When a new monster movie is being compared to the genre classics, you can hopefully take that as a sign that it’s doing something right. Of course, seeing how The Meg is about a giant prehistoric shark that returns to terrorize humans in the modern era, perhaps it was inevitable that audiences would notice similarities to a certain pair of hugely popular Spielberg-helmed pics.
In a recent interview with director Jon Turteltaub, the filmmaker acknowledged that his feature has frequently prompted comparisons to Steven Spielberg’s, while contemplating what exactly these responses could mean.
“A lot of people compare the movie to Jaws and Jurassic Park, yet no one has ever compared me to Steven Spielberg, so I have no idea what this means. Jurassic Park was so interesting because it’s a time-travel movie where the people don’t travel through time, the monster does, and that’s the same story here.”
While Jaws is hardly the only shark movie released before now, the influential blockbuster remains the high-water mark for the genre, by which pretty much every deadly fish film – from Deep Blue Sea to The Shallows to Pirahna – has been measured since. Jurassic Park, meanwhile, casts a similar shadow over blockbusters and monster movies in recent decades, making neither comparison particularly surprising.
While it would be a tall order for The Meg to match the thrills of either of those Spielberg classics, here’s hoping the film can at least bring enough ideas of its own to the table to stand out in this very competitive field of flicks about humans trying not to get eaten by non-humans.
For what it’s worth, early reactions to Turteltaub’s movie have been reasonably positive, suggesting a purely enjoyable popcorn flick that doesn’t exactly aim for high art but fares rather well on its own terms. We’ll see if The Meg can sink or swim with a wider audience when it’s released on August 10th.
