The Meg is a giant shark movie, so you’d expect it’d be pretty gruesome. Alas, it’s also a big budget studio movie, so you know what that means. It’s gotta be PG-13 for the studio to spend all that money to bring a giant megalodon to life. Even director Jon Turteltaub regrets that he couldn’t quite go all the way with the shark carnage (although he goes as far as he can).

“Knowing that this is for Bloody Disgusting, I am so disappointed the film wasn’t more bloody or disgusting,” Turteltaub told us. “My wife is glad about it and I’m glad my kids can see the movie, but the number of really horrifying, disgusting and bloody deaths we had lined up that we didn’t get to do is tragic. There was some really good gak that didn’t survive to the final cut.”

Turteltaub actually filmed some gory deaths, but during post-production the decision was made that The Meg would be appropriate for teenagers.

“We shot or even did a lot of visual effects for [gory scenes],” Turteltaub said. “We just realized there’s no way we’re keeping this PG-13 if we show this. It’s too fun a movie to not let people who don’t like blood and people who are under, say, 14 years old into the theater. I was very hesitant to cut out a lot of blood and gore. I wouldn’t have if I thought it was wrecking the story but it wasn’t. It still looked okay. I’ll sit down privately with your audience and take them through some really nasty gak.”

And don’t get your hopes up for an unrated DVD or Blu-ray, because all of those gory deaths require visual effects that would be too expensive to justify.

“The problem nowadays with those unrated DVDs is you used to have a bunch of scenes that were easy to either shoot or leave on the cutting room floor,” Turteltaub said. “Now to finish a scene costs millions in VFX. No one’s going to be spending millions of dollars just to have a little extra bonus footage.”

So since we’ll never see it, Turteltaub told us about one gory death scene. The character still dies, but not as graphically.

“I don’t want to spoil too much but there was a death in the movie of one of the leading characters where you thought he was still alive and you realized it was only his head,” Turteltaub said. “Then the reveal that that was all that was left was awesome, but needless to say quite a few people told us it was creepy and I had to cut it.”

That being said, don’t worry that The Meg is too tame. The Meg still eats a lot of people, and destroys other marine life. At least whale gore is perfectly fine in a PG-13 film.

“Oddly enough, the ratings people don’t mind chunks of whale as much as they mind chunks from a neck,” Turteltaub said. “Yet, it’s still right on the edge. I have to say there was a bite missing from a whale, it’s really gross and I think it looks really cool.”

And if you’ve seen the trailer, don’t worry too hard about Pippin the dog.

“All I can say is anyone who knows anything about movies knows that you can kill 10,000 people and the audience doesn’t care, but you harm one dog and everyone writes a letter,” Turteltaub said. “While shooting, we went through about 15 dogs. That’s just a joke.”

 stanman wrote:
When I first read the thread title I thought it was a Family Guy reference.



"Shut up Meg!"

Turteltaub actually filmed some gory deaths, but during post-production the decision was made that The Meg would be appropriate for teenagers.

“Now to finish a scene costs millions in VFX. No one’s going to be spending millions of dollars just to have a little extra bonus footage.”

 nels1031 wrote:

“Now to finish a scene costs millions in VFX. No one’s going to be spending millions of dollars just to have a little extra bonus footage.”

I know feth all about VFX, but its crazy that it still seems so expensive.

I get that it more and more realistic with every passing year, but I figured the technology and expertise to create high quality or close to high quality VFX would be abundant and cheap at this point. Like I said, I know nothing about the tech, but I know that a lot of other tech gets more and more affordable and accessible as time go by. Seems to go the opposite direction for VFX.

WE GAVE IT A : B-

What would summer be without a killer shark movie? Ever since Jaws attacked the box office and the beaches of Amity in 1975, Hollywood has been trying to duplicate its giddy Great White mayhem, chumming the multiplex waters with B-movie wannabes. Two years ago, we got The Shallows. Last summer, we had 47 Meters Down. Now we’re treated to the deliriously goofy sight of bullet-headed Cockney badass Jason Statham going mano a mano with not just any deep-sea predator, but a 75-foot-long megalodon — a prehistoric killing machine long thought to be as extinct as the woolly mammoth.

Through a fluke of science too absurd to explain (the movie only half-heartedly tries), this Jurassic shark has slipped through a crack in the ocean floor off the coast of China to wreak havoc on an underwater research facility and its hubristic billionaire benefactor (a smug-but-not-smug-enough Rainn Wilson). Since this is a Statham vehicle, his can-do salvage specialist character, Jonas Taylor, is given a tragic and perfunctory backstory that offers up a chance of manly redemption. It’s pure nonsense. But if that’s the kind of thing that’s going to trip you up, well, there’s a wonderful Mr. Rogers documentary playing two doors down.

I’ll be honest, The Meg isn’t nearly as good (or as white-knuckle gory) as the movie I had imagined in my head. The CGI is mediocre at best, and a romantic subplot with a single-mom scientist (Li Bingbing) is sentimental hooey. But it is ridiculous, cheesy popcorn fun. And Statham, God bless him, knows exactly what kind of guilty pleasure he’s signed on for — Sharknado with a bigger budget and a much bigger monster. B-

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
It's been said that you can tell if a movie with Jason Statham will be good if and only if: he drives a car and shoots people. This looks like it might disprove that.

Transformers but it's a Dog: Boy finds robot dog while doing normal boy stuff like BMX stunting in a junkyard.
"Just turn it in, it's a robot, it has no feelings!"
"It's shaped like a dog, it MUST have feelings!"

MAC and Me but MAC's a Gun: Little Jimmy has a hard life, he's adopted, his brother just got out of prison, and they're on the run because he found an alien space gun in an abandoned building and used it to shoot some guys trying to threaten his brother... and possibly a cop. The producers of Stranger Things bring us a heartwarming tale that so far looks like it plays out exactly as if the kid had found an M16.

 Captain Joystick wrote:
Saw it in the theatre with a friend, he was very careful about picking the moving chairs (they're called D-Box here, but are called full ATX or something in the next town over!) and ended up dissapointed that they apparently didn't bother making a motion track for the movie.

(snip)

Transformers but it's a Dog: Boy finds robot dog while doing normal boy stuff like BMX stunting in a junkyard.
"Just turn it in, it's a robot, it has no feelings!"
"It's shaped like a dog, it MUST have feelings!"

MAC and Me but MAC's a Gun: Little Jimmy has a hard life, he's adopted, his brother just got out of prison, and they're on the run because he found an alien space gun in an abandoned building and used it to shoot some guys trying to threaten his brother... and possibly a cop. The producers of Stranger Things bring us a heartwarming tale that so far looks like it plays out exactly as if the kid had found an M16.

 Ouze wrote:
We got the DBOX seats for the Magnificent Seven remake. I can't recommend these seats at any price, even for free (and they're not, they're like $20) - they are best described as really distracting, I think. Probably be amazing for gaming but a bad fit for movies.

 Ouze wrote:
Better than Jaws, oh boy. That's a reach imo.