My Thoughts on "Deep Blue Sea"
Whose hat is like a shark's fin 🦈🧢? LL Cool J's is apparently, or at least his character, Preacher's is. Even though Preacher doesn't actually wear a hat 🧢 at any point in the movie. Yes, I am finally reviewing Deep Blue Sea like I kept saying all of those weeks ago back when I reposted that journal I wrote on DeviantART about Rick Worley. You can go read that if you want. I'm sorry it took so long for me to finally get to this movie. Initially wanted this to be a July post since Shark Week 🦈 is in July, and the first Jaws movie is a Fourth of July movie 🇺🇸. But, I don't own Jaws, at least not on Blu-Ray 💿, and I can't exactly watch it on Peacock 🦚 since I don't have access to it on my PS4.
So, I thought reviewing Deep Blue Sea would be the next best thing. I wanted to wait until I could get a Blu-Ray copy 💿 to watch the movie because I do prefer watching movies on Blu-Ray 💿 since unlike with streaming, you don't need Internet 🛜 to watch it, there are no ads, and the picture quality stays consistent, instead of dipping due to an iffy Internet connection 🛜 which is a common thing in my part of the world. But, since the Blu-Ray 💿 of this movie is only available on Amazon and other online retailers that still sell physical media, that was obviously going to take too long, and by then, my shark kick 🦈 might over, and I might be focused and interested in something else. So I thought, "You know what? I'll just watch it on Max."
But, first, I had to make sure the movie was even available on Max, which luckily it was. It would be pretty bad if it wasn't available on there considering that it's a Warner Bros. movie, and Max is supposed to a be repository of all things Warner Bros.. Thankfully, I had a decent Internet connection, so the picture quality didn't dip too much. My family ditched CenturyLink, and went with T-Mobile Internet 🛜, which as it turns out is way better than CenturyLink ever was. Probably because T-Mobile Internet 🛜 uses cell towers (5G cell towers to be exact), and not cables like CenturyLink does.
So, my experience rewatching this movie was pretty pleasant. This is my 99th post, one more until I finally hit 100 posts. It was kind of a toss up between reviewing this movie as a 99th post or reviewing Twisters 🌪️ as my 99th post. But since we've been pretty limited on funds lately, I haven't had the chance to see Twisters 🌪️ while it's still in theaters. But, if all goes well, I might get the chance to see it this weekend or even next week.
I mean, next week we'll have money 💵 for sure since that's when my grandma gets her check from Social Security, but she told me today that we might be able to see the movie before her payday on Wednesday. Either way, I have to make sure I get watch that movie I have planned to review for my 100th post before then, so that I can start posting normal, and not have to worry about commemorating my 100th post with a special review. I think it's going to be fun, I think I'll like Twisters 🌪️. It's certainly more worth watching than Deadpool & Wolverine, the most overhyped movie of the year 😒.
Like, I don't understand why people were so excited for Deadpool & Wolverine, and I don't understand why everyone's going gaga over it 🤩, and why it's making so much money 💵 🤑. Is it just because it's a Deadpool movie and Wolverine's in it? Is that it? Whoop-de-F-ing-do, that's not enough for me to want to go see a movie in theaters, especially a Marvel movie in theaters. Or is it because people for some reason think it's going to be the movie that "saves the MCU." As if the MCU is something that's still worth saving at this point. I saw one video in the suggested video section on YouTube where someone called Deadpool & Wolverine, "the Barbie for boys ♂︎," and that's exactly right. It really is the Barbie for men ♂︎.
They're both overhyped vapid movies made to appeal to their respective demographic (women and girls ♀︎ in the case of Barbie and men and boys ♂︎ in the case of Deadpool & Wolverine), they're both released in the month of July, they're both critical darlings for whatever reason (Barbie's a little bit more understandable, but only by a little bit 🤏), and people have tasked with them the arduous task of "saving cinema" or "saving movie theaters," or "saving the MCU." Everything in the film industry from the filmmaking to the exhibition needs saving apparently, and it's these dumbass movies that people think are going to save them.
I only saw the first Deadpool movie once, back when it first came out in theaters in 2016, and then I never saw it again. I didn't watched Deadpool 2 because I have no interest in it, and I'm not watching Deadpool & Wolverine (which is de facto Deadpool 3) because I also have no interest in it. I couldn't care any less. I am so over superhero movies at this point. Nothing will make me go back. I'm not going back! To use Kamala Harris's new campaign slogan apparently.
It was also a line in Bad Boys II, in the scene where we're introduced to Reggie for the first time. Mike pretends to be Marcus's brother who just got out of prison, and starts waving his gun around in front of Reggie, shouting, "I'm not going back!" Referring to of course prison because Mike's pretending to the bad uncle who got released from prison in order to scare this 15 year old boy ♂︎ straight before he takes Marcus's daughter out on a date. Funny how Harris decided to use a line from Bad Boys II as the main slogan for her campaign. Speaking of which, I wrote something about the recent developments in the 2024 election which I plan on posting on this blog after I post my 100th post.
Back to what I was saying about Deadpool & Wolverine. That movie, and how it brought back Hugh Jackman to play the role as Wolverine/Logan again for the last time apparently (we'll see if it's really the last time or not 🙄) make me think about Hellboy again. There's a new Hellboy movie coming out called Hellboy: The Crooked Man. It is not a sequel to the 2019 Hellboy movie with David Harbour as Hellboy, it is yet another reboot because you know, everyone hated the 2019 Hellboy movie. On top of that, it's being directed by Brian Taylor, the second half of the Neveldine/Taylor duo that brought us the Crank movies and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.
I don't really know what reactions to Hellboy: The Crooked Man or the trailer that came out for it are, I haven't gauged it. But, I have a feeling that there are a lot of people, a lot of Hellboy fans who will automatically reject it simply because Ron Perlman isn't playing the character. Even if the movie itself isn't that bad, and is actually good, decent, or average.
