There may be plenty of fish in the sea, but film-savvy Rowan students got the biggest one to fry as part of their weekly Tuesday-night movie program. The Student University Programmers (SUP) held a screening of “The Meg” in the Student Center Ballroom.
Directed by Jon Turteltaub, “The Meg” depicts the consequences of a scientific exploration mission into the depths of the Marianas Trench. Shrouded by a hydrogen sulfide thermocline, this territory is home to thousands of marine species never before encountered by humans, including the megalodon, an 18-meter shark believed to have been extinct for 2.6 million years, considered to be the largest fish species to ever live on Earth. When marine rescuer Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) and oceanographer Suyin (Li Bingbing) unwittingly unleash this giant terror into waters off the Chinese coast, they and the rest of their science team embark on a mission to protect the world from this toothy terror. The film currently has a rating of 45%, “rotten,” on aggregate movie rating website Rotten Tomatoes.
Freshman radio, television and film major Marcus Nolan gave the film a decent review.
“It went against cliches a lot,” Nolan said of the film, “in the sense that everyone’s seen a lot of shark movies and knows what’s coming. They did a lot of expectation subversion where you expect something to happen and they did a misdirect to you, such as who survived and who died. If you think they’re going to die, they survived, but only for a minute, which I liked a lot.”
Nolan, who is often involved in creating and producing his own films, found certain aspects of the storytelling inspirational.
“It was some nice writing for an action movie,” Nolan said. “Sometimes people get used to just one-liners or just one action sequence after another. I would definitely aspire to that kind of creation as far as it being well-written.”
Sophomore law and justice major Taylor Jachts viewed the film as an entertaining B-movie of monstrous proportion.
“I think ‘The Meg’ was very funny and very stupid, but I enjoyed it,” Jachts said. “It’s the kind of thing that did not benefit my life at all, but did not not benefit my life at all. I have to say that the predictability was exquisite.”
However, Jachts did have complimentary words regarding the film’s futuristic concepts.
“All of the tech stuff did look really cool,” Jachts said. “All of the submarines and other aquatic machines were designed beautifully.”
She also found the event’s coordination commendable.
“I thought it was enjoyable,” she said. “I liked that SUP was raffling off a pizza.”
Nolan had one final important note on the quality of the film: “The dog survived,” he said, “which was nice.”
SUP’s final movie nights of the semester will include screenings of “Mission Impossible: Fallout” this upcoming Tuesday and “The Polar Express” the following Tuesday.
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