The Meg vs JAWS

Cafe Society
#1

Saw the Meg last night. It was ok but nothing like JAWS. You can tell they try to do some homage to JAWS but I see some critical differences.

  1. Jaws was a horror movie, the Meg sci fi and action/adventure.

  2. No compelling characters in the Meg. Looking for a version of Quinn.

  3. In the Meg the humans who fight the shark seem to always have the upper hand with advanced weapons and backup while in Jaws the humans have to improvise.

  4. The biggie - NO COOL MUSIC! Where was the equivalent to"daaaaa… dump, daa… dump, da da da da da"? All they had was a bad chinese rendition of “Hey Mickey”.

Then their is the whole fact the movie was a joint Chinese/American production so China is featured as the smart, advanced culture. The buffoon was a white american.

What did you all think of The Meg?

#2

I saw it a while ago and pretty much all I remember about it is the BLATANT pandering to the Chinese audience. I HATE that.

#3

And the blatant pandering to American audiences in almost every other movie, do you hate that as well?

#4

I’ve not seen “the Meg” but, come on…“Jaws” is just about perfect (though I don’t see it as a horror movie, much more of a character-driven psychological thriller.)

#5

No, because I’m an American (Fuck yeah).

#6

They obviously are pushing for the international audience.

I find it interesting that they showed Thailand as this backwater country while China was so advanced.

#7

No, they are pushing very specifically for a Chinese audience.

American movie-makers have realized that China is an emergent - and very profitable - market for Hollywood. There’s been a noticeable trend over the past ten years to deliberately tailor movies that pander to Chinese audiences in the hopes of increasing profits. It is now very common to see movies of every genre that have the characters relocate to China (or some other Asian city) for no apparent reason.

Probably the worst example of this recently was Transformers 4. It was funded in part by Chinese sponsors, and you can see that it includes Chinese product placement in many scenes. There was another example in an Iron Man movie, which included alternate scenes where Iron Man visits China. IIRC, even the Chinese thought it was stupid and ham-fisted.

For better or worse, ‘The Meg’ represents the future of cinema. Hollywood won’t stop chasing those Chinese tickets any time soon.

#8

All I can say is Jaws was a nearly perfect movie. I haven’t seen “The Meg” but based on what I’m hearing I probably won’t. And besides, if Jaws had never been made, there would be no Meg.

#9

Or Sharknadoes 1-5 either. Thanks, Spielberg! :smiley:

#10

“nearly” perfect? :dubious:

#11

*Jaws *is Alfred Hitchcock’s best film.

#12

Picked the DVD from my netflix que so in a sense it was free.