Will fans ever accept a live action version of this character that isn't played by Ron Perlman? Part of me doubts it. Just like how I doubt Marvel fans and superhero fans in general will ever accept a live action version of Wolverine that isn't played by Hugh Jackman. Considering that he's been playing that character now for 24 years, and no one's even remotely considering the idea of replacing him, or considering a day when someone other than Hugh Jackman will have to play Wolverine/Logan in live action. The same applies to Ron Perlman and Hellboy. No body will ever let his version of Hellboy go.
The Crooked Man already did kind of run into some controversy earlier this year when an interview with the president of Millennium Media, Jonathan Yunger came out that claimed that Yunger claimed that they used generative AI to create some of the creatures in the movie. Like, the article claims that Yunger said that they did initially use practical effects for the movie's demon character (which the article tried to make it seem was Hellboy), but once they proved disappointing, they used AI to create new creature designs, and then sent those designs to the visual effects department.
Of course, since a lot of people hate AI (including myself), people got up and arms about it. But, as it turns out, it was complete BS. Yunger was either misquoted or taken out of context. He wasn't even talking about Hellboy: The Crooked Man, he was talking about a completely different movie. All the claims that generative AI was used on the production of Hellboy: The Crooked Man were just misinformation created and perpetuated by the entertainment news media. Do we really expect anything else from them? I mean, this is the same entertainment news media that hurt John Carter's chances of becoming a box office success because of all their sensationalist stories making the production of John Carter out to be more hellish and chaotic than it actually was.
But enough ranting about Deadpool & Wolverine and Hellboy, let's talk about the reason why we're really here, Deep Blue Sea, a 90s classic that is having its 25th anniversary this year. This is a childhood favorite of mine, I watched it a lot as a kid, especially since I was really into sharks 🦈 growing up. I still am into sharks 🦈, but you get what I'm saying. Now when you read that, you might think to yourself, "You watched an R rated movie as a kid?" Yes I did, in fact, I watched a lot of R rated movies growing up. Movies that most people would say I would've been too young to watch at that age. But, my parents let me.
They didn't care what I watched. As long as it didn't have any sex or nudity, they let me watch it. That's how it was for me and my sisters growing up. That probably explains why a lot of things don't phase me the way they do a lot of other people. Like, don't freak out when I see violence in movies because I saw violence in movies all the time. It wasn't like it was real violence or anything. Luckily for me, this movie didn't have any sex or nudity, so I was good to go. I was able to watch it.
The closest thing to nudity that we actually get is the scene where Susan McAlester (Saffron Burrows) takes off her wetsuit to grab an electrical cord to electrocute one of the sharks ⚡️. But, she was still wearing a bra and underwear, so she wasn't completely naked. Even though in real life of course, when you wear a wetsuit, you have to completely naked underneath. You can't wear any clothes underneath, not even underwear, you have to be complete nude when you put on a wetsuit. The wetsuit is the only article of clothing you wear when you go diving 🤿. That's why sometimes, people tend to pee in their wetsuits when they're in the water 💦 because they've got nothing underneath that suit. It's not like they're wearing any underwear to mess up.
So, if Susan really wanted to be dressed properly for diving 🤿, she'd have to remove all of her clothes, including her bra and her panties, and then put on the wetsuit. Meaning, in that scene, if this movie were a bit more accurate in that front, she would've been completely nude in that scene where she took off her wetsuit to grab that cable to electrocute the shark 🦈⚡️, and not get electrocuted herself ⚡️. But, I get it. They do have a movie explanation for why she doesn't do that.
This is an emergency situation, and Susan and the other characters didn't expect that their high tech underwear research facility 💦 would be flooding, and that they'd have to swim for their lives. Plus, she probably didn't want to get completely naked when there were so many other people around her who could see her (especially the guys ♂︎) since they all changed into their wetsuits in front of each other. So, she was probably only willing to undress down to her bra and panties in order to get into her wetsuit.
The real world explanation of course is that they wanted this movie to have an R rating, and if they had Susan fully nude in that scene, the movie would've been hit with an NC-17 rating. Showing a woman ♀︎ fully nude on screen was still kind of taboo back then, in 1999, and wasn't considered R rated material. It was considered more NC-17 material. If you showed a woman ♀︎ fully nude, bush and all, you were kind of entering softcore porn territory. And yes, I did say bush since the 1990s were still a time in which the majority of women ♀︎ didn't shave their pubes, like they do now. Nowadays, it's all shaved and clear down there where the sun ☀️ don't shine. Even guys ♂︎ shave their pubes now.
Speaking of guys ♂︎, R rated movies have changed a lot since the 1990s. Ever since The Hangover and The Hangover Part II, and many others, including the Jackass movies, you can now show a penis on screen in a movie and still get an R rating. So, by extension, you probably could show a vagina on screen, and still get an R rating. So, if you were to do that scene today, you could technically do it where Susan is fully nude with nothing covering her vagina if the actress agreed to be naked of course, which I don't think Saffron Burrows did in this scene. I don't think she had a nude clause in her contract.
But I'm not sure if it would be done that way nowadays, if you would even be able to do that scene with the woman ♀︎ fully nude like that. Since, movies as of late (especially blockbusters), have kind of tried to stay away from overt intimacy and overt sexuality ever since people have looked more critically at things like the Male Gaze ♂︎ and the sexualization of women ♀︎ in film and TV. Some people have complained about that sort of thing like Chris Bumbray of JoBlo did in his review of Twisters 🌪️ to bring this back around to that. But I get it, I get why this is a trend in movies now to avoid intimacy or sexuality at all cost. They want to show that there is more to women ♀︎ than just sex.
Anyway, enough about sex and nudity in film, I'll save that for my Piranha 3D review. Or should I say, Piranha 2D review since the movie's really only available in 2D now that 3D is effectively dead on home media? It's certainly better than just calling it Piranha since there's two other movies called Piranha. The original 1978 movie and a made-for-TV remake that came out in 1995. Calling it Piranha 2D would be a great way to differentiate it from the previous two Piranha movies, and show that it's in 2D and not 3D.
