My Thoughts on “Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus 🦈🐙”
Note:
I started writing this in January or February. I don’t remember exactly when I created the draft, Blogger doesn’t provide that information, but the last I edited or made any changes or additions to it was on Saturday February 14, 2026, 3 days before our Internet 🛜 was shut off here at the Sanchez household on Tuesday February 17, 2026. So, this whole introductory section before I get into the actual review was written back in February, and it was mostly me venting about my aunt supporting ICE, or being sympathetic to ICE, but we have since talked things out, and have mostly just agreed to disagree, and we are on good terms now, despite our disagreements about politics. Huge disagreements about politics. So, I don’t want you to read this section thinking that I hate my aunt or that we’re on bad terms, we’re not. We’re actually on good terms. She actually played a huge hand in getting our Internet 🛜 restored, and I am eternally grateful for her helping us with that. We didn’t use any of her money 💵 to turn it back on, we used our own money 💵 through my dad’s lawsuit money 💵 (which I don’t want to disclose the full amount of for privacy reasons, but let’s just say it’s a lot), but she helped us talk to T-Mobile, and make the arrangements, and actually pay off the bill and get us finally caught up.
She did a lot of the talking because my grandma (like a lot of grandmas) is not very tech literate. She’s a Baby Boomer who doesn’t know how to use computer or smartphone technology 🖥️💻📱, and she doesn’t what to say as far as the phone and Internet service 🛜. My aunt knows more of what to say because she’s a Millennial (an older Millennial) who is more proficient with technology. She’s more proficient than even me, and I’m Gen Z. Older Gen Z, but still. And she handles all of her and her husband’s finances and bills. She pays everything. So she knew what exactly what to do, and what to say as far as getting the bill paid. We actually went to the T-Mobile to actually do this because we all figured that it was far better to do this in person than doing it over the phone 📱, to get the phones 📱 and the Internet 🛜 turned back on. And it worked out, and we did.
That’s how I was able to watch the movie and resume work on this review. Despite me not agreeing with her politics at all, despite me hating her politics, I still love my auntie, and think she’s one of the best aunties that ever was. Also, I managed to dig out one of my old desktop keyboards ⌨️ I used on my old iMac 🖥️ (an older model from 2012 or 2013) from one of my boxes of stuff that I originally had on my shelf because I gave my shelf to my grandma, and now I don’t have a shelf for my books 📖 or any of the other stuff I had on there. I tested it out, and it actually works, after all these years. So, I finally have a keyboard ⌨️ to type stuff on while using my laptop 💻, and I don’t have to type everything on my phone 📱 like I’ve been doing for the past year or so. So, when the look of the parentheses changes from the introductory section and the actual review when I’m talking about the movie, that’s why.
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(These are yet more screenshots from Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus 🦈🐙. The first one is of the octopus 🐙 which they reuse a lot, that's the only close-up shot of the octopus 🐙 they had and they just reuse it throughout the entire movie. The most they did to it to make it look like a different shot was flip the image on occasion, and sometimes they don't even do that. They just reuse the shot the same way it was, and expect you to think it's a different shot 🫵. And then the last two screenshots are of my man ♂︎, Seiji, he's the real cool guy ♂︎ of this movie. No wonder Emma falls for him 🥰, and no wonder he falls for her because she's pretty hot 😍. I'll be sure to include more screenshots of her throughout this review if I can, and of course I'll feature screenshots from their sex scene, which really isn't that explicit or anything. You don't even really see anything except them kissing 😘, but I'll get more into that in the main text below pretty soon.)
But, since I mentioned the shark 🦈 and the octopus 🐙, I guess I should talk about them and how inaccurate the science is in this movie, as well as some plot details that don't really make sense. You might even say that that one of them is a plot hole. I'm going off my notes here, I have a lot to say about them. Now, as I mentioned before, the shark 🦈 in this movie is a Megalodon 🦈. That's why it's called Mega Shark 🦈 in the title, even if the characters don't actually call it Mega Shark 🦈 in the actual movie, or any of the sequels. They either refer to as "Megalodon 🦈" or simply, "the shark 🦈." While, the octopus 🐙 in the movie is just a fictional giant prehistoric octopus 🐙. It is not based any real-life species, or at least, they don't mention any because there were no giant species of octopus 🐙 back then during prehistoric times. Either during the Mesozoic era or the current Cenozoic era.
Megalodons 🦈 were from the Cenozoic era, they existed from the Early Miocene to the Early Pliocene epochs, long before modern humans ever existed. They did not exist during the Late Cretaceous, or exist alongside dinosaurs like the Meg 🦈 books 📚 and the second Meg 🦈 movie, Meg 2: The Trench 🦈 would have you believe. They did not eat T. rexes in other words. There was the Tusoteuthis, from the Cretaceous Period, which was previously believed to be more like a squid 🦑 (pretty much analogous to the Giant squid 🦑 or Colossal squid 🦑 of today), but now is believed to be more like an octopus 🐙, but due to poor specimens or other specimens being reclassified as other species like Enchoteuthis, it's hard to get an accurate idea of what these animals really looked like or how big they were.
The Tusoteuthis could either be really big or could be really small and more comparable to an average sized octopus 🐙 like the Common octopus 🐙. In fact, some paleontologists consider Tusoteuthis to be nomen dubium, which basically means it's a scientific name that has dubious applications. Paleontologists now question whether certain specimens classified as Tusoteuthis should be classified as that or not. But let's just say that there likely weren't any octopuses 🐙 or octopus-like organisms 🐙 that were as big as the octopus 🐙 in this movie. I think we can all be pretty sure of that. We can also be pretty sure that Megalodons 🦈 in real life were not as big as the one in this movie or in its sequels. So, I will be focusing mostly on the shark 🦈 in this section rather than the octopus 🐙 because the shark 🦈 in this movie is supposed to be a real-life animal that actually existed. It isn't completely made up, it is based off of a species that actually existed 23 to 3.58 million years ago. I just mentioned the Tusoteuthis because it was the first real-life prehistoric cephalopod species that came to mind. And the only reason it did come to mind is that it was featured in the 2007 National Geographic documentary, Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure, which focused on prehistoric sea creatures, mainly those from the Cretaceous Period. Another childhood favorite of mine, I have a lot of nostalgia for that documentary. Another reason why 2007 was a great year for movies. I do plan reviewing that documentary sometime in the future. It's on my list, and I've written some notes for it.
Because Megalodons 🦈 were sharks 🦈, and like all sharks 🦈, had cartilaginous skeletons, very little of the animal was actually preserved during fossilization. Only their teeth survived. So we all scientists 👨🔬👨🔬 really have to go off of to try to determine the size of these animals are their teeth. And that resulted in some wild estimations. Some scientists 👨🔬👩🔬 estimated that, based on the size of the teeth that have been found and have been confirmed to be Megalodon teeth 🦈, the Megalodon 🦈 was capable of growing up to 60 feet in length, or 65 feet, or 70 feet, or 75 feet, even 80 or 90 feet. Those were the estimates that were commonly accepted by most scientists 👨🔬👩🔬, most paleontologists, around the time that this movie was made and when all those other schlocky low budget Megalodon 🦈 movies were made, and also when the Meg 🦈 books 📚 were written (by Steve Alten, who is the author of all eight books 📚 as well as an upcoming ninth book 📖 called Meg: Purgatory 🦈). Although most of them went with the more conservative estimate (at the time), 60 feet, while all the movies and fictional books 📚 written about Megalodon 🦈 went with the larger estimates, 70, 75, 80, 85, or 90 feet.
You know, you're writing a work of fiction about a giant prehistoric shark 🦈, you want it to be as big as possible so that it'll be the biggest threat it can be to the main characters, who are usually humans. Even when authors and filmmakers make stuff about Great White sharks 🦈 or any real-life meat-eating animal, they always make it bigger than normal. That's why the shark 🦈 in Jaws was 25 feet instead of 20 feet, or why the crocodile 🐊 in Lake Placid was 32 feet instead of 20 feet, which is how big Saltwater crocodiles 🐊 are believed to get, which was the crocodile 🐊 in Lake Placid was. It was a Saltwater crocodile 🐊...that somehow ended up in a lake in Maine, even though Saltwater crocodiles 🐊 live in Asia (specifically South Asia and Southeast Asia) and Oceania near the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean, while Maine of course is in North America and borders the Atlantic Ocean. The North Atlantic to be precise. But, I'm willing to let that slide because I like Lake Placid and think it's a good movie 🙂👍.
