What is hardest to understand about the new sequel to the 2008 movie “The Meg”, “Meg 2: The Trench” about a prehistoric shark called a Megalodon, is that this film is so bad that the producers guaranteed that there will never be a third installment. Why write a script this bad, and then spend millions of dollars on a sequel that ruins any chance of an ongoing franchise? All because of one bad movie, millions of dollars will now be lost on a rushed, bad idea, when all they had to do is create about three more script re-writes. The producers probably thought, it’s been 5 years since the original, let’s strike now when people still remember the last movie, forgoing any thoughts of writing a good script first.

For this screenplay, there is no real story, no connectivity, the transitions make no sense and are just excuses for action scenes with characters flying in and out and new insane creatures that come out of nowhere, including a giant Octopus and killer lizard creatures that are never explained. The plot involves some woman in their scientific party who betrays the other scientists, several whom were in the last (and much better) movie, with the exception of actress Bingbing Li. Bingbing Li was killed off for this sequel and perhaps she is the only actor who actually read the script and correctly decided to run for her life.

The motivations of the characters, the logic of what is going on, and even the special effects are all poorly offered within this film. For this sequel, there are not nearly enough giant shark scenes, and the scenes that do have the shark, are frequently too dark to see anything impressive. One reason for this is most likely because there was not enough budget to create special effects as good as the last movie, so they have way too many scenes at night and underwater, so they could save money.

Actor Jason Statham once again appears in this sequel and this time around has some karate scenes, along with young actress Shuya Sophia Cai, who stole the previous movie with her amazing cuteness. Unfortunately, there are not enough scenes with her in this sequel, but once again she steals this movie as well, even though it is stunningly bad.

We have all seen too many lucrative sequels destroyed by a bad screenplay, once again showing how mandatory and how difficult it is to create the story first, making sure it is great, before spending so many millions on a bad film that in this case, has wrecked another movie franchise.

The Rotten Tomatoes for this shark sequel are a correctly low 26% and I agree with this number and recommend seeing the first movie and miss this one.

In the history of movies, it has been rare that two highly advertised mega movies have been released in the same weekend. This time around with Oppenheimer and Barbie, the interest has been so high that the names “Oppenbarbie” and “Barbenheimer”, were created, based on the order the masses are planning to see these two new films. The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for both movies are also very high with 94% for Oppenheimer and 90% for Barbie. The 94% for the 3-hour Oppenheimer makes some sense, but the 90% for a mostly bad Barbie film, is crazy.

Due to curiously, this blog, and the insane high ratings for Barbie, I decided to waste two hours, hoping that the trailers and the news reports about this film did not show what this movie was really all about. Unfortunately, the trailers are mostly accurate, showing what is a ridiculous series of disconnected scenes, cartoon-like sets, and even some unexpected musical numbers. This film on the whole looked like it could mark some level of career suicide for both Margo Robbie and Ryan Gosling, yet another reason why the 90% ratings make no sense here.

There are some honorable attempts at providing some very good messages about life and death and how difficult it can be to be a woman – including the speech from America Ferrera, that practically steals the entire movie. None of the attempted messages and camp absurdity are enough to save a screenplay written by husband and wife, Gretta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, where it seems they were commissioned by a major studio to complete the impossible task of – “writing a screenplay about the Barbie Doll, because name recognition will auto-create the box office”. Most of the attempts at humor failed, realized from the very few laughs in the large audience I was in. Baumbach and Gerwig, who also directed this film, knew that making a movie like this straight would never work, so they went in the only direction they could, but some movie ideas are impossible to save.

Other actors that appear in this movie include, Kate McKinnon, whose great comedic talents are mostly wasted, the same for Will Ferrell, Dua Lipa, Simu Liu, Issa Rae, and Rhea Perlman.

With the release of Oppenheimer and Barbie on the same weekend, it will be interesting to see how the box office plays out, as now for well over a year, the world is past the movie theater disaster that was created by the Pandemic of 2020.

My rating for this movie is 50% and only for young girls who have had Barbie dolls, never for adults, other than those with sleeping disorders or who see this movie after smoking weed.