It had been a really long time since I've rewatched this movie, I actually don't remember the last time that I watched in full, but I do know it's been awhile, and I really did enjoy it this time around. Deep Blue Sea is still a really fun movie all these years later. It really does hold up. It's probably the second best shark movie 🦈 since the first Jaws movie, although, I do kind of enjoy this movie more than the original Jaws. Blasphemy I know, but this movie has a certain level of rewatchability and accessibility that Jaws just doesn't have.
Maybe it's because the movie shows the sharks 🦈 from the very beginning instead of hiding them until the third act like Jaws did. Maybe it's the 90s factor, I don't know. But, Jaws does kind of feel a bit too 70s for me, too New England-y for me to rewatch it that often. This is a movie that I could keep returning to repeatedly. I know that I'm not the only one who feels this way about the two films. Yeah, some people do call it dumb and say the premise is absurd, but I don't care, I still really like it. You might say it's just nostalgia talking, but I do genuinely think that this movie is well made, especially on a technical level.
The sharks 🦈 look amazing. They used a combination of CGI and animatronics to bring the sharks 🦈 to life, and the animatronic sharks 🦈 look amazing. These are easily the best animatronic sharks 🦈 that have ever been put to film, no contest. They sure as hell beat any of the animatronic sharks 🦈 in the Jaws movies, that's for sure. They look so lifelike, and their movements are so smooth, there's nothing that gives them away as being mechanical. Which is what you want with any animatronic creature in any movie, for them not to feel robotic. And these sharks 🦈 do not feel robotic at all. They just look and feel real.
They look so real in fact, that according to the behind-the-scenes featurettes on the DVD and Blu-Ray 📀💿 of the movie, there were at least a couple of instances during the production where people thought that they were real sharks 🦈. I guess this is what happens when you get the guy who did the effects for Free Willy to do the effects for your shark movie 🦈. Even the CGI's not that bad. A lot of people complain about the CGI in this movie, but I think it looks fine for the most part. There are only a few select moments when I would say that the CGI looked iffy, but most of the time, it was fairly decent.
Speaking of real though, the behind-the-scene featurettes in the special features did also claim that they apparently used real shark footage 🦈 in the film, and yet no real shark footage 🦈 is to be seen in the movie. I've never seen any real shark footage 🦈 in any of the viewings of the movie that I have seen. I mean, they did go out to the ocean, they did get into the water 💦 and swim with real sharks 🦈 and look at real sharks 🦈 from the safety of a shark cage including with Thomas Jane, who is the only actor in the film who got in the water 💦 and swam with the real sharks 🦈.
But I just don't know if any of that shark footage 🦈 they may or may not have shot was even used in the film, or was ever in consideration to be used at any point during the production or post-production. If they did intend to use real shark footage 🦈 and intersperse it with the CGI and animatronics, at what points was it supposed to be used, and why wasn't it used?
I would've been able to tell if there was any real shark footage 🦈 used because neither the animatronic and CGI sharks 🦈 resemble their real-life counterparts. They look realistic, but they don't look like real-life sharks 🦈 if that makes any sense. There are four sharks 🦈 in this movie: three mako sharks and one tiger shark. One of the makos is a female ♀︎, the big one is, and the two smaller ones might be female ♀︎ too, but they might able to male ♂︎, they never really specify. They don't specify what sex the tiger shark is either.
The makos are the ones who come the closest to resembling their real life counterparts, but they don't come that close. They still just kind of just look like great white sharks but with curvy teeth. Some times, when they're CG, they look like bull sharks with black eyes, even though makos and great whites don't technically have black eyes. Their eyes aren't completely black, they do have pupils, you can see them in certain bright light, and they're more of a darker grey color rather than pure jet black. Shark eyes are not actually like a doll's eyes at all, Quint was wrong about that.
Makos in real life tend to be a lot more slim, slender, and streamlined because they're a shark 🦈 that's built for speed. They're considered to be the fastest shark species 🦈 in the ocean, which was kind of surprising, learning about recently. I always thought that the blue shark was the fastest shark 🦈 in the ocean, but no, it's the mako. So, if they had made the makos in this more slim and sleek, then they would've been a lot more accurate. It's crazy to think that the game, Maneater (2020) had a more accurate mako shark design than the ones in Deep Blue Sea.
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(These are some photos of real mako sharks, or shortfin mako shark as their full name is. You'll notice that some of these are in aquariums. Mako sharks have been kept in captivity, but not very successfully. All of the ones that were died very soon after they were introduced. Making mako sharks one of the many shark species that cannot be successfully kept in captivity, along with their cousins, the great white sharks.)
But, probably the most inaccurate shark 🦈 in this movie, the one that looks the least like its real life counterpart is the tiger shark. This thing did not look at all like a real tiger shark. In all honesty, it just looked like one of the mako sharks painted green with some stripes on it. Real tiger sharks look completely different. They look completely different from mako sharks. Their teeth are completely different. Mako shark teeth are more thin and curvy, while tiger shark teeth are a bit curvy, but they're a lot wider and more serrated.
Their teeth are specially adapted to crush hard shell prey, like sea turtles, which are what tiger sharks mainly like to eat. Their teeth, as well as their stomaches probably, allow tiger sharks to eat a much wider variety of foods than any of their contemporaries, including makos. For that reason, tiger sharks are often nicknamed the "garbage disposals of the ocean." One tiger shark ate an entire suit of armor one time, that's varied their diet is, and how willing to eat anything, including just garbage, and just any junk that falls into the ocean.
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(These are some photos of real tiger sharks.)
That is one detail that this movie got right about tiger sharks, since the one that we see in this movie has a license plate sticking out of its mouth, which BTW, is the same license plate that was in Jaws, the one that Chief Brody and Hooper found in the stomach contents of that tiger sharks that the locals killed. That was a nice little easter egg, this movie showed its respect for Jaws in its own little way since this movie probably wouldn't exist without Jaws. None of these killer shark movies 🦈 that were made after Jaws would have.