Nowadays, most scientists 👨🔬👩🔬 believe that the Megalodon 🦈 was only capable of growing up to 40 feet, or 45 feet, or 50 feet, or 55 feet. 56 feet at the most. Which is still big, it's bigger than any predatory shark 🦈 that exists today, bigger than any predatory fish that exists today. But it is still a far cry from the straight up sea monster that most scientists 👨🔬👩🔬 imagined back in the 1990s and 2000s, when the Megalodon 🦈 became more known in the mainstream, and was embraced by filmmakers and storytellers. They scaled back their estimations significantly. Although, the Meg 🦈 movies starring Jason Statham follow much more closely the current scientific version of the Megalodon 🦈, they use more of the current size estimations that have been proposed by scientists 👨🔬👩🔬, and even go as far as not making the shark 🦈 look like a Great White 🦈, which most depictions of the Megalodon 🦈 back in the 2000s did, including this one. People just thought back then that the Megalodon 🦈 was just a scaled up Great White 🦈, that Megalodons 🦈 and Great Whites 🦈 were closely related, or that the Megalodon 🦈 was a direct ancestor of the Great White 🦈, which is what the 2002 movie, Megalodon 🦈 proposed. It even dubiously said that the scientific name for Megalodon 🦈 was Carcharodon Megalodon 🦈, a direct connection to the Great White 🦈, when that is false. The actual scientific name for the Megalodon 🦈 is Otodus Megalodon 🦈, as scientists 👨🔬👩🔬 gained a greater understanding of this animal, and its connection to the Great White 🦈 was diminished.
This movie however didn't go with any of those estimations. It went with something far bigger. They made the shark 🦈, at least well over a hundred feet, maybe 120 feet, 130, maybe even something as long as 150 feet. Hell, this Megalodon 🦈 might even be as big as 200 feet, or 250 feet. Because, we see it take down a jumbo jet ✈️, take down warships (frigates and possibly a destroyer), a submarine, take a bite out of the Golden Gate Bridge 🌉. Those things aren't small. Your average 747 is at least 231 feet and 10 inches in length with a wingspan of 195 feet and 8 inches and a height 63 feet and 5 inches. I got that information from a website called GlobalAir.com, here's the webpage where I got from. Your average Constellation-class frigate is about 496 feet in length, and your average Virginia-class nuclear submarine ☢️ is about 377 feet in length. And the Golden Gate Bridge 🌉? Forget it, it's over 8,980 feet in length with a width of 90 feet and a height of 746 feet. So, the shark 🦈 in this movie would have to be a pretty big boy ♂︎ for it to do any of the feats that we see it do in this movie.
So basically made both the shark 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 in the movie kaiju-sized, perhaps without even realizing. That's the only thing that explains why these things are so big, and why they're able to do take down warships and submarines, take down jumbo jets ✈️, destroy oil rigs, and take a bite out of the Golden Gate Bridge 🌉. Although about those scenes where the shark 🦈 takes down a warship, they repeat this same gag where the military (the Navy) thinks that they killed the shark 🦈 only to find out that they didn't and immediately get killed by it. They do this exact scene and setup twice, just with different admirals. Except, the second admiral who does this I guess has a panic attack, and does nothing as the shark 🦈 approaches their ship, except have this scared look on their face 😰. Their men ♂︎ are asking them what they should do next, but this idiot just stands there with his mouth gapping wide open, and they all die. Why did they do that? Did they think it was funny? Because if so, it wasn't that funny to me 😕. The second one was only funny because of the admiral's reaction 😆. The military in this movie makes the military in Godzilla (1998) look competent by comparison, truly. And of course, this movie does follow the conventional wisdom at the time, the scientific consensus at the time, that Megalodons 🦈 were related to Great Whites 🦈, and thus, they made theirs just look like a scaled up Great White 🦈. It explains why the Megalodon 🦈 acts like a Great White 🦈 and leaps out of the water 💦 and into the air like one to grab the plane ✈️ and pull down into the ocean.
And when I said "boy ♂︎," I really do mean it since the shark 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 are both male ♂︎. The plot kind of requires them to. The heroes' plan wouldn't work if either one of them was female ♀︎. It is kind of funny though their plan to defeat the shark 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 is to use pheromones to basically catfish them 🤣. Trick them into thinking that there's a female ♀︎ out there waiting for them, and when they go into try to court that (imaginary) female ♀︎ and mate with her, it's actually a trap and they get killed. Their original plan was to trap the shark 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 in San Francisco Bay and Tokyo Bay respectively, and either capture them or kill them. The scientists 👨🔬👩🔬 (our heroes) want to just capture them, while the military of course wants to kill them. We've seen this song and dance before in other movies like this 🙄. It is kind of stereotypical that the Japanese 🇯🇵 are the ones handling the octopus 🐙.
Whereas the scenes involving the Megalodon 🦈 I think are intentionally funny. They're intentionally meant to be ridiculous and stupid, and get a reaction out of people. That's why those scenes went viral online, because they were so stupid, and the people who made the movie knew that and were betting on that, that those scenes would get that kind of reaction. Even if people didn't watch the rest of the movie, at least they saw those scenes and it got them talking, sharing and liking on YouTube and social media. It seems like they took the octopus scenes 🐙 a lot more seriously than they did most of the Megalodon scenes 🦈, and because of that, they're less fun and less memorable than most of the Megalodon scenes 🦈. It is clear that they wanted this franchise to be about the Megalodon 🦈, the Megalodon 🦈's the main star, and the octopus 🐙 is just the antagonist, another monster that the Megalodon 🦈 fights. It's kind of like a Godzilla movie or a Gamera movie, where, yeah sure, they might focus on the new monster they introduced for that film, but at the end of the day, it is still a Godzilla movie or a Gamera movie. It's the thing here, the octopus 🐙 is the monster the Megalodon 🦈 fights, but this is Mega Shark 🦈 movie, so obviously the Megalodon 🦈 will get more focus and screen time. Especially since this is the first movie, you need to establish all this stuff, and put your best foot forward.)
What other country is more associated with octopuses 🐙 and tentacles more specifically than Japan 🇯🇵? None, there's no other country that's as associated with octopuses 🐙 and tentacles as Japan 🇯🇵 is, even though there are other countries where octopus 🐙 is eaten, like Italy 🇮🇹. They eat octopuses 🐙 in Italy 🇮🇹. That's why that one octopus episode 🐙 of Iron Chef featured the Iron Chef Italian 🇮🇹, Masahiko Kobe and was an all Italian battle 🇮🇹 because octopus 🐙 is an ingredient that's commonly used in Italian cuisine 🇮🇹. But, they're associated with octopus 🐙 or squid 🦑 the same way Japanese people 🇯🇵 are. I remember hearing a story about a Japanese guy 🇯🇵♂︎ who ate an octopus arm 🐙 (not a tentacle, an arm because octopuses 🐙 have arms not tentacles) that wasn't fully cooked, it was still kind of raw, and the arm was still moving because octopus arms 🐙 have a bunch of nerves and even when you cut them off, those nerves will still be there, and the arm will still move around as if it's still alive. Kind of like why a lizard's tail 🦎 will still move even when it's been removed. And then once he swallowed it, he choked on it because it was still moving around in his mouth. I don't know how true that is, but I remember hearing about it and seeing in it in a TV show.
But, that's one of things people know about Japan 🇯🇵 or Japanese people 🇯🇵, even if they never been there; especially if they've never been there. They like to eat squid 🦑 and octopus 🐙, and they like to eat them raw, or just barely cooked to make sure that they're dead, just like how they like to eat sushi 🍣, which is often raw fish and other raw seafood. They even use squid 🦑 and octopus 🐙 in sushi 🍣 (ignore the salmon in the sushi 🍣 featured in the sushi emoji 🍣). And of course, they like to feature octopus 🐙 or squid 🦑 in hentai (which is anime porn 🔞 basically), or at the very least tentacles. People (weebs) like seeing anime girls ♀︎ getting fucked by tentacles. That sort of thing is so popular it's even bled into Western porn 🔞 too. Animated or otherwise.
Of course, not every Japanese person 🇯🇵 likes squid 🦑 or octopus 🐙, and not every Japanese person 🇯🇵 likes hentai, and if they do, not all of them like tentacle porn 🔞. That's why it's a stereotype to associate Japanese people 🇯🇵 with squid 🦑, octopus 🐙, or tentacles in general. So, the fact that it's the Japanese 🇯🇵 handling the octopus 🐙 rather than the Americans 🇺🇸, who are handling the shark 🦈, even though sharks 🦈 live around Japan 🇯🇵 and Japanese people 🇯🇵 do fish for sharks 🦈. Not to eat them of course, unless it's for shark fin soup 🍜🦈 (which is of a Chinese thing 🇨🇳, but Japanese people 🇯🇵 did occasionally eat it too, especially in Chinese restaurants 🇨🇳 in Japan 🇯🇵, and especially by the rich elites 🤑 within the society), but to cull their populations so that they won't kill the fish 🐟 they actually like to eat.
