Sharks of Cinema

After seeing The Meg last week, I wondered why such a mediocre film had been so popular for two weekends running.  So I did a little research.

I started by watching the original shark movie again.  I'd seen it a couple times, but not  recently.

"Jaws" has a plot that holds together.  It opens in a beach city whose economy relies on summer tourist traffic.  A great white shark wanders into the area, develops a taste for swimmers and boaters and decides to stick around.  While the body count rises, the mayor resists warning tourists for fear losing business.  After inadequate efforts to catch and kill the shark, a serious attempt is launched in the action-filled third act, when the sheriff, a scientist and an old sea salt take off in a rickety boat to do battle with the piscine predator.  

The shark is not seen for much of the movie.  Its approach is signaled by a John Williams score with a thrumming two-note warning -- duh-dah-duh-dah-duh-dah -- that teaches viewers to dread what's coming.  This is a subtle but effective (and economical) bit that never would make it into a film today.

"The Meg" is different.  It opens with a years-past, deadly event that is not understood and that preshadows the appearance of a much, much bigger and much, much scarier shark, albeit a completely fictional one and one that for some reason always pops up near a small research station with scientists and a designated action hero. (Really, the Pacific Ocean is quite a bit larger than the water around Amity Island, the setting for "Jaws.") These devices help "The Meg" get to its killing business faster and to amp the action from there, but with plot contrivances that undermine the credibility of virtually every scene.


Context

In 1975 "Jaws" broke new ground in at least three ways.  

  -- It introduced sharks as dreaded predators, perhaps the first aquatic animals to gain that distinction since "Moby Dick."

  --It was a mainstream hit, not a B-movie, like previous horror films.

  -- It was the first summer blockbuster in an industry whose summer season traditionally had been its least profitable.  
          (The first Star Wars movie, two summers later, cemented the summer blockbuster trend and led, over time, to superhero movies that initially were summer releases and now have become year-round, big-selling favorites.)


There have been many shark shows since then, starting with three Jaws sequels of declining popularity.

Given this, my first thought was that the "The Meg" attracted dedicated fans who flock almost habitually to summertime shark movies, no matter their quality.

But then I did some more research.  I think another factor is at work.



We're All Cynics Now

Something has happened to shark movies over time.  

Yes, there have been ones that  that played the story straight.  The most recent, 2016's "The Shallows," starred Blake Lively and got much better reviews than "The Meg." (For one thing, it had a more believable story.)  It was profitable, selling $119 million in tickets worldwide.


By contrast, "The Meg" has generated revenues of $370 million in just over three weeks.   

What seems to have happened is that the straight shark film has, well, jumped the shark.  The new genre is comedy/outlandish/horror shark movies.

Consider the variations.  

In 2003, Dreamworks (the studio run by "Jaws" director Stephen Spielberg) released "Shark Tale," a computer-generated piece featuring a vegetarian shark -- a friendly shark, if you will.

Other film and television variations followed with the following titles:  

Spring Break Shark Attack

Shark King 

Ghost Shark 

2-Headed Shark Attack (and a 3-headed sequel)

Jurassic Shark 

Snow Shark 

Sand Sharks 

Shark in Venice

Swamp Shark

And, of course, 2013 brought us "Sharknado," which I assumed was a wacky one-off.  But, as happens so often, I was wrong.  This year, the ScyFy channel released "Sharknado 6."  

There is now a reliable audience for improbable shark films, including really cheesy ones that are modern examples of a phenomenon that used to be called "camp." Audiences seem to watch because they enjoy being in on the jokes.

What else could be expected from an industry that in 2006 shelled out $33 million to make a film called "Snakes on a Plane?"

MovieMonday: The Meg

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

H.L. Mencken, a cranky newsman, wrote something like this 92 years ago today.  And he didn't even get a chance to see "The Meg," the top-selling movie the weekend before last and the second-best seller in the weekend just ended.

Let's talk about this mess.

The story is an action-packed tale about scientists chasing a giant shark to save mankind.  Their prey, a megalodon, aka meg, has been extinct for 2.5 million years.  Except maybe it hasn't.  

(Megalodons compare to filmdom's previously dreaded great white sharks as a petroleum tanker truck compares to a motorcycle.) 