There is some confusion that I had over which shark 🦈 was the one that escaped at the beginning, and attacked those young people on the boat ⛵️. All this time I thought it was the tiger shark that Carter Blake (Thomas Jane) takes the license plate out of its mouth, since the shark 🦈 at the beginning looked greenish in color just like the tiger shark in this movie does. But no, apparently isn't. It was one of the three makos that escaped and attacked that boat ⛵️. The character, Janice (Jacqueline McKenzie) says so, and then there's some dialogue later on that confirms what she said. This wouldn't have been so confusing that they not made the tiger shark look so similar to the mako sharks in the film.
That being said though, I do like the opening of this movie. I do like how they make you think that it's going to be like slasher flick with these teens/young adults being picked off by a giant shark 🦈, but then it kind of flips the script by having the shark 🦈 get captured for the real movie to begin, and having none of the teens/young adults get killed. This is one of the few shark movies 🦈 to not start with someone dying right at the beginning. No, they save all the shark carnage until the second act, and the only ones who die are the scientists and the millionaire venture capitalist who helped fund this whole thing. Only the shark wrangler 🦈 with a criminal record and the chef preacher 👨🏾🍳✝️ survive.
While I am talking about the characters, I guess I might as well talk about my favorite ones. My favorite characters is in this movie are Carter, Preacher, and Russell Franklin (Samuel L. Jackson). Those three were the best characters to me, and they were the ones who stood out the most, and weren't stupid, annoying, or unlikable, which are what Janice and Stellen Skarsgård's character, Jim Whitlock fall into. Yeah, Scoggins is annoying too, but he's supposed to be annoying, which was why Michael Rapaport was the perfect casting for that character 😁.
The writers, the director, they all knew that character was annoying, and that was the point of him. He's supposed to be that guy who loses his cool in a really stressful situation, who panics easily, and starts lashing out at everyone, and just getting on everybody's nerves. Kind like Hudson in Aliens, only here, Scoggins is already kind of a douchebag before all the bad stuff happens.
The way that I know that he was supposed to be an annoying and unlikeable character is the fact that they gave him the most brutal death them of all. He literally gets ripped apart by one of the sharks 🦈 (I believe it's the Gen III because the last remaining Gen II goes after Susan at the same time) while being electrocuted at the same time ⚡️. It's probably my favorite death in the entire movie, and it couldn't have happened to a better character because Scoggins was kind of a dipshit—he's played by one of the most insufferable actors/comedians/movie commentators/podcasters in Hollywood, so of course he is—and I really didn't feel sorry for him at all.
I didn't entirely buy his and Preacher's friendship either, even though the two are supposed be really close friends, and Preacher even says, "This is for Scoggs," when he shoots the Gen III shark 🦈, which is the final shark in the film 🦈, with the dynamite spear. I don't know, the way they wrote Preacher, and the way LL Cool J played him, it seemed like he was really distant from everyone else and wasn't close with anyone, and really just there to do his job, make money 💵 hopefully, and mind his own business while doing it. He wanted to fade into the background, or be down below in his own little corner of the facility and not be bothered by anyone else, that's what it felt like to me.
So, when they introduce this element that him and Scoggs are really close friends, and Preacher feels bad when he dies, it kind of comes out of no where, and feels forced. It doesn't feel natural. But, maybe that's just down to LL Cool J and Michael Rapaport not really having a lot of on-screen chemistry with each other, and it really just feeling as if the two are really uncomfortable around each other, with LL Cool J looking the most uncomfortable out of the two.
I wouldn't be entirely surprised if it came out that LL Cool J and Michael Rapaport couldn't actually stand one another while on set, especially this is Michael Rapaport we're talking about. He's not exactly well liked within the industry, and there's a lot of people who can't stand the guy ♂︎. I can't stand Michael Rapaport, and I wouldn't be surprised if LL Cool J couldn't stand him either.
Speaking of death, Franklin was a pretty great character. Samuel L. Jackson always delivers even in a movie like this. It would've been cool if Franklin had survived until the end, but given that he was easily the biggest star out of all of them in the cast, it makes sense why had to go. In a movie like this, the biggest star tends to be one of the first ones to go, just for pure shock value. Like, "Oh, no, they killed so and so! That means no one is safe, and any of the characters can die." And in this case, it just happened to be Samuel L. Jackson.
His death in this movie is probably the thing that people remember the most about it besides the scene where Susan removes her wetsuit and shows off her half-naked body. I say half-naked because again, she wasn't fully nude, she had a bra and panties on. But, I guess Sam Jackson was the sacrificial lamb so that LL Cool J could make it to the end. I guess 90s cinema wasn't quite ready to have two black characters survive until the end of a horror movie (or horror action thriller in this case), so they settled on just one ☝️.
But hey, at least Sam Jackson got to redeem himself by surviving to the very end in Snakes on a Plane 🐍✈️. He may have been taken out by a shark 🦈 (two sharks 🦈 technically) in one movie, but he was more than a match for snakes 🐍. Those snakes 🐍 on that plane ✈️ never knew what hit them. If they ever, for whatever reason, make a sequel to Snakes on a Plane 🐍✈️ but with sharks 🦈 like Sharks on a Ship 🦈🛳️, and they bring back Sam Jackson, I hope that they reference this scene in Deep Blue Sea.
Carter's great of course, he's the cool action guy protagonist with a dark past, and in that role, Thomas Jane does great. His role in this movie makes me wish that Thomas Jane did become a bigger action star than he became, as the biggest action role he had after this was Frank Castle in The Punisher (2004). Every other role he's been has been a much smaller supporting role or a cameo role like in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.