I mean, to give you an idea of how stereotypical this is, is would be like they made a movie about, oh I don't know, a giant ape 🦍 fighting a giant bear 🐻, and they had the Russians 🇷🇺 deal with the bear 🐻 while the Americans 🇺🇸 dealt with the ape 🦍. No other country is as associated with bears 🐻 as Russia 🇷🇺. Whenever countries of the world are represented by animals, bears 🐻 are always used to represent Russia 🇷🇺. Or to be more relevant to this series, it would be like if the second movie, Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus 🦈🐊 involved Australia 🇦🇺, and they had the Australians 🇦🇺 deal with the giant crocodile 🐊 while the Americans 🇺🇸 dealt with the shark 🦈. The only other animal that's more associated with Australia 🇦🇺 than crocodiles 🐊 are kangaroos 🦘 of course. Though no one would actually make a kaiju movie about a giant kangaroo 🦘. Though, there is at least one creature feature about a killer kangaroo 🦘. It's called The Red (2024) AKA Rippy, although it's technically a zombie movie 🧟♂️ since it's about a zombie kangaroo 🦘, but still it counts. If Zombeavers 🦫 counts as a creature feature despite being about a zombified animal, rather than non-zombified killer animal like in most creature features, then Rippy does too. I hope CoMiC reviews that movie on his channel someday. I should've included it in my post recommending/requesting movies for him to review on his channel. Maybe I could edit it in later on.
But then, when that plan doesn't work, they come up with a new plan to have the shark 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 fight each other to the death by luring them towards each other using those same pheromones they used in their previous plan. Technically Emma's the one that comes up with the second plan after she has a nightmare 💭 about the events that preceded, including the moment her and Seiji had sex in a janitor's closet but you know what I mean. Just imagine, you were frozen 🥶 in ice 🧊 for millions of years during a battle with your arch-nemesis, and then a girl ♀︎ calls you up and says she wants to have sex with you (a one night stand basically), and then when you actually go to meet her, it turns out it's your arch-nemesis, who got the same kind of text you did. You'd be pretty pissed 😡. It'd be the worst case of blue-balls ever. But that's pretty much what happens to the shark 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 here.
They're both testosterone males ♂︎, who are very horny and just want to mate with the closest female ♀︎ they can find, and then they both got tricked by the humans into meeting each other. Of course, they'd fight to the death. They need some way to get that sexual frustration out. If they can't get it out through actual sex (you know, mating), then they can get it out through violence. Killing their worst enemy, which is each other. The Megalodon 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 hate each other 😠✊, their species are naturally opposed to one another. They're naturally inclined to hate one another and kill one another. That's why when they were frozen 🥶, they were frozen together 🥶. They were in middle of a fight, when they got frozen 🥶 and stuck inside of a glacier near Alaska, which I do want to touch on in a little bit. Locked in an eternal battle until they’re thawed out and awakened, and one of them kills the other. And while, they don't fight each other right away after being broken out by the whales 🐋 slamming into the ice 🧊 (they’re not actually thawed out, they’re just broken out of the ice 🧊), they do eventually find each other thanks to the humans, and continue and ultimately finish what they started millions of years ago. I would say this movie gives a much better reason for why they're fighting than any of the sequels do, though I haven't any of the sequels other than Crocosaurus 🐊, which I remember not really caring for. I mean I guess in Mega Shark Versus Mecha Shark 🦈, it would make sense why they're fighting because the Megalodon 🦈 is fighting a robot shark 🦈, and the robot shark 🦈 was built by the humans, and therefore they were the ones who initiated the fight. Even though the Megalodon 🦈 still the antagonist in that movie, as it is every Mega Shark 🦈 movie.
But, if one of them was female ♀︎, does that mean we'd get a Sharktopus 🦈🐙 out of it 🤔? Maybe this is the secret origin of the Sharktopus 🦈🐙 in the Sharktopus 🦈🐙 movies. It is the logical conclusion of Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus 🦈🐙. After they fight, they mate and produce a hybrid offspring together, a Sharktopus 🦈🐙 😆. It would be like how in Alien vs. Predator (2004), the last surviving Predator, Scar gets Facehugged, and then later on, after he dies, and the other Predators from his tribe take his body on board their ship so they can take it back to their home planet, a PredAlien bursts out of his chest in the final shot of the movie. Leading to the sequel, Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem where the PredAlien grows and matures into an adult Xenomorph, becoming a Praetorian which is the final stage before a Xenomorph becomes a Queen, crashes the Predator ship that it was one, and then escapes, along with a bunch of Facehuggers that Predators held captive on their ship, and start an infestation in Gunnison, Colorado. An infestation the Cleaner Predator, Wolf is sent to deal with, but is ultimately taken care of by the US military 🇺🇸, who drop a nuke ☢️ on the town and literally kill everyone in the town along with Aliens and one lone Predator that was there, except for our main heroes who managed to escape the town in a helicopter 🚁.
Just like what happens to Raccoon City in the Resident Evil games as well as the second Milla Jovovich Resident Evil movie, Resident Evil: Apocalypse...and also Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City 😒. Isn't crazy that we live in a world where people actually prefer Resident Evil: Apocalypse, and pretty much all of the Milla Jovovich Resident Evil movies over Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City? But, that's just how things turn out some times. Sometimes people will embrace a bad adaptation of a video game if they're confronted by an even worse one. It's just like what happened with Street Fighter (1994) after Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li came out, or what happened to Doom (2005) after Doom: Annihilation came out. I do actually plan on reviewing Street Fighter (1994) and Doom (2005) sometime in the future, and I have written reviews for both Alien vs. Predator (2004) and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem which are on the blog right now and you can go read if you're interested.
I mean, the females ♀︎ of pretty much every shark species 🦈 (including probably the Megalodon 🦈 too) are larger than the males ♂︎, they grow larger than the males ♂︎. Sharks 🦈 are sexually dimorphic, meaning one sex tends to grow larger than the other, it's just it's the opposite way for them as it is for us humans, or really most mammals. Instead of the males ♂︎ growing larger than the females ♀︎, it's the females ♀︎ that grow larger than the males ♂︎. So, they're the real impressive specimens of each species. If you see a really big shark 🦈 out in the ocean, chances are it's a female ♀︎. So, it would be more likely for the shark 🦈 in this movie to be female ♀︎, it would make more sense and kind of endearing that shark 🦈 that's in every single film in this series is a female ♀︎ rather than a male ♂︎ as is usually the default.
Whenever we see any animal, our first assumption is that it's a male ♂︎, and we need to change that because not every animal we see is a male ♂︎. More often than not, it's probably a female ♀︎, especially if it's a shark 🦈 and it's gigantic. All of the biggest Great White sharks 🦈, all of the record breaking Great Whites 🦈, have all been female ♀︎. Males ♂︎ of that species are just not capable of getting to those huge sizes like Deep Blue, who is one of the largest Great Whites 🦈 ever recorded at exactly 20 feet. And that's just because that's how they naturally evolved. They evolved so that females ♀︎ would be larger than males ♂︎. It's not the male ♂︎'s fault or the female ♀︎'s fault, that's just how they evolved. So, if the Megalodon 🦈 in this movie was a female ♀︎ and the octopus 🐙 was a male ♂︎, they could've had them mate, and produce a Sharktopus 🦈🐙 together. The world's first Sharktopus 🦈🐙. I guarantee you that was Roger Corman's thinking when he came up with the idea for Sharktopus 🦈🐙. He must've say this movie and thought, "What if, instead of a giant shark 🦈 fighting a giant octopus 🐙, we combined the two and created a hybrid of the two? 🤔"
(These are screenshots from Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus 🦈🐙 of the shark 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 fighting, and supposedly dying. I say supposedly since I don't think the shark 🦈 actually dies here. I think it survives, and then goes onto appear in all of the sequels. The Megalodon 🦈 that's in the sequels is the same one from this movie.)
There is another scientific inaccuracy that I want to talk about besides the size of the Megalodon 🦈, and that's the assertion that this movie makes that Megalodons 🦈, as well as the fictional giant octopus species 🐙 that the octopus 🐙 is apart of, preferred cooler waters 💦. Not only were the Megalodon 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 found in and released from a glacier near Alaska, but the humans lure both of them to the Arctic Ocean for their big fight, and they straight up say that the Arctic was their natural habitat, and that prefer cooler waters 💦. Megalodon 🦈 (2002) did the exact same thing, except that movie takes place near Greenland 🇬🇱, in the Greenland Sea near the Arctic Ocean. There's even a scene in that movie where the Megalodon 🦈 breaks through the ice 🧊, and rises up from the water 💦 to try to grab our heroes as they're trying to board a helicopter 🚁 to get out of there. When of course, in reality, Megalodons 🦈 actually preferred warmer shallower waters 💦.
