Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus Running Commentary

Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus

Within the last few years, I have begun to truly enjoy and appreciate the horrifically bad. On one hand, I am insanely happy about this. I am sick of having intensely high standards and being disappointed by directors for ‘only’ […]

by Chris Neumer

Within the last few years, I have begun to truly enjoy and appreciate the horrifically bad. On one hand, I am insanely happy about this. I am sick of having intensely high standards and being disappointed by directors for ‘only’ making A minus films. On the other hand, it’s not the type of thing that looks particularly good to others. I realized this recently when flipping channels and chose to watch The Suite Life of Zach and Cody over Michael Mann’s Heat. You try explaining that to someone. I have no idea how to… and I had to; I was watching TV with friends when I decided to go with The Suite Life.

Regardless of whether my new affinity for trash is a good or bad thing, it has resulted in one very tangible change in my life: I watch one hell of a lot of big animal movies now.

Big animal movies are a unique genre of films that I (now) appreciate on several levels. The plot of these movies is all exactly the same. There is a big animal (or insect) in a place it probably shouldn’t be. Chances are good that there is a big festival/event coming up wherever the animal is… and for some reason, the big animal is incredibly hungry. Chaos and shoddy production values quickly follow.

Mainstream Hollywood has not picked up on the big animal movie the way the smaller distributors have. Sure, Spielberg brought the genre mainstream with Jaws, but during the last decade, the only big animal movie that I can remember that got any kind of wide opening was Lake Placid. I, of course, thoroughly enjoy that movie.

Just as I thought the genre might have been dying out, writer/director Ace Hannah (Jack Lopez to his parents) decided to breathe new life into it: he took two big animals and pitted them against one another in a battle royale. And thus the world was graced with Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus.

I first learned of Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus in late December of 2009 when I saw that its trailer was one of the top ten most viewed trailers of the year. This means two things: 1) An entire team of publicists out there should be fired for not getting this title into my hands earlier—I highly doubt anyone other journalist in America who routinely interviews Oscar winning actors has spent as much time also writing about big animal movies as me, and 2) America’s collective cultural taste has never been better.

I watched the trailer and was floored. Hannah had his shark take down an airplane… that was flying at 10,000 feet! I couldn’t get a copy of the film soon enough.

The plot of said work of cinematic genius is sufficiently explained in the title. There’s this mega shark that is traversing the globe doing battle with this giant octopus. In between fights, they attack and chew on a peculiar assortment of things… like the Golden Gate Bridge and submarines.

I’ve written about Gary Busey versus a Tiger, Michael Madsen versus a Crocodile, the thought about writing about Deborah (Debbie) Gibson versus a Mega Shark AND a Giant Octopus that were also fighting one another seemed to be good to be true. Only time would tell.*

* Please note that while normally there would be a brief conclusion at the end of the running commentary, there is none here. My last line of the commentary sums up everything extremely nicely.

:10 Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus opens with a shot of mountains. I was not expecting this. For the next thirty seconds, the viewer is graced with a series of snow-capped mountain flyover shots. If the octopus has walked out here, this could be my new favorite movie.

:40 Cut to a submarine underwater.

:50 Cut back to the mountains. This is a weird juxtaposition. For the same reason I wouldn’t expect Huge Lion versus Angry Chimpanzee to open on a coral reef, I am hard pressed to explain the lengthy mountain shots here.

4:19 Speaking of coral reefs, we see shots of just that. The reef is filled with schools of fish and hammerhead sharks. Unfortunately, the movie is taking place in northern Alaska, next to an ice shelf, so…

7:18 A pod of humpback whales is swimming head first into an underwater glacier wall. This kills them and also causes the glacier to fall apart. Lo and behold a giant octopus and mega shark are released into the world. If you want an explanation for how two creatures that were frozen into glaciers millions of years ago survived for all that time without food or oxygen, you’re going to have to look elsewhere for this information. Then you’re going to have to e-mail it to me.

8:47 This is undoubtedly my favorite scene in the movie. In it, the octopus decides to try and eat (?) a Japanese, deep-sea, oil rig. The genius of this scene—and I can’t use that word enough when writing about this film—comes in the set up.

I suppose you could just cut from the octopus escaping the glacier to him attacking the oil rig, but there needs to be a lead in of some kind to set the scene. In this instance, it’s precisely this lead in that makes the whole thing.