After two deep-water rescues, a research team and a studly superhero discover that a meg has escaped its millions-year hideout underneath the floor of the Marianas Trench, seven miles under the Pacific Ocean.  When the meg surfaces it is not blinded by light after millions of years in total dark, and it has suffered no decompression on its way to the surface.  The meg is only hungry.

Its first prey -- yay, Greenpeace -- is a boat of poachers collecting shark fins for an Asian specialty dish.  The perhaps naive hero team takes its own, same-sized boat out to inspect the pieces of the other boat floating on the water.  A brave scientist goes down in a heavy plastic shark cage, ready to confront the meg, but of course does not succeed. 

As is traditional in such stories, the challenges get greater and greater and greater.  Lesser characters die nobly while the stars of the movie endure.  You can guess at the ending.

The star, Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham), is a British version of Dwayne Johnson and a popular veteran of many action films.  His character has spent the last five years nursing regrets and many beers on a beach in Thailand, but these have not diminished his buff torso or willingness to jump into the ocean in a wetsuit with a spear gun and without diving fins to do battle with a ginormous foe.

Other characters include a despicable billionaire (but I repeat myself) who has funded the research team; the team's noble Chinese director, his comely and brave daughter, and her darling eight-year-old child); an intrepid submarine pilot who is Taylor's ex-wife; plus two diverse crews of serious/wacky/angry/noble men, each with a two-dimensional personality.  

If this is the sort of movie you like, you probably have seen it.  Let me know what you think.

Next:  "Jaws" and What Followed

MovieMonday: Crazy Rich Asians

The preview above gives the general dimensions of this romantic comedy with an Asian cast and setting.  What it does not show is how much fun the movie is.  

The setup is this:  A Chinese-American economics professor, Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), is invited by her boyfriend, Nick Young (Henry Goldman), to join him on a trip to Singapore, where she can meet his family and he is to be the best man at his friend's wedding.

Along the way, Rachel gets inklings that Nick's net worth is somewhat greater than she had assumed, given his job as a history professor.  

When they get to Singapore, the lid comes off.   Rachel visits her lively college BFF, Go Peik Lin (humorist Awkwafina), who lives in a fancy family house decorated like Versailles but who is gobsmacked to learn that Rachel's boyfriend is the Nick Young, whose family, she says is "not just posh and snobby, but snoshy."

As Rachel meets Nick's relatives and friends, viewers are treated to the glitzy side of Singapore.  Characters spend lavishly on travel, jewelry and fashion.  There are pre-wedding bachelorette and stag events that make American versions look subdued.  There are many sweeping camera shots of the bright lights of Singapore at night. (Seems clear the country is eager for its star turn here.)

The essential tension of the plot is whether April and Nick will marry.  His severe and duty-obsessed mother, (Michelle Yeoh), is adamant that she does not want a Chinese American daughter-in-law.  This conflict is handled credibly by all the actors and carries the story along.

But back to the fun.  The director, Jon M. Chu, seems to have been given a free hand to adapt a popular novel of the same name.  He and his script writers stripped the story to the basics and loaded it up with humor. Peik Lin's parents and siblings are delightful fun, as are Nick's two ne'er-do-well cousins.   Further laughs also are woven into many scenes -- as when we see what Peik Lin carries in her car trunk and when hilarious distractions arise during Rachel and Nick's pivotal scene toward the end of the movie.  All well done.

The effect is a sincere story wrapped in a wacky package, enjoyable to watch and with plenty of silliness (and, yes, subthemes that say that money isn't everything.)  

Warner Bros. outbid Netflix to make this film and is promoting the heck out of it.  There have been very well-received preview showings in scattered secondary markets, and it is opening this Wednesday -- not Thursday or Friday -- in anticipation of a big, big weekend at the box office.


This movie seems to matter a great deal to Asians in the film industry.  The last Asian-American film story was "The Joy Luck Club," a 1993 film about Chinese mothers and daughters; Disney's "Mulan," five years later, also was about Asian themes.

The difference here is that "Crazy Rich Asians" is a traditional story about family squabbles that happens to have a Chinese cast; Capulet v. Montague conflicts over children's love interests are common across all cultures, after all.  