Makes sense right? Most of their prey in shallower, and generally warmer, coastal waters 💦. In fact, paleontologists believe that the changing climate and cooling temperatures caused by the onset of the ice age 🧊 strongly contributed to the Megalodon 🦈's extinction. That, and their huge size. Their immense size was both a strength and a weakness because on the one hand, it meant that it was the top predator in its environment and nothing could challenge it or take it down, besides maybe the Livyatan, but on the other hand it meant that it needed a lot more food to sustain itself. And when that food supply dwindled due to the declining temperatures, the Megalodon 🦈 couldn't sustain itself, and it eventually died out. It's the same reason why the dinosaurs went extinct, the nonavian dinosaurs, they were so big that when the food supply was disrupted by the fallout of the asteroid impact ☄️, the environmental devastation that impact caused, they all eventually died out.
Starting with the herbivorous dinosaurs who fed on the plants 🌱 that died out due to the asteroid debris and dust blocking out the Sun ☀️, and then the carnivorous dinosaurs that fed on the herbivorous dinosaurs. Sure, the carnivorous dinosaurs were probably able to survive by scavenging on the carcasses of the dead herbivorous dinosaurs, but there's only so long you can do that before that food supply runs out. So, eventually they starved and died out. That's why the animals that did survive the K–Pg extinction tended to be either small or be able to go long periods of time without eating. Dinosaurs needed to eat all the time, and have a steady supply of food. That's just the issue with being so big, you need more food to survive. And the Megalodon 🦈 is extinct. There aren't any Megalodons 🦈 swimming around, not even in the deep ocean, and even if there are, they're not really the same creatures that existed millions of year ago because they had to adapt and change to survive in those deep dark depths. I don't care what some cryptozoologist says, or what Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives 🦈 says, those sharks 🦈 are gone, there's none of them. The only thing that's left of them are their fossilized teeth.
That is one thing that I appreciate about this movie is that it didn't try to assert that Megalodons 🦈 didn't go extinct, and that they survived until the modern day, and there's just a whole population living out there in the ocean, usually in the deep sea. Which is what Shark Attack 3: Megalodon 🦈, Megalodon 🦈 (2002), Shark Hunter 🦈, and the Meg 🦈 movies and the books 📚 they're based on did. Megalodons 🦈 did still go extinct, it's just that this one was preserved and kept in a state of suspended animation for millions of years by this glacier it was frozen 🥶 in with the octopus 🐙. Now, the end of the movie does hint that there's another Megalodon 🦈 frozen 🥶 in another glacier, but still that is better than just having Megalodons 🦈 be alive in the deep ocean and not actually going extinct, which is what most movies that deal with the Megalodon 🦈 do, and what some cryptozoologists actually believe.
Some of them actually believe that the Megalodon 🦈 is still alive out there, there is a population out there, we just haven't discovered them yet, usually because they say that they just live in the deep ocean and they use the fact that the ocean remains mostly unexplored, and that saying that we know more about space than we do about our own ocean, therefore Megalodons 🦈 and other sea monsters exist. And they've managed to convince enough people online of this, and that they treat it as if it's fact. Even though it defies all logic and goes against the scientific evidence and data that we have. But, what are you going to do? You got a bunch of people who believe in Bigfoot, and you're going to change their minds that he isn't real. Surprisingly, not a lot of people believe in the Loch Ness Monster, that one's kind of diminished in recent years, and has been overtaken by Bigfoot, who more people are convinced are real. People think there are Sasquatches (and by extension, Yetis) living out there in the wilderness, we just haven't discovered them yet. Hell, more people believe that the Megalodon 🦈 is still alive than believe the Loch Ness Monster ever existed, even though the popular conception of the Loch Ness Monster is that it's a plesiosaur that somehow survived until the modern day in the Loch.
I know just talked shit about Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives 🦈, but truthfully, I actually like that documentary and I have a lot of nostalgia for it, just like Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real 🐉 AKA The Last Dragon AKA Dragon's World and Mermaids: The Body Found (which actually has Megalodon 🦈 in it), and I think if none of those documentaries were aired on either the Discovery Channel (known as just Discovery by then) or Animal Planet, and were aired on the Sci-Fi Channel (known as SyFy by then), they would've been received a lot better. So would Lost Tapes frankly, if you remember that show. You wouldn't have this hullabaloo about how Discovery and Animal Planet are misleading the public, and perpetuating conspiracy theories and validating cryptozoology, which is the exact opposite of what most scientists 👨🔬👩🔬 and science communicators want. Cryptozoology is not a real science, and it shouldn't treated as such, and critics of these documentaries (really docufictions) felt that they were validating it and making it seem like a serious science with some credibility to it when it very much is not.
That is the core of the criticisms levied towards these films, these psuedo-documentaries, more so Mermaids and Megalodon 🦈, is that they're not real. They're complete works of fiction, and they're lying to public trying to make it seem like they are real when they're not. I mean, I get it, that was probably my biggest complaint about The Fourth Kind, it's an alien abduction movie 👽 that tried so hard to convince people that it was real, when it actually wasn't. All that "archival footage" was fake and the "real" versions of the people featured in the film, in that "archival footage," are just paid actors playing characters just like the actors in the supposed dramatization parts of the movie. But, if they were aired on a channel like SyFy, there would be no question in people's minds that these were works of fiction, and there wouldn't be all this controversy about it. Like, "Hey, this is on SyFy? It must be fake. It must be science fiction," but because these documentaries were on Discovery and Animal Planet, thought, "Hey, it's on Discovery or Animal Planet, it must be real. Discovery and Animal Planet would never air something that was fake." I actually do plan on reviewing all three of those documentaries on this blog someday, as well as Lost Tapes, not enough people talk about that show, that show's kind of been forgotten about and has largely faded into obscurity. Oh, and The Fourth Kind, I also plan on reviewing that in the future too.
They don't even follow through with that ending in the sequels since the Megalodon 🦈 in those movies is the same one in this movie I think (like I said I haven't seen any of the sequels besides Crocosaurus 🐊 and I didn't even really like that one), it didn't actually die in the fight with the octopus 🐙 at the end. That's something that often happens in sequels, where the previous movie will set up something for a sequel to follow up on, and then when the sequel comes out, it doesn't follow through on the previous movie's set up at all, and just does its own thing. You could argue that was the case with Jurassic Park, the movie, with the Barbasol can that had all of those dinosaur embryos. The reason why that movie has a shot that lingers on that can as it gets covered in mud is that Steven Spielberg had the expectation that if Jurassic Park was successful enough to get a sequel (which it was, as we all know), it would have to follow up on that can and deal with the retrieval of that can.
But then Michael Crichton wrote the second book 📖, The Lost World (1995), and it didn't mention the can at all. I mean, it was Gillette can in the original Jurassic Park book 📖 and not a Barbasol can, but still. It went off in its own direction, introducing a second island 🏝️ full of dinosaurs. And because Jurassic Park movies still had to be based on books 📚, Spielberg naturally had to base the second movie off of the second book 📖 that Crichton wrote, and that was the direction they went in with the film adaptation, The Lost World: Jurassic Park. And then the Barbasol can was never brought up again in any of the sequels until Jurassic World Dominion, but even then they really didn't make a big deal out of it. It's just this thing in the background to make you go, "Oh hey, I remember that 👈," and then when Dodgson does grab it when he's trying to make his escape, nothing comes of it afterwards because he dies, and no one but him is even aware of its existence, and it's lost forever because it's presumably inside of that hyperloop car that he got stuck in with the Dilophosauruses that split venom in his face and kill him. One of the most brilliant bits of comeuppance I've ever seen in any movie since Dennis Nedry was famously killed by a Dilophosaurus, and he was Dodgson's industrial spy, his mole on the inside that was supposed to steal InGen's crown jewel and deliver it to BioSyn, InGen's #1 rival and competitor. So, he essentially killed by the same dinosaur that killed the guy ♂︎ that he bribed into stealing embryos from InGen, and started this whole thing. Another reason Dominion probably should've been the last movie for real, instead of them rebooting it afterwards 😒. Unless police and forensics went down into the tunnel where the hyperloop car was, and found whatever was left his body and found the can in his belongings.
But, at this point, the Barbasol can is kind of irrelevant to the story, especially since they rebooted the series, they did a soft reboot: Jurassic World Rebirth. That's why it was called Rebirth, it's a new beginning...after Jurassic World was was a beginning after Jurassic Park III 😕. But you know, the Jurassic World trilogy kind of went off the rails, or at least a lot of people felt they did, so it was time to hit the reset button yet again. It's kind of like Mortal Kombat, it just keeps rebooting itself over and over again. They try something, and then they run it into the ground, and then when the people get sick of it and want something different, they just reboot it. But, just a soft reboot, not a hard reboot, they still want the new movie (or game in the case of Mortal Kombat) to be connected to the previous ones, but still largely ignore what those films did and leaving most of what they introduced out in favor of doing their own thing.