After an exterior shot of the oil rig, Hannah cuts to a master shot of two Japanese management types who are talking to an American worker on the rig. Hannah could have chosen any topic of dialogue here. The dialogue isn’t the important part. The important part is that whatever dialogue is being spoken will be interrupted by this huge, pre-historic octopus engulfing the entire oil rig. Hannah could have picked a conversation about baseball teams, girlfriend problems or even something technical going on with the rig. But he didn’t.

Nope.
He chose to have two Japanese workers explaining to an American that it’s not proper to piss on people in the shower. The scene actually includes this line of dialogue, “My men feel like they’ve been disrespected [because you urinated on them].”

…Cue the octopus.

10:00 In a nice gesture towards Deborah Gibson, the producers apparently agreed to only cast actors who were noticeably worse than she. That or they instructed really talented actors to perform horribly so she would look better in comparison.

11:54 Gibson’s boss at the Oceanographic Institute where she works seems like he went to the David Caruso School for Acting. Not only is he wearing a white lab coat and standing around on the beach doing absolutely nothing while looking hardcore, but he starts the scene facing away from the camera. All that’s missing are sunglasses.

12:26 Less than two minutes after Gibson’s boss has reprimanded her for showing up late, he has sent her home to think about what she’s done.

13:28 Gibson is going to have to face a review board the next morning to determine whether she will be able to keep her job. She’s something of a rogue, loose cannon, uh, girl-next-door. She borrowed a sub that she shouldn’t have over the last weekend and showed up a few minutes late to work a couple days later.

Now, having been sent home from work, she is on the beach, drinking a wine cooler out of a paper bag. I like this logic: I’m worried about getting fired tomorrow… so I’ll spend today drinking.

13:30 …and lying her way to the scientific equivalent of a crime scene. The carcass of a large whale has washed up on shore with an enormous chunk of flesh missing from its side. Gibson assumes it’s a bite. Her boss tells her to be serious and mentions that it’s obviously a wound sustained from the propeller of a ship.

As Gibson attempts to point out that there’s something that looks like a huge fucking tooth in the wound, her boss tells her to leave. All this leads up to Gibson returning to the carcass and extracting the aforementioned huge fucking tooth chip.

15:05 Although the Norcal Oceanographic Institute has been examining the whale carcass for more than 12 hours, no one else was interested in pulling out that huge fucking tooth chip. I’m thinking that there needs to be a review board for Gibson’s boss as well.

16:23 Japanese officials are interviewing one of the Japanese workers that survived the attack on the Japanese oil rig. The Japanese worker is talking with an Australian accent and has blue eyes. You just can’t see these things coming.

17:32 My second favorite scene in the movie and the scene that got me determined to watch it in the first place. Mega shark jumps out of the water to take a bite out of a plane flying at what has to be 20,000 feet.

The plane hits some turbulence in some high altitude cloud cover. The passengers are a little nervous. A flight attendant (who actually has a scarf around her neck) is reassuring the passengers that everything is okay. One of the passengers sighs in relief, looks out the window and sees a prehistoric shark flying towards them, mouth wide open in anticipation of lunch.

Like I need another reason to be afraid of flying.

18:50 Gibson has been fired. Her boss actually found sunglasses (and is wearing them inside to boot) and offers her this advice as he chases after her: “Don’t love the ocean too much. It doesn’t love you back.”

19:17 Gulp. Gibson is using the same laptop I do.

21:35 With nowhere left to turn, Gibson goes to see her old professor, XXX. She shows him the huge fucking tooth that she pulled out of the whale carcass and they begin testing it to see what it could be. In an effort to show that science is being done, Gibson and the professor are putting colored liquids into test tubes. The results are in: the tooth came from something with a bite radius of 11 feet. That is just wrong, if this picture is any indication.

25:35 If we can believe Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus, the San Francisco International Airport is right next to a sandy beach with lots of palm trees around. It is also curiously close to the very same pier where Gibson and her professor met earlier.

28:08 Talk about getting your money’s worth! Gibson, her professor and the Japanese scientist, XXX, are now walking on the very same pier where Gibson and her professor said their hellos several scenes back. Not only that, but the three actors haven’t even bothered to change clothes since that scene.