Some people even said that he should've been the lead in a Predator movie, which is why it's so disappointing that when he finally was in a Predator movie, he wasn't the main lead, and he played a military vet with Tourette's syndrome. A very stereotypical and kind of insensitive form of Tourette's syndrome, like that was movie Tourette's syndrome, not like real Tourette's syndrome. Which is weird because the director of The Predator, Shane Black also has Tourette's syndrome. So, you'd think he'd try everything in his power to make sure that the Tourette's syndrome was handled respectfully and sensitively rather than be played purely for cheap laughs, which is what actually happened.
I really liked Preacher, Preacher was a really fun and cool character, LL Cool J did a really good job with it, and I'm glad that he survived. The great thing about him is that you don't think he'll be a survivor. Like, he's this sort of unassuming side character who's mostly kept to the sidelines, who mostly keeps to himself. He doesn't involve himself in the goings on at Aquatica, which is the name of the research facility that they all work at. When you first meet him, you don't think he'll have that much importance in the plot, so therefore you don't think that he'll survive.
That, and he's black, and black characters don't tend to survive for very long in horror movies, and this is a horror movie, albeit an action-horror film. It's more a thriller than a full on horror film, but you get what I mean. A lot of black characters in these type of movies don't tend to make it out. But, Preacher not only survives to the very end, but he proves to the most instrumental in them all staying alive. I mean, he's the one who ultimately kills the shark 🦈 in the end, he's the one who blows the final shark 🦈, the big female ♀︎. So, they defied the stereotypes and clichés in more ways than one.
However, him surviving to the end of the movie did come at the cost of another character surviving, or I should say, not surviving since she didn't make it out. Yes, I'm talking about Susan McAlester, the sexy British scientist 🇬🇧👩🔬 herself, the real brains 🧠 behind the entire operation, the woman ♀︎ on the poster, and the closest thing this movie has to a human antagonist. I actually didn't hate her that much on this rewatch. I expected to dislike her a lot more than I actually did, and trust me, the movie definitely wants you to dislike her.
They really try to make her out to be a villain for creating the sharks 🦈 and giving them super intelligence, something that the other scientist characters in this movie are in position to be criticizing her for, considering that they were all in on it. Like, Scoggins famously says, "She's screwing with the sharks 🦈, and the sharks 🦈 they're screwing this us," get outta here! You were complicit in her "screwing" with the sharks 🦈, you were all on board with it before they started eating your colleagues. You do not have the moral high ground here.
Like, they make this whole big deal about she violated this thing called the Harvard Genetics Compact and these things called Chimera policies by using genetic engineering 🧬 to make the sharks' brains 🦈 bigger to harvest the protein complex they need to create the cure to Alzheimer's. Which BTW, are those real things? Are those real laws or agreements or were they just made up for this movie? I feel like it's latter, but I could be wrong. If you know, please let me know in the comments.
Janice especially gives her a hard time for this, calling her a "stupid bitch." Well duh, how else did you think those sharks' brains 🦈 got bigger? They certainly didn't get that way naturally. You yourself called them the "test sharks 🦈," and you and everyone else at Aquatica refers to them as "Gen II" and "Gen III," so obviously you had to have known they were bred entirely in a laboratory, or they were tampered with genetically 🧬. If anyone stupid and naïve, it's you, Janice. The movie doesn't really recognize this hypocrisy nor does it acknowledge it. At least she doesn't survive.
This would be like if in Jurassic Park, all of the scientists except Dr. Henry Wu were all shocked and surprised that the dinosaurs were genetically engineered 🧬 and that they had frog DNA 🐸🧬 was added to them. Which is kind of what happens in the Jurassic World movies now that I think about it. In Jurassic World, InGen creates a new dinosaur for the park, Jurassic World, called the Indominus Rex, with Dr. Wu leading the project.
They create this new dinosaur by splicing the genes 🧬 of multiple dinosaurs as well as modern day animals together. So, this dinosaur is a hybrid, a chimera in every sense of the word. And yet, the CEO of the company, Masrani, and everyone who works at the park, including Claire are all shocked when they find out that the Indominus Rex has all the DNA 🧬 of all these animals mixed in, and the Indominus Rex is so dangerous.
Well, duh, of course the Indominus Rex is a hybrid with the DNA 🧬 of all of these animals. You all knew it was a hybrid. That's literally how you pitched it to the investors, that it was a completely new dinosaur that never existed before, and was a purely man made creation that was bigger and more ferocious than the T. rex. You were all on board with this until it all blew up in your faces and the Indominus Rex escaped, and destroyed the entire park. And just like in Deep Blue Sea, everyone kind of just collectively throws Dr. Wu under the bus, just blames him for everything, even though he wasn't the mastermind, he wasn't the architect, he was just a cog in the machine, and the real people are the corporate executives at the top of the company, including Masrani.
And the movies afterwards, kind of just decided too that everything's all Dr. Wu's fault since they make him out to be the one who created the dinosaurs and brought them back to life, when really, he was just one scientist out of many who worked on this. He may have been the top scientist, he may have been the most brilliant, but he wasn't the head honcho, he wasn't the one who came up with many of these ideas, and was ultimately just following the orders of some corporate master, who are always the true villains in the Jurassic movies. The plot of Jurassic World has a lot similarities to the plot of Deep Blue Sea. It has more similarities to the plot of Deep Blue Sea than the plot of Deep Blue Sea has to Jurassic Park.
Which brings me to my next point, a lot people compare this movie to Jurassic Park, and a lot of them say that this movie ripped off Jurassic Park somehow. The most notable example of this is Honest Trailers, who made all of these comparisons between the movies, listing off similarities, showing footage side-by-side, and trying to make it seem like this movie reaped off one of the most popular and influential films of the 1990s. But, I've never felt that these comparisons or these accusations of plagiarism were all that fair.