Unless they're going for nostalgia bait, in which case the goal isn't try something new, and just play it safe and regurgitate what came before, but just tweak it a little bit to make it seem a bit different. That's Rebirth did, it took the series back to its roots, taking place on an island 🏝️ again, full of dinosaurs, and focusing on a small group of humans trying to get off the island 🏝️ and not get killed by any of the dinosaurs on the island 🏝️. No more dinosaurs living amongst humans, no more human cloning, no more superheroics and the main hero surviving impossible odds and doing things that no ordinary human could do in real life, no more dinosaurs befriending the main hero and becoming their pet, no more dino activists, no more trying to use the dinosaurs for military purposes, and no more locusts. Especially no more locusts, people hated the locusts in Dominion, hated them 😤. I loved them, but no one actually cares what I think. No one in charge of this franchise is actually listening to me, or reading what I have to say. All of the things people didn't like about the previous Jurassic World films, Rebirth intentionally left out in favor of making something that harkened back to the original trilogy, the Jurassic Park films. The film that were still called Jurassic Park instead of Jurassic World. The only new element introduced in the previous Jurassic World films that Rebirth left in was the hybrid dinosaurs since Rebirth features at least two dinosaurs ✌️: the Distortus Rex and the Mutadon.
It's just like what Mortal Kombat did with Mortal Kombat 1. The only new element that game introduced was that it was another alternate timeline, or an alternate universe, where Liu Kang is the new protector of Earthrealm after Raiden relinquished that responsibility, stepped down from that role, and Liu Kang reset everything, and basically altered every characters' lives and altered the realms in an attempt to create the ideal timeline, a timeline that he liked and where everyone would happy and wouldn't suffer, and there would be no more evil endangering the realms. Of course, it doesn't work since no matter how he altered the other characters and their lives, they still end up suffering in some way, they still ended up in conflict, and evil still ended up taking root and endangering the realms. The world, the universe of Mortal Kombat, is self-correcting as this game establishes. No matter how much you try change it, no matter how you try to alter the fates, personalities, appearances, abilities, or even genders of the various characters within the universe, everything just ends up back the way it was.
Other than that, other than it taking place in a different reality created by Liu Kang and every character being slightly different (or even radically different in some cases), it was still ultimately a retelling of the very first game. It was still about a tournament, and needing assemble a team of warriors to defend Earthrealm, and they're all the same warriors; almost all of them. Only it's Liu Kang doing the assembling and not Raiden since he basically swapped places with him where Liu Kang is the protector of Earthrealm, making sure no threats come to Earthrealm, and Raiden is the hero, he's the champion of Mortal Kombat, the guy ♂︎ who's ultimately going to defeat the bad guy. Or at least, that's the set up until the game's story just devolves into multiverse shit 😒. It was the same, but slightly different. So, that is one example of a movie setting something up for the sequels to follow up on and elaborate on, and then the sequels never follow up on it.
The MCU has become pretty infamous for doing this, especially post-Endgame. They didn't have a plan anymore, they had no idea where they wanted to take this series after Avengers: Endgame and the Infinity Saga was all wrapped up. So, they just threw anything and everything at the wall, and saw what stuck, and very little of what they introduced in any of those post-Endgame films went anywhere. And I guarantee you that when Michael Bay comes back and makes his new Transformers movie, it will more than likely be a reboot of some kind, and will not follow through or pay off any of what Transformers: The Last Knight introduced. It's been 9 years since that movie came out, and the next Michael Bay Transformers movie (if it actually gets made) probably won't be out for a couple more years since it was barely announced last year. So, it will have been a longer away. People have already forgotten what happened in The Last Knight (if they even remember that movie existed at all), and even if they do, they don't like it. They didn't like it then, and they sure as hell don't like it now.
But, the Transformers franchise is kind of a mess right now, they've announced a whole bunch of projects, they've talked about certain things, most of which conflicts with one another. You know, you don't just have this new Michael Bay Transformers movie, but you got a live action Transformers directed by Josh Cooley (the director of Toy Story 4 and the recent animated Transformers movie, Transformers One that everyone who saw it liked), you got another Transformers movie directed by some guy ♂︎ named Ángel Manuel Soto which may or may not be animated or live action (no one knows at this time), and then you still got Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Steven Caple Jr. talking about doing a sequel to Transformers: Rise of the Beasts and following up on that G.I. Joe teaser at the end and doing a Transformers/G.I. Joe crossover. It seems like the double whammy of the box office failures of both Rise of the Beasts and Transformers One threw this franchise into chaos. Now its future is uncertain. And it seems like they're just throwing anything at the wall and seeing what sticks.
I imagine most of these projects won't happen, and that one that will probably get made is the Michael Bay one. No matter how much detractors of Michael Bay moan and complain about it. I mean, it makes sense right? Paramount and Hasbro saw how the last two Transformers movies failed at the box office, they see that Transformers is a dying brand that's fading out of relevance, so now, they see Michael Bay was their savior, their one last hope to try to turn this ship around, get the franchise back on track, and make it the moneymaker 💵 it once was. After all, Transformers became a success under his watch, under his direction, when he was the main architect of this franchise. It also started to decline under his watch since The Last Knight massively underperformed below expectations, not even making as much as the first Transformers movie from 2007. So, Paramount and Hasbro would be wise to keep that mind when deciding to bring him back to do another one. But obviously it's a risk they're willing to take, it's a gamble they're willing to bet on because they are desperate. Paramount is desperate to hold onto the film rights, and Hasbro is desperate to make Transformers a winning brand again.
I know kind of got off track talking about all that other stuff, but it had to be said. I had to get it out of my system. I'm just wondering why it took so long for Emma to put two and two together that the Megalodon 🦈 came out of the ice 🧊? Because when she brings into Lamar to look at the tooth she found in the whale carcass 🐋, and he analyzes it, and determines that it was a Megalodon 🦈, she's initially in disbelief. She's wondering how a Megalodon 🦈 could kill a whale 🐋 when Megalodons 🦈 have been extinct for millions of years. It's not like she came into this fresh, and had only seen the whale carcass 🐋 and found the tooth, no, she actually saw something before that. Something weird, something strange, something out of the ordinary. She doesn't at all think to herself, "Oh man, that thing that I saw that came out of the glacier near Alaska, that was a Megalodon 🦈 😧." She only puts two and two together when her friend, Vince (who's played by an actor named Jonathan Nation BTW) sends her tape 📼 of the submarine footage from their unauthorized submarine voyage in the minisub at the beginning of the movie, and her, Lamar, and Seiji see the shark 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 inside of the ice 🧊. Like, come on girl ♀︎, you're a scientist 👩🔬, you should've put two and two together a long time ago. Even if you weren't a scientist 👩🔬, you still should've put two and two together, and realized you weren't hallucinating. I would've come to that realization as soon as I found that tooth inside of that whale carcass 🐋.
But since I mentioned Vince, there is one more thing I want to mention before I talk about the big plot hole in this movie. After the whale carcass scene 🐋, and shortly before the scene at night where Emma retrieves the tooth and before she gets fired by the institute she works for, there's this short scene where her and Vince are standing on the beach 🏖️, talking about, venting about the government restricting access to the carcass, and their boss being an asshole, and they're both drinking beers inside of brown paper bags. Why? Why would they do this? Couldn't they just drink the beers without paper bags covering them? Why do they have to be in paper bags? I initially thought it was too avoid copyright ©, because they didn't have rights to feature an actual name brand beer, they couldn't afford a license, so they opted to just cover them with paper bags instead.
But, they didn't actually need to feature a name brand. They couldn't just used a fake brand that they made up, like what The Simpsons did with Duff. They did this with the airline in the movie, which is a fictional airline called Condor Airlines. But even then, that doesn't make sense because later on in the movie, when Emma's at home, she's using a laptop 💻, and we can clearly see that it's a MacBook 💻 because we see the Apple logo on the back of the laptop 💻. It's right there, front and center in the shot. They didn't try to cover it up or anything. So clearly, they didn't have a problem with featuring an Apple product and showing that it's an Apple product, so why be all sneaky about the beer? Unless there really is a place in California that sells beer in a brown paper bag like that, or Emma and Vince are just weirdos who like putting their beer in paper bags and drinking it like that.
(This is a screenshot from the scene I was talking about, where Emma is in her home, she's at her desk, and her laptop 💻 is open, and we can clearly see that it's a MacBook 💻 because we see the Apple logo on the back. It is front and center in the frame, no mistaking it. Why The Asylum worried about the beer bottles being exposed but not about this, if that is indeed why the beer bottles were inside of paper bags? I don't know, and I doubt we'll ever get answers to these questions. I doubt The Asylum or the director would be that willing to answer why Emma and Vince are drinking beer out of brown paper bags? It's such a stupid thing to care about, and it's not worth their time to answer it.)
