The odds on Mega Shark verses Giant Octopus…

The trailer I posted earlier today is simply wonderful, but really, how many dozens (hundreds) of times have we been burned by stuff like this? Let’s take a jaundiced eye at the prospects of whether this will live up to even a fraction of its promise.

Reasons to despair:

1) It’s made by Asylum, a firm that doesn’t exactly have a great track record. Their Cloverfield knock-off, for example, was unbearably boring and featured about ten seconds of monster ‘action.’
2) History suggests that the CGI budget for this film is probably exceedingly low. The work here looks decent enough, but the question is, does the trailer give us a significant hunk of every CGI shot in the movie? Is there three or four minutes max of giant monster action, max, surrounded by 86 minutes of Deborah Gibson and Lorenzo Lamas?
3) The film stars Deborah Gibson and Lorenzo Lamas.
4) Specifically, there’s Lamas’ track record in this genre (Raptor Island, the killer shark dud Dark Waters…)
5) A regular problem with these things is the underwater scenes and fights. When there’s nothing to scale the monster against, as in the brief bits of tussling we see, they look just like normal-sized animals.

The good:

1) Hope springs eternal, and it’s a giant shark / octopus film.
2) Whether they had the money to pull it off or not–again, largely a matter of how many minutes of monster stuff they could afford–they at least get the central idea of the genre, which nearly all these *koff* SyFy-style movies miss: Giant monsters have to wreak mass destruction, or there’s not much point to things.

This is why It Came From Beneath the Sea remains the great undersea giant monster movie, because Harryhausen’s wonderful monster quintipus pulls down ships and attacks the Golden Gate Bridge and other feats of oversized mayhem. Say what you will about how ridiculous this trailer’s action looks, the fact is, the monsters are chowing on (again) the Golden Gate Bridge, jet planes both commercial and military, battle ships, etc. They GET IT.

I’m not holding my breath that this will be great, and again, history indicates it will most likely be massively disappointing. If it’s watchable, that will be enough. I guess it comes down to this: If there is seven to ten minutes of monster stuff in the movie, concentrated in scenes long enough to entertain–say, thirty seconds to a minute each–instead of the occasional five-second shot before we go back to Lamas and Gibson, we will be happy viewers. Let’s keep our fingers crossed here.

[By the way, I thought 2002’s Megalodon was fairly decent, certainly compared to the abysmal Shark Hunter or Shark Attack 3 (which I didn’t find as entertaining awful as many). If this is that good, I’ll be well satisfied.]
  • Ericb

    Well, their marketing seems to be working. In the past 24 hours I’ve seen mention of this movie pop up on 4 different websites, one of which was a science site more interested in the octopus aspect than the monster movie aspect.

  • fish eye no miko

    jet planes both commercial

    The scene with the guy in the plane is AWESOME. There are a lot of things to be concerned about when flying, but “attack by giant mega shark” probably never crossed that poor guy’s mind.

  • fish eye no miko

    I’ve got a question, Ken: When I look at the Main Page or the Author Archives, there are nest pictures, but on these pages, the pictures don’t show up.. Is that intentional? It’s fine, it doesn’t bug me or anything, I’m just curious as to why it happens. Thanks.

  • itsmenotyou

    By what Ericb said, maybe this will be a cult flick like that beautifully horrible Dead-Alive/Braindead (whatever).

  • Those “nest pictures” are intended to appear on the front page in lieu of an excerpt when the item is current. Pictures must be manually entered in a different fashion to actually appear on the piece. However, the ‘excerpt’ photos also appear, as you note, in the archive lists, etc.

  • fish eye no miko

    Ah, ok. Thanks, Ken. ^_^

  • fish eye no miko

    Wait… looking at my question… “nest pictures”? LOL! Oh, God. I think I meant “neat” pictures… Oh, lordy…

    To actually be on topic: I kinda wish they’re gone with a giant or colossal squid instead. Yes, those are both real animals, and they’re different (giant squid are longer, colossal squid have bigger bodies). Though I notice that they say the two animals in this are ancient animals that get thawed out, while the squid I’m talking about are modern. Though that could work, too. A modern-day colossal squid is pitted against a prehistoric shark… Oooohh… I like it.

  • Got an advance look at the film last night and can tell you right now that if they’d had a bigger f/x budget this film would be a guaranteed instant cult classic. To address your bullet points:

    Reasons to despair:

    1) Even a blind squirrel finds a nut. One thing I never felt watching was boredom.

    2) This is the only thing that holds the movie down. No, not everything had been given away in the traiiler. Most of it, but not all of it. CGI is cheap and falls into that category of never looking completely realistic or totally fake. I kind of put it in that category as Gamera 3 where the action happens in short spurts early on followed by a long stretch without anything other than stuff that is implied but never shown (the giant octopus reportedly gets into Tokyo Bay and goes all It Came From Beneath the Sea on the city), and finally a whole lot during the climax. If they’d had the budget to show everything they wanted to this would have been epic.

    3) Debbie Gibson clearly knows what kind of movie she’s appearing in and appeared to be having a blast. She’s positively giddy throughout.

    4) This is the most inspired I’ve seen Lorenzo Lamas in ages too. Dressed like Steven Seagal, chewing scenery with gusto.

    5) There is that element from time to time. Most of the time they’re attacking planes, bridges, oil rigs, or tussling with the US sub fleet.

    The good:

    1) You get a mega shark and a giant octopus and they do deliver whenever they get screen time.

    2) The guy who wrote and directed the film – HE GETS IT. The tone, the pacing, the sometimes over-the-top energy and enthusiasm on the part of the cast – HE GETS IT. He knows he’s making a campy b-movie and does so without going all “wink, wink” at the audience as so many filmmakers do.

    Took a break from writing my review to post this. I’ll be giving it a solid 3 1/2 out of 5.

  • Ha, I knew you’d be point man on this, Scott. Thanks for the scoop! Now I’m really excited.

    The web seems ablaze over this film. Maybe it does well enough that they can make a second one with a higher budget. In the meantime, though, I can only wait for my copy to come in.

  • The Rev. D.D.

    Oh man, Foy liked it? There’s a ringing endorsement if I ever heard one.

    I am all kinds of excited to get my hands on this movie now…

  • My positive review is now up at Dread Central. A few mild spoilers but not giving away much that the trailer doesn’t. Here’s the link: http://www.dreadcentral.com/reviews/mega-shark-vs-giant-octopus-2009

  • BT

    Not to be a stickler or anything Ken, but your typo concerning the name of the ’50s Harryhausen movie makes that movie seem like it belongs in an entirely different genre, if you get my drift.

  • Well, thanks for, er, bringing it up, BT.

  • fish eye no miko

    o/~ “Darling it’s better/Down where it’s wetter/Under the sea…” o/~

  • Insert Will Ferrell into this Mega Shark movie and it instantly becomes a “blockbuster comedy hit”

  • SuperVepr

    @fish eye- I have to agree. Mega-squid strike me as far more sinister than the friendly octopi.