a walk.
[look of confusion on Seiji's face]
Emma MacNeil: You know a-a *walk*
[Emma walks out]
Emma MacNeil: .
[Seiji - slow look of realization and follows her]

So now we've got an implied sex scene in a janitorial closet, an incredibly convenient post-coital chat about pheromones, and all the elements are in place: the Americans will use scent to lead the shark to San Francisco (which, as you have read, turns out GREAT), and the Japanese, being less the "top predator" and more the "squid-eating" types, will simultaneously lead the octopus toward Japan. No stereotypes here, folks, it's just that the Japanese are better with... tentacles...

When the wisdom of this pheromone idea is questioned, no one thinks to ask why the creatures must be lead toward immensely populated areas. The question centers more on the "how do you know it will work?" side, which is met with this thoughtful response: "Those guys have been frozen in ice for millions of years. Wouldn't you be a little horny?" (I know nothing turns me on more than mass whale suicide.)
 
Please bear in mind, I am giving you the best excerpts from the script here.

Right. So some folks die in various low-budget ways (There was one shot of the octopus' eye that was used at least a half-dozen times), and it is decided by little miss "I think I'm a mermaid" Emma that the only way to stop the carnage is to force the two aquatic marvels into a Pacific showdown. And it would obviously be very important to, you know, have some submarines around in case anything needs to get bitten in half.

Oh, and every one of the main characters besides Lamas can drive a submarine or a smaller, escape-pod submarine.

And also the two aquatic monsters can swim faster than jets can fly, which really saves a lot of waiting around.

Yeah.

There's some sort of shark-octopus fight, but it's pretty murky, and despite the film's 2009 release (only in London, where it grossed a whopping 433 pounds, or $681 US dollars), the CG effects are about as good as they were in, oh, the 1970's, so it's hard to tell who has the edge. The shark bites off a few tentacles, the octopus gets in a few heated snuggles, and after many, many fruitless torpedo launches, the pair floats into the deep again, possibly out of sheer depression. Will the scientists live to have sex in another closet? You'll have to watch to find out.

It's safe to say that this movie has already humiliated itself beyond reproach, and if you are a drunken Lorenzo Lamas with self-esteem issues, you probably shouldn't be reading this. In an effort to be judicious, I will limit my critique to three points:

First: In real life, the octopus would have totally kicked the shark's ass. Mega Octopus could have taken some pointers from its little cousin, who knows better than to back up, charge, and headbutt the shark, or to put its tentacles inside the shark's mouth. The giant pacific octopus: now there's an octopus that has perfected the Deadly Snuggle.

Second: The movie title has too many adjectives. If you need that many adjectives to make your movie appealing, you are overcompensating. If there's anything my $40,000 Masters in English has taught me, it's that adjectives are weak. I suggest following in the cinematic path of the Japanese, and giving the dueling monsters names, like "Squishy, boneless friend to all children," or "Alex, that dickhead shark who really hates bridges and anything that is orange (possibly because nothing rhymes with orange)."

Last: With the exception of some dead teens in bikinis, the movie has all the elements of a B-movie creature feature: the disbelieving officials, the contrived sex scene, the rebel hero who no one believes in, the maniac USD in command, iconic landmarks being destroyed, and even a minor submarine mutiny, but all these things feel like random elements that were ordered with less precision than a game of Boggle. There was nothing to like about the characters, but there was also very little to enjoy about hating about them. Also, they experienced pretty much everything behind reinforced steel and glass, what with all the action happening in very deep water. Because the graphics blow, the sense of scale, and therefore the sense of human vulnerability, is nil. Where is the disturbing sexual metaphor, the human sacrifice, the tongue-in-cheek "I know I'm ripping off Jaws" allusion? Why didn't anyone shout, "Go, go, go!" or "Move, move," or even something like my favorite line in Anaconda (said by Ice Cube to Jennifer Lopez): "Hold on, I think I can blow [the giant snake] up."

I give this B movie a D, in that it would have been much improved by any number of drugs, none of which I can afford, as all my recreational drug money now goes to student loans.



PS: Dear reader, your homework for the great month of October is to obtain and watch Blood Angels (good luck! It's not even on his IMdB page), in which an evil Lorenzo Lamas keeps a harem of Lady Half-Vampires, who escape and decide to run a nightclub. Get ready to talk about feminism, camp, vampires, rape culture, and how to throw a successful rave. Huzzah!