Now, onto the plot hole. If you read the little description underneath the first screenshot from the movie that I featured in this post, you'll know that at the beginning, the thing that leads to the Megalodon 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 getting loose is a bunch of whales 🐋 ram into the glacier that they're both frozen 🥶 in. And the reason why that happened, why the whales 🐋 rammed themselves into the glacier is that they were agitated by an experimental sonar transmitter that the government and/or the military was testing at the time that Emma and Vince were in the minisub watching some whales 🐋. It's actually pretty similar to Mermaids: The Body Found, because in the documentary, the whole plot of it is that a bunch of whales 🐋 are beaching themselves and dying (so are the mermaids, but the scientists 👨🔬👩🔬 don't know that yet), and these scientists 👨🔬👩🔬 ultimately discover that it's an experimental sonar weapon that the military is testing that's causing the whales 🐋 to go crazy. And that's also how they discover the mermaids too because the mermaids communicate through echolocation just like whales 🐋 do, and the sonar weapon developed by the Navy is messing them up too.
The sound recording they picked up of the sonar weapon being activated, and the whales 🐋 communicating with each other and screaming in pain from the sound of the sonar weapon, also picked up the mermaids communicating with each other screaming in agony from being exposed to the sonar weapon being tested. This is before of course, they head over to South Africa 🇿🇦 to examine the titular mermaid body that was found in the stomach of a Great White shark 🦈, which makes up a good portion of the story, the main plot. In between all of the flashbacks to the past (the more nature documentary part of the movie), showing the evolution of the mermaids, how they got there. Using the thoroughly discredited Aquatic ape hypothesis to explain the existence of the mermaids, and make them seem somewhat scientifically accurate or plausible. Even though, as I said, the Aquatic ape hypothesis has been discredited for decades. It's often ignored and dismissed as pseudoscience by most accredited anthropologists. And of course, as in a lot of stories like this, the Navy is trying to cover up the existence of the mermaids, to keep it under wraps, because they're trying to cover their asses that they tested an experimental sonar weapon that's not only killing whales 🐋, but also killing an aquatic human species (which are what the mermaids are in Mermaids) that they knew about this whole time but chose not to tell anyone, not even the scientific community.
When I first watched this scene, I thought it was going to be something like that, that I just described with Mermaids, and it was going to be this major plot point, that it was going to play into the plot later on, and that's why the military arrests Emma, Lamar, and Seiji, and why they're trying so hard to cover up the existence of the Megalodon 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 and keep it under wraps, and why they want to just kill them rather than capture them like Emma, Lamar, and Seiji want to do, because they're partially responsible for why they got loose and are killing everybody, causing destruction and mayhem on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. And they don't want to be embarrassed or be humiliated, or worse, face any legal repercussions as a result of this. I mean, this was the Obama administration, so maybe something would've happened to them if this got out. I hadn't seen the movie in a while, and I only remembered bits and pieces of it, so I thought it was a possibility. But no, this is never brought up again.
When Emma, Lamar, and Seiji do get arrested and taken to that military facility and are forced at gunpoint to come up with a solution to defeat the shark 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 by Allen Baxter (Lorenzo Lama's character), the military is at complete loss as to where the shark 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 came from. They're seemingly completely unaware of the sonar transmitter that was being tested at the beginning of the movie, and it had a role in releasing the shark 🦈 and the octopus 🐙. This is why it's a plot hole. It's key to the shark 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 getting loose and wrecking havoc across the ocean, and yet it's never brought up again and really doesn't matter to the plot whatsoever. It's like when Jack Perez wrote this in the script, he just came up with it to provide an explanation for where the shark 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 came from and how they got out and started going on rampages, and he couldn't think of anything else other than maybe genetic engineering 🧬 but maybe he thought that was played out.
So, he came up with this explanation that they were both prehistoric species (the shark 🦈 a Megalodon 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 a fictional species that doesn't actually exist and they don't actually name because it doesn't actually exist) that got frozen together 🥶 in a glacier millions of year ago, and then the government or the military decide to test a new sonar transmitter right next to the glacier where the shark 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 are. It freaks out a bunch of whales 🐋 that the main character just happens to be observing, and then they all just commit suicide and slam their heads into the ice 🧊 to put themselves out of their misery, and that causes the ice 🧊 to break apart, releasing the shark 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 from their icy tomb 🧊, and allowing them to roam free throughout ocean. Causing destruction wherever they go.
But, he couldn't figure out how to actually make it fit with the rest of the story, even though I just laid how you make it fit in with the rest of the story. Just have the government try to cover up their involvement in releasing the shark 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 and emphasis that is their fault that this all happened, it's really not that hard. The pieces were there where they could've taken the story in that direction if they wanted to. All it would've taken was a rewrite, do a few minor tweaks here and there. But, he really didn't want to do that. Either he didn't want to do that, or he did want to do it, but The Asylum didn't give him any money 💵 to do any script revisions. So instead, he chose to just leave it unresolved, and hoped that audiences wouldn't notice or care that there was this plot point at the beginning of the movie that is pretty integral to the plot, it's how the Megalodon 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 get loose, and it never comes in play later on, it never gets resolved.
We never see the people that were involved in that sonar transmitter test face any repercussions for what they did, even though what they did was illegal, and ultimately led to two sea monsters being released and wrecking havoc across the world, killing thousands of people. Nothing. Ultimately, the sonar transmitter is about as plot relevant as that one idiot scientist 👨🔬 was at the beginning of King Cobra 🐍 (1999), the one that kind of looks like Carrot Top and CoMiC renamed "Ob-Knob" in his review because he's both obnoxious and a knob (which is just another way of calling someone an "asshole" in Britain 🇬🇧). He served his purpose, which was to provide a way for the snake 🐍 to escape and start killing people in the outside world, and then he's never brought up again afterwards. Just like the sonar transmitter in this movie. And in some way, he was right because no one else who has reviewed this movie seems to have noticed this discrepancy, and the fact that they introduce this thing earlier on in the movie, just to provide an explanation for how the Megalodon 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 get loose and start destroying the world, except for me. I feel like I'm the only person who has seen this movie who actually noticed that.
But, seeing all stock footage of Hammerhead sharks that they show at the beginning really gave me Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy 🦈 flashbacks since that movie also started with a bunch of Hammerhead shark stock footage. Only there it was actually about a Hammerhead shark, or rather a Hammerhead shark/human hybrid created by a mad scientist 👨🔬 (played by Jeffery Combs) as an attempt to cure his son's cancer (because sharks 🦈 are immune to cancer, which Deep Blue Sea also claimed, but so are Naked Mole rats, so he easily could've crossed his son's DNA 🧬 with that of a Naked Mole rat to achieve the same result), so it actually fits. Even though I already kind of talked about Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy 🦈 AKA Sharkman AKA Hammerhead in my Deep Blue Sea review (which was my 99th post), I do plan on reviewing that movie later on, as well as King Cobra 🐍 (1999), which I also mentioned, even though CoMiC already reviewed that movie and that was excellent. I still want to write my own review. I also made sure to include Hammerhead in my post recommending/requesting movies for CoMiC to review, which I hope I'll be able to post in the next couple of weeks. If this review and my Simpsons Movie review don't take me any longer to do.
I do want to talk about Lorenzo Lamas since I mentioned him earlier since he's the only "big" name actor in this movie who's sort of well known besides Deborah Gibson, who I'll touch on shortly. He's the second billed actor in the movie after Deborah Gibson, like if you look at the poster and the DVD cover 📀, above the title it just says "Deborah Gibson and Lorenzo Lamas." But, despite him being the second most well known actor in this movie, most of you reading this probably have no idea who he even is. And I don't blame you because I really didn't know who he was either until I saw this movie. He's mostly done TV work, and even when he has done movies, he's usually in a supporting role. Like he was in Grease, but I guarantee you that if you saw that movie or you rewatched it (if you've seen it before), you probably wouldn't be able to spot him. The only other movie I've seen in was Dark Waters 💦, which I also mentioned in my Deep Blue Sea review, and I really didn't like upon rewatching it. I liked it as a kid, but not as an adult, that movie really didn't hold up for me, and really didn't have an entertainment value for me as a shark movie 🦈 or as a creature feature in general. But I'll still probably review it someday, and I still want CoMiC to review it on his channel.
He also was apparently in Unseen Evil 2 AKA Alien 3000, but I don't remember seeing him in that movie, but then again I really don't remember much from that movie. Other than I didn't like it. That movie's also on my list of movies to review, God help me 😬. But, even if I really don't know him that well as an actor, I do think he did a pretty good job in the role as Allen Baxter. He's basically just this hard ass government agent who's determined to take down the shark 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 by any means necessary, and is kind of stubborn, and not always willing to listen to the scientists 👨🔬👩🔬 that he hired (more like kidnapped and coerced) until his own plan and strategy blows up in his face and is left with no other option. But he's still the smartest guy ♂︎ in the government/military in this movie.