Yes, Deep Blue Sea does have a lot of similarities to Jurassic Park, but it does ultimately do its own thing, and goes a completely different direction than Jurassic Park the film did, to point where you can't really say that they're the same movie. For one thing, they kill all of the sharks 🦈 by the end of this movie, while the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park survive. All of the Nublar dinosaurs survive despite them supposedly having lysine deficiency that was bred into them to make sure they'd die without a continuous supply of lysine. Including the T. rex, who would come to be known as "Rexy." She's really old for a dinosaur by the time the events of Jurassic World Dominion, and yet she's still alive and kicking. I don't know how old T. rexes or dinosaurs in general can get. But, it seems like a lot for this girl ♀︎.
To bring this back around to Susan, she's made out to be such the villain that she ends up being the last to die. They saved her death for last. This is supposed to like a comeuppance moment for her, but I came away from this movie feeling as if she really wasn't that deserving of death, despite the hand she played in creating the sharks 🦈, and by extension the hand she played in causing all of her colleagues' deaths. She had basically been redeemed by the end, and her death was a heroic sacrifice. A pointless one, but a heroic sacrifice nonetheless.
But, she wasn't originally supposed to die. In fact, she was supposed to survive until the end. She was even going to become Carter's love interest ❤️, and the two were supposed to share a kiss together 💋 after they kill the last shark 🦈. But, test audiences felt that she was kind of a villain for creating the sharks 🦈, and therefore, they didn't think she deserved to live or become Carter's love interest ❤️. So, the studio forced the filmmakers to go back, and change the ending so that Susan would die and Preacher would survive. Although, Preacher was always meant to survive. There were supposed to be three survivors, instead of just two ✌️.
They also apparently removed some scenes that would have made Susan out to be a more sympathetic character despite her clear and obvious flaws and despite all the grave mistakes she made. A lot of people say that the scene where Preacher talks into a camera 📹 that he finds rummaging through Janice's stuff, was a reshoot that they had done after principal photography. If that's the case, that's probably what they replaced all of those scenes with Susan that her more sympathetic.
For this reason, fans have been clamoring to get this original ending restored, either as a deleted scene in the special features, in some alternate cut of the movie with that ending edited back in. Along with whatever deleted Susan scenes they left on the cutting room floor. They even started a petition to try to get Warner Bros. to do this, to release a 4K version of this movie for the 25th anniversary with that original ending included. Though, like with many petitions, I'm not sure if this one will go anywhere or will amount to anything. But both Thomas Jane, and the director, Renny Harlin have expressed support for this movement and the idea of bringing this original ending back. Which BTW, a lot of people forget that this was a Renny Harlin movie. He directed Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, and The Long Kiss Good Night, and was considered one of the top action directors of the 90s, and for good reason. No wonder this movie kicked so much ass.
I only learned about this movement recently, and it was another reason why I was so interested in reviewing this movie at this time during the 25th anniversary. I had no idea that there were this many people who were invested in Susan as a character, and wanted her to be given the proper respect that they felt she deserves. I also had no idea that there were so many people wanted to see Susan get with Carter.
Test audiences in 1999 may not have bought into their romance ❤️, but after rewatching the movie yesterday, I can safely say that there is chemistry between the two. There's clearly something there, there's some sparks flying, some sexual tension maybe, and they were clearly building up to something. You put two attractive people together in a situation like this, they're probably going to fall in love ❤️, or at the very least, have sex with each other, especially if they already had those kind of feelings for each other before this high adrenaline life and death situation happened. But, whatever they were building up to never comes because they decided to change the ending and kill Susan off. I will say that I do think that if this movie were made today, Susan would have been portrayed in a much more positive light and she would have survived.
Times have definitely changed, everyone's all about female empowerment ♀︎ and giving women ♀︎ their time to shine, and I like Susan would appeal to that "girlboss" crowd or at least, the kind of people who like female characters ♀︎ such as her and would actively root for if she were a real person. I mean, there are people who idolize and glorify characters like Regina George from Mean Girls, and unironically say that she's a role model for girls ♀︎ and women ♀︎ everywhere.
But, I'll put it another way. If John Hammond was allowed to survive until the end of Jurassic Park, then I don't see why Susan couldn't have survived until the end of Deep Blue Sea. And John Hammond did actually die in the book 📖, the original Jurassic Park novel 📖 the movie's based on. He fell down a ditch, and got eaten alive by a bunch of Compsognathuses, or Compies for short. So, it was a conscious decision on the part of Steven Spielberg and David Koepp to keep John Hammond alive rather than kill him off, despite all the horrible mistakes he made, and despite how much blood 🩸 he has on his hands 🤲.
He's just as bad as Susan in a lot of ways, in fact, he's arguably worse since he was only doing it to create theme park entertainment, whereas she was doing it to actually save people's lives. And yet, he gets to live, and she doesn't? Maybe it's underlying sexism of the time. But, these are all things to consider if this movie ever gets remade for whatever reason. If I ever end up working on a remake of this movie, I would keep Susan alive. I know that much.
I should touch on the music real quick before I forget. The music in this movie is amazing. The score by Trevor Rabin is beyond well done. That theme is iconic, and some of the other themes are just suspenseful, and even awe inspiring in some cases. The main Aquatica theme is breathtaking, and the shark attack theme is really cool. I can listen to those themes all day if I wanted to, and I have before. Or at least, I've listened to them for hours. However, the main score is not available on any digital music platform as far as I know.
Probably the only place where you could get a soundtrack album with just Trevor Rabin's score is on an out-of-print CD 💿. But, there is a soundtrack album on iTunes at least that has a bunch of rap, hip-hop, and R&B songs on it. Some of which is in the film, and a lot of which is not. My two favorite songs on the album are "Deepest Bluest (Shark's Fin 🦈)" by LL Cool J and "I Found Another Man ♂︎" by Natice. This album may not be what people are looking for when it comes to the Deep Blue Sea soundtrack, but I like it.
So, what about this film's legacy? Well, believe it or not, this movie actually did kind of inspire an entire subgenre of sci-fi oriented shark movies 🦈. It created an entire subgenre of Sharksploitation 🦈, which in of itself is a subgenre. A subgenre within a subgenre. These are what I call the "genetically engineered shark movies 🧬🦈," movies that are about sharks 🦈 that were genetically altered 🧬 or bred directly in a laboratory, and were all "inspired" by Deep Blue Sea one way or another. Movies like Blue Demon, Hammerhead AKA Sharkman, and Dark Waters 💦.