If CRA finds a big market, as the glossy "Empire" television series has, maybe studios will be willing to finance traditional stories staged in different communities.  About time, I'd say.

Note

Before I saw the film, I started reading the book that was the source material.  I don't say this often, but here goes:  The movie is better.

MovieMonday: Fanney Khan

This weekend's big movies were the sixth  "Mission Impossible" and the second film in two years about grown-up Christopher Robin, Winnie the Pooh's boy.  I wasn't interested in either of them.

So I saw my first Bollywood production instead.

The film is mostly about a 50-year-old man whose youthful singing career never took off and who wants his much-loved daughter to succeed where he did not.  He gave her the name of a legendary Indian diva of years past and taught her what he knows.  The energetic dad, Prashant (Anil Kapoor), will do anything it takes to assure that his and his child's dream comes true.  

His daughter, Lata (Pihu Sand) has the singing and dancing chops, but her plus-size physique is mocked by audiences.  This, and her somewhat inexplicable anger at her father, does not diminish Prashant's enthusiasm.  

Of course he faces barriers.  He loses his job when his factory closes.  His steadfast but practical wife, Kavita (Divya Dutta), points out that it will take 30 years of saving to finance and release an album of their daughter's music.  

But Prashant persists.  He takes a new job driving a taxi, and when a famous singer named Baby Singh (glamor-puss Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) plops into his back seat he sees an opportunity, has an idea and runs with it.  

Coincidences pile upon contrivances and more contrivances, and on and on it goes until the extremely unlikely feel-good ending.

Kapoor's energy and enthusiasm carry the plot, and he is ably assisted by his loyal work friend, Adhir (Rajkummar Rao), and neighbors and colleagues, all of whom wish him well.  The themes are family loyalty and the cooperation of friends, plus more than a soupcon of lecturing against the kind of abuse Hollywood actresses have had to endure over the years.  It suggests that the Indian movie-going public is more traditional than the American one, not that there's anything wrong with that.

I chose the movie because its plot seemed clear, because I don't speak Hindi, and because I believed, correctly, that the audience would be immigrants. But there were subtitles, and a good bit of the dialogue was in English.  In India, it seems people move back and forth comfortably between local languages and English; interesting to know.

As expected, there were many musical numbers backed up by well-choreographed dance routines featuring professional hoofers and neighborhood children.  

In short, I enjoyed the film, but its plot is way, way over the top.

For this we cannot blame Bollywood. The script is a rewrite of "Everybody's Famous," a 2000 Belgian film that was nominated for an Oscar in the foreign film category but found no audience in the US.

By contrast, "Fanney Khan" may do better.  It opened Friday, in India and on 64 US screens -- 11 in the California, nine in New Jersey.  (The US had about 4 million Indian immigrants in 2015, and no doubt more have arrived since then.) In fact, two Indian films are among the 100 most well-attended in the US so far this year, and this without any apparent promotion to the non-immigrant population.  


Same Old, Same Old Cinema

If I weren't in Nashville, a city that has a good-sized Indian population and a multi-plex with too many screens, I wouldn't have had a chance to find a film like "Fanney Khan."

We could use more variety in the films available at American multiplexes.  The current situation favors the usual genres -- superhero, action, vulgar comedy and horror -- with sequels and more sequels until once-novel ideas have played themselves out. 
It gets dull, and if you don't live near a good-sized city with an art house, that's all there is to see. 

In some ways, the situation resembles the bad old days of American cinema, when a few big studios controlled not just the making of films but also their distribution to studio-owned theaters.  After several tries over decades, the vertically integrated system was busted up in 1948 as a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.  

Now we have a situation that feels effectively the same:  Big studios release their big films onto many screens controlled by a few theater chains, and small studios/distributors release smaller films onto fewer screens, based on their estimations of audience interest in various locales.  

But sometimes you don't know what will interest you until something unexpected comes along.  It takes remarkable luck and/or post-Sundance word-of-mouth for an unusual movie to make its way into broad distribution.  (Yes, this may matter more to me because I  am TV-phobic.)  In a world with hundreds of film schools and languages and flavors of drama and humor and documentaries -- more of the same feels rather limiting.