They don't actually say what his job is within the government or the military (like what agency or department of the government or branch of the military he works for), in fact, they don't even say if he works for the government or the military. He's just the vaguely government or military guy ♂︎ who's in charge of dealing with the shark 🦈 on the American side of things 🇺🇸 (while the Japanese 🇯🇵 deal with the octopus 🐙 which I mentioned and nitpicked about earlier), and he's the one brings Emma, Lamar, and Seiji into the fold. Again through kidnapping and coercion but he's still the one that brings them in to come up with a solution to the shark 🦈, and by extension, octopus 🐙 problem. But it's clear he has some sort of authority because he's commanding the troops, he's commanding the admirals in the naval ships and submarines telling them where to go and what to do. He's clearly not some low level agent.
There is this weird part though after he arrests Emma, Lamar, and Seiji and brings them to that facility to start working (on chemistry 🧪 apparently, since most of what they do is mix liquids in test tubes 🧪, some glow, others don't). It doesn't have anything to do Allen, or even Lorenzo himself, it has to do with Seiji. There's this moment where he says that he feels secure, when asked how he feels about being arrested and held prisoner by the US government 🇺🇸. What? Why would he say that? I mean, I get that he was being sarcastic, but still. He feels secure, what an odd thing to say in that moment. It's not a big deal, and it doesn't affect my view of the movie one way or another, it was just something that I had to comment on, especially since Shitcase Cinema mentioned it in his review a long time ago. That review is almost a decade old, or is a decade old at this point, it's hard to believe, I remember when that was a new review, and I was still into that style of review. Now the only reviewers I like who actually do that style are Brandon Tenold and Decker Shado, and out of those two, Brandon's the only one who actually posts somewhat consistently.
(This is another screenshot from Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus 🦈🐙. This is another screenshot of Emma, this is after the scene where they tell Allen about their plan to use pheromones to trap the Megalodon 🦈 and the octopus 🐙 in San Francisco Bay and Tokyo Bay respectively, and they're looking at screens as what usually happens in movies like this where the military and/or the government are heavily involved, and she has this somewhat serious, somewhat smirking looking on her face 😏. I don't know how to describe it. She has a confident look let's just say, she's confident in their plan, that she, Lamar, and Seiji came up with after her and Seiji had sex, and she knows it's going to work. And it does, until the military fucks it up. I was going to say she exhibits bad bitch energy, but I feel that saying that she's confident is better. I also think her having sex with Seiji the previous night or the previous couple of nights helped, it provided some inspiration, and it helped reinvigorated her. As it would anyone who hadn't had sex in a while, or ever. They don't explicitly say if Emma's a virgin or not, but I kind of have a feeling she was before she met Seiji. She was just way too into the ocean to have any boyfriends, so she never lost her virginity at any point. But, Seiji took away her virginity, he gave her that gift. He did her that solid, and she came out of it a better woman ♀︎. Ready to take on the world. Sometime you just need some dick, that's all it takes.)
The next actor, or actress I should say, I want to talk about is Deborah Gibson, who is the lead actress in this movie. She plays the main character, Dr. Emma MacNeil, who've been talking about here and there throughout the review. She's an oceanographer, she's very rambunctious, she doesn't like listening to authority, that's why her boss doesn't like her, or didn't like her, that's why she got fired. She doesn't take "no" for an answer, she'll do things her way, regardless of whether or not the powers that be approve or not, if she's disobeying direct orders. And she always trusts her gut instinct. If she's convinced of something, if she thinks she's onto something, she'll do everything to get to the bottom of it, even if there roadblocks in the way preventing her from finding answers. She will find ways around those barriers. Like, when she noticed something in the whale carcass 🐋, and she asked if she could examine it, and everyone told her "no," she went out at night to get it herself because she desperately needed to know what it was that was in whale carcass 🐋, and thank God she did because she found the Megalodon tooth 🦈. It's because she followed her gut feeling and disregarded a direct order from her boss and from the government agents who blocked off the carcass that they found out it was a Megalodon 🦈 was killing everybody. She's very spunky, she’s a free spirit. Her heart belongs to the ocean. She even tells Seiji at the end of the movie that she’s not at a “stay at home and cook” kind of gal, she’ll be spending a lot of her time in the ocean.
I actually liked Emma, and it's not just because I find Deborah Gibson attractive, I do, but that's the only reason why I liked her. I actually liked her personality. She's a protagonist that I actually liked, that I could actually get behind, and I was rooting for her the whole time. Sure, it did bother me that it took her so long to put two and two together that the Megalodon 🦈 (and by extension, the octopus 🐙) came out of the ice 🧊, but it wasn't that big of a deal. It wasn't enough for me to dislike the character, or write her off as just being stupid. Clearly, she's not, she's a very intelligent woman ♀︎, who's an expert in her (despite being rebellious), that's why I was surprised it took her that long to figure it out. It's a nitpick at best. She does come back in one of the other sequels. She doesn't come back in the second one, they got Jaleel White (Steve Urkel himself) to be in that one instead, she came back in the third one, Mecha Shark 🦈. But even then, she didn't have a huge role from what I understood. Her role in Mecha Shark 🦈 just amounted to a cameo role. She's just there to talk about the Megalodon 🦈 for a bit, and then she leaves. But, she did a starring role in another Asylum movie unrelated to the Mega Shark 🦈 series, Mega Python vs. Gatoroid 🐍🐊, along with Tiffany Darwish, better known as just Tiffany, another pop star turned actress...who only appears in Asylum movies on occasion. And I thought Deborah Gibson did a good job playing her. She's not a super well known actress. She's more well known than most of the people in this movie, but she's still not someone that people would instantly recognize if they saw it, at least not young people, around my age or younger.
She used to be pop star prior to becoming an actress. She's most well known the song, "Foolish Beat," which she wrote, produced, and sung when she was only 18 years old. She was born in 1970, and she released her debut album, Out of the Blue in 1987, and she released "Foolish Beat" as a single in 1988. At the time, she was the youngest female artist ♀︎ to write, produce, and sing a single. Then she made an another album, Electric Youth, and then another single, "Lost in Your Eyes," which was a #1 hit in the US 🇺🇸 at the time. All of the singles of hers that hit the top 20 of the Billboard 100 were written solely by her. She's one of those artists who writes all of her own songs. She was even recognized by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers 🇺🇸 (ASCAP) as Songwriter of the Year, along with Bruce Springsteen, 1989. Which is a pretty achievement at a such a young age. I didn't even achieve anything like that when I was her age, which was 19, she was 19 when she became Songwriter of the Year.
And despite also having an acting career, and mostly being in Asylum movies, she still does produce music to this day. She produced single in 2020 called "Girls Night Out ♀︎," which was her first top 5 and highest charting hit in 30 years. So, if anyone would recognize it would probably be older generations, either Baby Boomers or Generation X. Probably Gen X because she's part of that generation, and came of age at the same time as that generation, and would definitely mean a lot more to them that she would to Baby Boomers or Millennials. Definitely not Generation Z, or Generation Alpha for that matter, these two generations don't know who she is at all. She was before their time, and while she's still alive and still makes music to this day, she still wouldn't mean a lot to them. She still wouldn't resonate with them like she may have with some Gen Xers. It's kind of like how artists like Billie Eilish, Charli XCX, Olivia Rodrigo, and Sabrina Carpenter speak to people of my generation, Gen Z, because they're around the same age as us, they're apart of our generation, and they came of age around the same time as us. I may not personally listen to any of their music, but plenty of people my age or slightly younger listen to them, especially women ♀︎ and queer folk. Truthfully, I've never listened to any of Deborah Gibson's music, or Debbie Gibson as she comes by now, but I might just check it out after this. After I'm finally done with this review.
The movie does have some pretty disorientating editing. That's probably the biggest flaw with the movie besides the big gapping plot hole that I spent several paragraphs complaining about. That little plot point introduced at the beginning of the movie that is never resolved at any point. They reuse a lot of shots in this movie. Often times in the same scene, just minutes or even seconds apart. I mentioned this in the caption or description underneath the screenshots I took of that airplane scene ✈️, but what they'll often to do, try to make it look like a different shot. But, it's not just the editing that's the problem here, it's also the shaky cam. There's a lot of shaky cam in this movie, especially whenever the Megalodon 🦈 or the octopus 🐙 attack something, and we see it from the humans' perspective. They just shook the camera and had the actors just flail around to make it look like something was happen and the humans were being tossed around by the force of these giant creatures, because they didn't have the money 💵 to afford a gimbal to actually shake the set so that the actors wouldn't have to fake it, they'd just be reacting to what's happening on set.