Most of these movies involve the sharks 🦈 being created to be used as weapons for the military, but one actually kind of stuck to the Deep Blue Sea template by having the shark 🦈 or rather, shark man be created to help cure a disease. Hammerhead AKA Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy AKA Sharkman, is a sci-fi horror film about a mad scientist who turns his own son into a shark/human hybrid—specifically a hammerhead shark/human hybrid—as a way of trying to cure his cancer. Because you know, sharks 🦈 don't get cancer. This movie said so. But, after doing so, the scientist becomes obsessed with trying to turn all of humanity into shark/human hybrids, and trying to get his son to impregnate a woman ♀︎ with a shark/human hybrid baby.
So, he tricks a bunch of these investors or corporate executives (I'm not sure what they are), who all happen to be former friends and acquaintances of his that he feels wronged him in some way, into coming to his island, the island he uses as his base of operations, and then sends his mutant shark/human hybrid son to kill them all, except for one of the two women ♀︎, who happens to be his son's former lover (before he got turned into a shark/human hybrid), and who he wants to use to try to impregnate with his son's mutant offspring.
Freaky stuff, but I remember liking this movie as a kid, even if I didn't catch all the Island of Dr. Moreau or Freudian undertones. Even if Sigmund Freud's work apparently has been discredited for years, according to Decker Shado, the Internet personality with the best hair. So, I'm not sure if I should even use the term, Freudian or not. I had no idea that Jeffrey Combs was even in that movie until fairly recently. But it makes perfect sense in retrospect, he can practically play a mad scientist role in his sleep.
It's no surprise that he's the biggest name actor in the cast, and is the one who gives the best performance, even if I personally don't think the acting in Hammerhead is all that bad, especially in comparison to other low budget Sci-Fi Channel movies. Oh, sorry I meant, SyFy 🙄, talk about a horrible rebranding. That's almost as bad as rebranding Twitter 🐦, X, just X, nothing else. Only a mind as brilliant as Elon Musk's could've come with the idea of renaming one of the top social media websites to the letter X. I hope you can tell I'm being sarcastic here.
Hammerhead is actually apart of a series of unrelated movies that all have to do with human/animal hybrids. There was Snakeman, Mosquito Man, and even Skeleton Man. Skeleton Man isn't even about a human/animal hybrid, it's about a serial killer, who is like some ancient genocidal warrior who wiped out a Native American tribe. And yet, they probably that movie on Sci-Fi Channel, back when it was still called Sci-Fi Channel and not SYFY.
It is cool though Hammerhead decided to use a hammerhead shark as the basis for its monster, even if it isn't a full hammerhead shark, but a hybrid. Not very many shark movies 🦈 use hammerheads. They usually only use great whites, and sometimes occasionally bull sharks, but mostly great whites. But hammerheads are such unique looking sharks, and they're one of the most iconic shark species, they're perfect for movies. I always appreciate it when movies use shark species 🦈 other than great whites. Any species really.
Even lemon sharks, which would be cool. I like me some lemon sharks, and I wouldn't mind if they were in a shark movie 🦈, either as an antagonist or a protagonist because I am open to the idea of having a shark 🦈 be a protagonist in a shark movie 🦈 instead of always the antagonist. Lemon sharks would be great for that because they really don't attack humans that much. There only 11 recorded lemon shark attacks on humans, and none of them have been fatal.
When I was a kid, I imagined the idea of having a shark movie 🦈 with a sand tiger shark AKA a grey nurse shark AKA a spotted ragged-tooth shark after I saw Deep Blue Sea because sand tigers have similar teeth to the mako sharks in this movie, and mako sharks in real life. Even though, sand tigers are some of the most peaceful and docile sharks in the entire ocean, they rarely if ever attack humans, and shark attacks 🦈 in general are pretty rare. So, if you have a shark 🦈 that rarely if ever attacks humans and shark attacks 🦈 are already a pretty rare occurrence, you know it's pretty rare. They've attacked less people than even lemon sharks. There's a reason why sand tigers are the most common sharks 🦈 that you see in aquariums, and it's not just because of their sturdiness.
Moving on, another movie that was heavily influenced by Deep Blue Sea was Dark Waters 💦. But unlike in Deep Blue Sea, the sharks 🦈 in Dark Waters 💦 were genetically engineered 🧬 to be used as weapons for the military. Specifically, they were meant to used to hunt down terrorists since the movie came out in 2003, and that was the time of the War on terror. The movie's also a little bit like The Abyss, in the sense that the plot about this underwater facility 💦 being destroyed, and group of people being sent down to investigate, and a lot of the dangers the characters face are technical problems and water 💦 rather than the sharks 🦈 themselves.
Dark Waters 💦 is probably the most obscure and hardest movie to find out of all of the movies that I've listed here. The only way I was able to watch it was that someone uploaded the whole thing on YouTube, and because it's some obscure low budget B movie that no body cares about, it wasn't copyright claimed and has been able to stay up all this time. It's also the one with the least likable protagonists because both of the two main leads in the movie are criminals.
They're like marine biologists who are trying to discover the lost city of Atlantis (yes, they really are trying to discover Atlantis and prove that it's real), and they've been funding their research through illegal means. And the whole movie's about them being blackmailed by this billionaire (or millionaire, I'm not sure) into investigating this damaged underwater facility 💦 that he built that was attacked by the US Navy 🇺🇸's genetically engineered sharks 🧬🦈. Even though the rich guy ♂︎ who blackmailed them is also kind of a criminal himself. It's criminals kidnapping and extorting other criminals.