30:18 In an effort to kill a charging mega shark, the Navy destroyer is firing long range anti-aircraft guns at it.

30:43 Ace Hannah had to stay up late for many nights in a row to create dialogue like this.

NAVY UNDERLING: The target has disappeared, sir.

CAPTAIN: You mean destroyed. Target destroyed!

NAVY UNDERLING: No, sir. I’m not getting anything at all. He’s using residual—

CAPTAIN: Radio Washington. Target destroyed!

NAVY UNDERLING: Target returned.

CAPTAIN: It rises!

31:58 Getting fired from your job means that you, apparently, don’t sleep at your own apartment anymore. When Gibson wakes up on her professor’s couch, she throws off her blanket to reveal she slept in her Uggs.

32:02 Faceless federal agents burst into the professor’s house holding high-caliber assault rifles complete with laser sites. With several red dots pointed at his forehead, the professor stares at them and asks cheerfully, “What can I do for you gentlemen?

32:15 Gibson, the professor and the scientist are taken to a secure government facility where they are asked to help capture and kill mega shark and giant octopus. Why they were asked with rifles is anyone’s guess.

33:00 Enter Lorenzo Lamas! Here is everything you need to know about Lamas. He is tall, he has a pony tail, he dresses entirely in black and, if his performance here is any indication, a worse actor than any number of inanimate objects you may have in your house. He is the government, uh, agent who has been, uh, assigned to the, uh, mega shark case. And he’s angry.

33:10 Lamas tells Gibson, the professor and the scientist that “We’re dealing with a threat that no one has ever imagined.” This is not true. Not only has this threat been imagined, but Gibson printed out a picture of it the day before.

35:00 Lamas shows Gibson, the professor and the scientist a map of where all the mega shark and giant octopus attacks have occurred in the last few days. I’ll say this, they’ve got range. Some of the attacks are in the North Atlantic near Greenland and others are on the west side of Australia.

35:09 Gibson hands a federal agent a CD of images to look at. This isn’t noteworthy. What is however is the fact that Gibson hands the agent the CD with her thumb pressed firmly against the readable side of the disc. The agent accepts the CD by placing her own thumb on the readable side of the disc as well.

35:43 Despite the world wide carnage caused by the mega shark and giant octopus—that haven’t actually battled yet—Gibson, the professor and the scientist are categorically against the idea of killing the creatures.

36:45 I barely have the energy to describe this horrible plot twist. Gibson and her cronies have agreed to help the government providing that the government doesn’t kill the mega shark and giant octopus when they catch them. Their plan is to isolate the creatures in San Francisco and Tokyo Bay. How you ask? They don’t know. “Work on it, pronto!” Lamas yells. The twist is this: when the shark arrives in San Francisco, Lamas and the Navy are going to kill it.

37:18 Working commences: more colored liquids are being poured in and out of different test tubes and beakers.

37:51 Progress is being made. Red liquid is now being poured into a light blue liquid. (And if you’re doing the math, yes, more than 30 seconds of characters fiddling with colored liquid in test tubes has elapsed).

38:35 More Hannah dialogue.

GIBSON: I was always drawn to the water. I always felt a part of it.

SCIENTIST: Me too.

GIBSON: Didn’t matter how rough it was or how stormy, it never scared me.

SCIENTIST: Me too.

40:33 Based upon the positive merits of the aforementioned conversation, Gibson and the scientist are passionately making out. There is a cut and the two are lying on the floor of a janitor’s supply closet next to one another with a sheet covering them. A mop and bucket of water is inches from their heads. Pillow talk ensues.

41:40 There are many types of bad. This scene hits a new type of bad: the ‘unusually awkward’ bad. Gibson has come up with the idea of luring the shark into San Francisco Bay by putting pheromones into the water there. When she succeeds in creating the proper pheromone (by pouring neon green liquid into some other neon green liquid), the professor kisses her on her right ear while the scientist kisses on her left ear. Just weird.

45:30 Giant Octopus takes out a Navy fighter pilot who is flying below 1,000 feet. Strangely, the pilot calls “Mayday” and announces that he’s going down before he’s actually hit.

46:34 The professor announces that he’ll run the naval operation because he doesn’t want the SEALs to mess it up. No joke necessary.