And if that wasn't enough, there's also these flashing lights every time there's an action scene, or an attack scene, anything intense that's going on in this movie, there are these awful flashing lights. I guess to make it seem more intense, you don't need that. But, even if none intense scenes, during montages, they still do flashing lights. I don't suffer from epilepsy, but all the flashing lights in this movie were getting to me, it was starting to bother me. It was starting to hurt my eyes. It's an eye sore, it's uncomfortable to look at. I really wish that this movie didn't have any of those flashing lights, this movie would've been so much better without, and I hope that none of the sequels have these same flashing lights in them otherwise I'm gonna lose it 😤! So, if you're someone who has epilepsy, you probably shouldn't watch this movie, or maybe you can watch this movie, just cover your eyes 🙈 around the parts where there are flashing lights. It's not as bad as The Incredibles 2 or some older anime (a lot of older anime actually), but there significant parts of this movie where there are no flashing lights.
I do gotta give this movie props for being one of the few movies back in the 2000s to depict an interracial relationship between an Asian man ♂︎ and a white woman ♂︎. Sure, there were other movies that depicted such a relationship before this like The One (2001), that one depicted an Asian man ♂︎ and a white woman ♂︎ as a married couple 💍, but this one goes all the way with it not only having them actually kiss on screen 😙 but also having sex. Granted, we don't see anything, we just see the beginning part of it and the end of it, this is most PG-13 sex scene I've ever seen in an R rated movie. I don't even know why this movie's rated R, it's pretty tame. Not just in terms of violence and sexual content, but also language. There's hardly any swearing at all in this movie. No F bombs, no C words, the one that begins with c and ends with t (you probably know which one I'm talking about). This movie could've easily been PG-13, but it just wasn't for some reason. What about this movie made the MPAA decide to give it an R rating I'm really curious? Was it the whale carcass 🐋? You'd still be able to show that in a PG-13 movie because it's not a human corpse, it's a whale carcass 🐋, and there's not even a lot of blood 🩸.
But the fact that they actually had that happen in the movie at all is pretty daring for the time. Even now, we still don't really see relationships between Asian men ♂︎ and white women ♀︎ (or women ♀︎ of any race really) depicted on screen in movies or TV shows or streaming service. If they depict an interracial relationship involving an Asian person, it's usually an Asian woman ♀︎ paired up with a white man ♂︎. Sometimes a black man ♂︎. But, back in the 2000s, it was a lot worse. For some reason, movies (and probably TV shows) back then had this thing about not having the Asian man ♂︎ kiss the white woman ♀︎ 😙. Even if they're supposed to be in a relationship together. Double Toasted 🍞 were the first ones to really point this out in their two-part roast of The One (2001), which depicted a marriage 💍 between a Chinese man 🇨🇳♂︎ and a white woman ♂︎, Carla Gugino played Jet Li's character, Gabe Law's wife in that movie. They're supposed to be a married couple 💍 in that movie, and yet, they never kiss 😙. Did they just think that audiences back then weren’t ready to see an Asian man and a white woman be intimate with each other beyond a hug 🫂? Were they afraid of offending the more racist people in the audience who were against interracial relationships, especially between an Asian man and a white woman? I don’t know. But the affect is that relationships between Asian men and white women in movies and TV shows just across as weird. Something just seemed off about them because of the filmmakers or the studio’s refusal to allow them to kiss on screen 😙. But this movie went against that by not only showing them kiss 😙 but also have sex. Even if you don’t actually see anything and this movie could’ve easily have been rated PG-13 because of how little of the sex scene you see. I used to think that scene was the hottest thing I had ever seen 😍 when I was a kid, that was the most explicit or scandalous thing I had seen up to that point. This long before I ever discovered porn 🔞. And despite how little the movie actually shows, it still gets to me. It still makes me feel a certain way 😍. Believe or not, this scene did speak to certain people because in the comments of the clip from this scene on YouTube, someone left a comment saying that they were a blonde white woman 👱♀️ (they made sure to point that out) who was married to a Japanese man 🇯🇵, and they weren’t used to seeing this type of relationship represented in media, especially not in a movie like this. That comment really spoke to me, it really stuck with me, and I decided to screenshot it and save it, just for this review. This is that comment below.
Who knew that a low budget Asylum movie would be more forward thinking and progressive than most big budget blockbusters at the time? But, although this movie was progressive and forward thinking in one aspect (showing an on-screen kiss 😙 between an Asian man and a white woman), it was quite regressive in another aspect: the casting. Despite Seiji being Japanese 🇯🇵, the actor who plays him, Victor Chao is not. He’s Chinese 🇨🇳, Chinese-American 🇺🇸🇨🇳 to be exact. This was not the first time Victor Chao was cast in a Japanese role 🇯🇵, and it would not be the last, as he also played a character in the Red Alert series, coincidentally also named Dr. Seiji Shimada. I wonder Jack Perez was a fan of the Red Alert games, and decided to name this character the same thing because of that. He also voiced Kenshi in Mortal Kombat X 🐉, who is supposed to be Japanese swordsman 🇯🇵. His weapon of choice is a katana, can’t get anymore Japanese 🇯🇵 than that. This is a common practice in Hollywood, more so back then now but even now it still happens, where Asian actors would be cast in any Asian role, regardless of whether it fit their real-life nationality or ethnicity. You got Chinese actors 🇨🇳 being cast as Japanese characters 🇯🇵, Japanese actors 🇯🇵 being cast as Chinese characters 🇨🇳, Korean actors 🇰🇷 being cast as either Japanese or Chinese characters 🇯🇵🇨🇳, Vietnamese actors 🇻🇳 being cast as any one of those three as well as Thai characters 🇹🇭 and Cambodian characters 🇰🇭, Thai actors 🇹🇭 being cast as all five of those plus Laotian characters 🇱🇦, and Filipino actors 🇵🇭 being cast all six of those plus Indonesian characters 🇮🇩. The list goes on, and applies to South Asians as well. Indian actors 🇮🇳 are always getting cast as Pakistanis 🇵🇰 and vis versa (Pakistani actors 🇵🇰 being cast as Indians 🇮🇳) in Hollywood movies. The most recent examples of this that I can think of are Wylde Pak, where a Filipino actress 🇵🇭 was hired to voice to a Korean-American character 🇺🇸🇰🇷, and Mortal Kombat 🐉 (2021), where Indonesian actor and martial artist 🇮🇩, Joe Taslim was cast as Bi-Han/Sub-Zero ❄️, even though the character is supposed to be Chinese 🇨🇳 and speaks Chinese 🇨🇳 earlier on in the prologue of the film. He’s reprising his role as Bi-Han in the sequel, Mortal Kombat II 🐉 (2026), but only after he’s been resurrected and transformed into Noob Saibot. The reason why I’m usually against this sort of thing is that is treats Asians as if they’re interchangeable, and they’re all the same, and there’s no tangible difference between them in terms of appearance, language, and culture. It’s sort of reflective of how a lot of white Americans 🇺🇸 (but even plenty of non-white Americans 🇺🇸) can’t tell the difference between different Asian people. They can’t tell the difference between a Japanese person 🇯🇵, a Chinese person 🇨🇳, and a Korean person 🇰🇷. They either lack the ability or interest to distinguish one Asian group from another. But, even if he’s a Chinese man 🇨🇳 playing a Japanese man 🇯🇵, I still like Vic Chao in the role, I think he was pretty good as Seiji. He’s a handsome guy, you could totally see why Emma would fall for him 🥰, and for what it’s worth, they do make a cute couple. Even if we don’t see Seiji in any of sequels. He doesn’t return in Mecha Shark 🦈, only Emma does. But, while I’m here, I do like Lamar. I really like Lamar. The actor who plays him, Sean Lawlor, is not super well known (at least not to me), but he did a good job as Lamar. He’s good at playing that mentor type to Emma, he was her professor, told her everything she knows, and she probably got some of her rebellious nature from Lamar. He’s also Irish 🇮🇪, and that makes him ten times better.
If you’re interested in watching this movie, if this review was enough to convince you to check it out despite all the bad things that have been said about it online, you can watch for free on YouTube. Like I said, The Asylum uploaded the entire thing on their official YouTube channel, including all of the sequels. They’re all in 1080p HD, so you don’t have to worry about watching it in 480p or 360p SD. Like you probably would if you were to watch this on any other YouTube channel, or on DVD 📀, which you can go out and buy if you want. But, I would still recommend watching the one that’s on the Asylum YouTube channel. That’s how I’m going to watch the sequels when I get to them. Even though I had to review this movie on its own for my 199th post, I still plan on reviewing the sequels as part of one large post. Unless I end up having a lot more to say about each one, then I’ll review them individually.
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