Dark Waters 💦 also has the distinction of having a sex offender as one of its main leads. No, it's not the man ♂︎, it's the woman ♀︎. She had sex with a minor, an underage boy ♂︎, as part of some scheme to get more funding for their underwater research expedition 💦. And yet, this woman ♀︎ is one of the main heroes of the movie, and we're supposed to root for her. Yikes 😬. I feel this woman ♀︎ should be put on a registry or something.
Not since Transformers: Age of Extinction has a sci-fi action movie tried to make us root for and sympathize with a sex offender. Even though this movie came out way before Age of Extinction, so it technically did it first, but whatever. The big difference being of course that Dark Waters 💦 is an obscure low budget direct-to-DVD 📀 movie that barely anyone's even heard of, while Transformers: Age of Extinction was a big budget summer blockbuster that cost $210 million 💵 to make and grossed over $1.104 billion 💵 at the worldwide box office.
The only things I remembered about Dark Waters 💦 all these years before I rewatched it a couple of months ago was the shot of the three sharks 🦈 swimming in a tank that looked like the bottom of a swimming pool, and the fact that they made a Terminator 2 reference. BTW, until I rewatched it recently, I was under the impression that it took place on an oil rig. Like, they had turned this oil rig into a scientific research facility, and that's where they created the sharks 🦈.
But no, instead of the whole movie takes place on a submarine. Like, the entire laboratory where they created the sharks 🦈, and the tank where they keep them is all inside of this big nuclear submarine ☢️ used by the Navy. Is that even possible? Can you actually fit a several thousand gallon tank inside of a submarine, even a nuclear submarine ☢️? For some reason, I doubt it.
But, probably the most egregious example of this sort of thing was Blue Demon, a movie that I am more than comfortable labeling as a Deep Blue Sea rip-off. Blue Demon copies Deep Blue Sea in a lot of ways. It's a movie about genetically engineered sharks 🦈🧬, there are multiple sharks 🦈, they're smarter than average sharks 🦈. It even has a similar opening where we focus on a couple of college students being attacked by one of the sharks 🦈 before we get to the main story.
The only difference here is that the sharks 🦈 were created to be used for military purposes rather than medical purposes like the ones in Deep Blue Sea. However, unlike Dark Waters 💦, they weren't created to be used as weapons to kill terrorists with, but rather, were created for bomb detection and bomb retrieval. Kind of like a bomb sniffing dog 🐕, but you know, underwater 💦. It wasn't until this evil general showed up, and released the sharks 🦈 and tried to use them to plant bombs rather than locate them and retrieve them.
The movie's also rated PG-13 instead of R, so we don't get any real shark carnage 🦈. Barely anyone actually dies or gets eaten by the sharks 🦈. What's even the point at that point? I mean, Dark Waters 💦 was also rated PG-13, but at least it had the guts to show a little bit of blood 🩸. It's also way more light-hearted than Deep Blue Sea. Deep Blue Sea is a much darker movie than Blue Demon, it's way more serious. Blue Demon by contrast is really goofy, almost playing out like a comedy. Especially with the two bickering divorced scientists 👨🔬👩🔬 who are our main protagonists for that movie, and get back together in the end. You know, that old cliché? Something that rarely if ever happens with divorced couples in real life, and yet happens all the time in movies.
The biggest name actors in that movie are Danny Woodburn and Jeff Fahey, who was also in The Eden Formula, another low budget direct-to-DVD movie 📀 I watched as a child. The only parts of the movie I actually remembered all these years before I rewatched a couple of months ago was this transition shot at the beginning where we see this girl ♀︎ screaming after encountering one of the sharks 🦈, and it zooms into her mouth while she's screaming, and then transitions to the main guy ♂︎ eating a sandwich while upbeat golf music ⛳️ plays in the background.
The part where the evil general (who is actually played by Jeff Fahey) dies by getting blown up by one of the sharks 🦈 bringing back a bomb, and then crashing into the facility with it, and gives a salute before he dies 🫡, and David Woodburn's character throws out a witty one liner at him before he escapes and leaves the evil general to his fate, "Can you say sushi 🍣!?" I also remember the part where the sharks 🦈 have gone missing the middle of his important presentation, and one of the scientists (who turns out to be turncoat who's working for the evil general) asks, "Who let the guppies out?" And David Woodburn's character says, "I don't care who let them out, I want them back here, now!" You might think those are some oddly specific parts to remember, but they are what I remembered before I rewatched it.
Deep Blue Sea did end up having sequels eventually, but like Lake Placid and Anaconda before it, these were both low budget direct-to-DVD 📀 schlock that were of significantly poorer quality than the first one. In fact, they barely count as sequels since they're basically just remakes of the first movie. The second movie has the exact same plot as the first one. Except it's about a black billionaire guy ♂︎ bringing a bunch of investors to this underwater facility 💦 that he built, and showing the genetically engineered sharks 🦈🧬.
I don't know what the third movie's about, but I wouldn't surprised if it was also a rehash of the first movie too. Either way, both movies completely ignore the events of the first movie, and don't reference any of the characters from the first movie. Not even Susan McAlester, who is the one who created the genetically engineered smart sharks 🦈🧬 in the first place. So, I really don't see what the point even was making sequels to Deep Blue Sea when you're just going to ignore all of the events and characters from the first movie, and just remake the first movie essentially, but do a shitty version of it.
Luckily, very few people have heard of these movies, let alone seen them, so they haven't tarnished the reputation of the original that much. Maybe one day we will get a proper sequel to Deep Blue Sea that has a decent budget, and has big name actors that people actually recognize. Maybe, we could even get a crossover with Jaws. I've even got the perfect title for it, In the Jaws of the Deep Blue Sea. But first, I think they should do a Piranha and Jaws crossover first. I've got the perfect title for that too, Piranha vs. Jaws. But, if not any of that, then hopefully we can get a 4K release of this movie, ideally before the end of this year since it's the 25th anniversary.
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Here are some videos explaining the original ending of Deep Blue Sea. Most of them are by a YouTube channel called Deep Blue Sea Fan:
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