Meg 2: The Trench (2023)

The Meg is back, and he has brought his little friends!  It has been five years since Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) fought the Meg.  In the intervening years, he married Suyin, Suyin died, and he is now the single father of teenaged Meiying (Sophia Cai).  He has also taken up the fight against oceanic polluters, performing wildly dangerous feats to provide proof to the authorities.  With his good guy character firmly established, the story can begin.   There is a captive Meg in a grand enclosure.  To make things more interesting, it has birthed several more Megs.  Yeah, it's fine, because they are training them.

Of course, going to the trench where the Meg was found is routine these days.  However, on this particular trip, the submariners discovered a secret mining operation!  Secret!  Sure.  The miners are not at all happy about this and set about killing Jonas' submariners.  Inevitably, the minisubs are rendered useless and the reduced number of submariners must walk to the mine.  So, they had suits that would withstand this pressure?  Okay, fine.  They manage to infiltrate the mine but are trapped. To save the day, Jonas swims from an airlock to another airlock.  No suit!  He's just that tough.  Sigh.

When the surviving submariners return to the surface, they must face armed mercenaries as they race toward the mainland.  Once there, the meg's little friends - doglike dinosaurs who prove quite good at running on land despite millennia spent deep beneath the ocean - charge through a beach resort, killing whomever they catch.  Sigh.

Once again, Jonas is called upon to kill the Meg.  No, make that three Megs.  No problem.  He has 4 explosive-tipped hastily-made javelins that he can fling at a Meg while he races around the bay on a Jetski.

The Meg was fun.  This is garbage.  Clearly, Li Bingbing (Suyin) read the script and asked that her character be killed off.  Statham should have gone the same route.  Hard pass.

The Beekeeper (2024)

Adam Clay (Jason Statham) is a beekeeper in Massachusetts.  He rents a barn on the property of Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad).  It is clear that Clay has gotten close to very few people and Eloise is one of them.  Thus, when Eloise is robbed of everything by some online scammers, Clay immediately sets out for vengeance.  It turns out that the mild-mannered beekeeper has a violent history that makes him extremely dangerous.  In fact, ludicrously so.  Yes, the movie quickly crosses the line into fantasy where no amount of FBI agents, Secret Service Agents, SWAT teams, or former Special Forces can stand up to him.

The Beekeepers is an agency (?) outside of the government with the job of protecting the hive, that is the American polity.  That sounds like an incredibly bad idea.  When Clay is forced to face his replacement, there is no subtlety.  The Beekeepers care little of collateral damage.  Nor do they care about stealth.  Every agency has a picture of Clay early in the movie.

The action is entertaining, but the plot is beyond belief.  Why did Jeremy Irons agree to star in this?  Ever since he did Dungeons & Dragons (2000), it feels like he'll take any role.  It also looks like the villain was based on Hunter Biden!  The son of the president does shady deals to make buckets of money and also does cocaine in the presidential residence.

Mediocre.  Skip.

The Meg

Mana One is a top of the line oceanic research station funded by billionaire Jack Morris (Rainn Wilson) and headed by Dr. Minway Zhang (Winston Chao).  Morris arrives at the station just in time to see the discovery of a previously hidden deep sea ecosphere.  No sooner has the three man sub deployed a rover than both it and the rover are attacked.  Someone needs to rescue the stranded sub.  Enter Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham), the top deep sea rescuer in the world.  While rescuing the crew of the disabled sub, the Megalodon - a 70 foot shark that has been extinct for millions of years - is revealed as not so extinct after all.  Escaping back to Mana One, the submariners are followed by the Meg.  The Meg proceeds to terrorize the region and is soon headed for a popular beach on the Chinese coast.

Though many scenes harken back to Jaws, it is not a scary movie.  Rather than the slow ticks of a fishing line or the bobbing of barrels on the ocean, this movie has speeding subs that make maneuvers more suited to jets in the sky than mini-subs in the sea.  As there are a lot more characters, none of them develop the depth of Chief Brody, Quint, or Matt Hooper.  This is an action movie, not a suspense thriller.  If there isn't wildly unlikely action, then there is a pause for Jonas and Suyin (Li Bingbing) to show growing attraction toward one another or some planning session on how to resolve the latest problem.

 

Statham is himself.  Where his Transporter persona - Frank Martin - is a master with cars and martial arts, Jonas is a master of subs and scuba.  He does it well, as usual, but this doesn't expand his acting chops.  Shuya Sophia Cai shines as Suyin's daughter, Meiying.  She steals scenes throughout the movie and often has the best lines.  She even plays matchmaker for her mother and Jonas.  Rainn Wilson does a surprisingly good job as the billionaire until he is made stupid.  After having survived being on a very large ship that the meg sank, he then goes hunting the meg on a much smaller boat while a helicopter drops bombs on the meg.  Why isn't he on the helicopter?  Well, he wouldn't get his comeuppance that way.

 

This movie is pure popcorn fun.  Thumbs up.