47:45 Readying himself for the impending fight against mega shark, the professor tells Gibson, “Sooner or later, every scientist faces something like this.”

Yes. This is true. Sooner or later, every scientist finds himself taking control of the Navy while trying to lure a 500 foot long, prehistoric shark that just ate a plane into San Francisco Bay.

52:40 A Navy operative states that mega shark is swimming at 500 knots. That’s almost 600 miles an hour. The sailfish, which is commonly viewed as the fastest swimmer in the ocean, has topped out at about 68 miles per hour.

54:53 The Navy fires on the shark. The captain in charge reports that the target has been destroyed. Lamas yells, “Whoo! Who wants shark skin boots?”

54:58 Oops. The target has been sighted again. Maybe, just maybe, the Navy should instruct its captains to wait more than five seconds before announcing that things have been destroyed.

55:55Apparently, mega shark has taken the attempt on its life personally and is now pissed off. As it swims out of San Francisco Bay, it takes a bite out of one of the following:

A. Crime
B. Antiquated laws about heterosexual-only marriage
C. The Golden Gate Bridge
D. Rice-a-Roni

56:15 The target is lost. Again.

58:00 Now that mega shark is back in the open ocean, Lamas has already jumped to Plan B: nuclear weapons. “That’s what I’m going to recommend to Washington before we have a global catastrophe on our hands,” he says angrily. It’s a bold measure, but I truly like the concept of using nukes to prevent a global catastrophe.

59:57 Among the negative consequences from using nuclear weapons to kill mega shark and giant octopus, the professor sites the massive tidal waves they’d cause.

59:57 Gibson suggests that instead of using nukes, they simply have mega shark and giant octopus fight each other and kill one another. Everyone seems to view this as a rational and logical solution to the problem.

1:05:54 Another tender moment between Gibson and the scientist. He tells her that he thinks about ‘that night’ a lot before he goes to sleep. This is strange because it can’t have been more than three days ago that they slept together.

1:07:18 Gibson, Lamas and the professor head underwater in an American sub. The scientist does the same on a Japanese sub. The idea is to drag the pheromones behind the subs and lure mega shark and giant octopus together.

The American sub captain asks a very good question, “What happens if the shark shows up?” Gibson says, “Floor it.” At this precise minute, the shark shows up. And even though mega shark can swim 500 knots and the sub isn’t going to ever top 45 knots, the sub is somehow outracing mega shark right now.

1:08:22 Even though mega shark is behind them, the sub is firing torpedoes in front of them.

1:09:36 Uh oh, giant octopus has arrived.

1:10:26 This seems like the perfect time to get out of there and ‘floor it’! The captain turns to give this order and Gibson says defeatedly that they’ll never be able to out run mega shark.

1:10:35 I love this exchange. The captain gives the order to turn on the emergency turbo propellers.

NAVY UNDERLING: But, sir! We’ll overheat the engines and crack the core!

CAPTAIN: That’s an order! Engage the emergency turbo props now!

Why would the Navy install an emergency system in its submarines that would cause untold destruction to the ship?

1:13:55 The submarine’s engines haven’t overheated and the core hasn’t cracked. However, in an effort to avoid mega shark and giant octopus, the captain has ordered the navigator to take the sub into an underwater ice field. The navigator does so against his own best judgment. When the sub has hit a fairly nice cruising speed, the navigator leaps away from the controls and pulls a weapon on the captain. The navigator then tells the captain that the decision to go into the ice field will kill them all.

Ironically, because the navigator left his post, the sub crashes into an ice flow, a distraction that allows the captain to grab the navigator’s gun. All this is merely a long way to putting the professor behind the stick.

1:19:10 Gibson, Lamas and the professor have left the American submarine and gotten into a smaller sub that has, unbeknownst to everyone including Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus’ f/x team, been attached to the bottom of the Navy sub this whole time. They hop into this other sub just in time to watch mega shark bite off the back end of the Navy sub.

Strangely, eating a nuclear reactor core doesn’t bother mega shark one bit.

1:21:41 Gibson, Lamas and the professor sit back (helplessly) and watch as mega shark and giant octopus fight. The victor? No one. Apparently mega shark and giant octopus die at exactly the same moment and sink to the ocean floor. “It looks like they finally finished what they started 18 million years ago,” Gibson sighs.

I feel the same way about the movie.