Toothy Trailers: 47 Meters Down

I am just a little bit behind on getting this posted, but as you can see, in recent days, things have finally been a little busy around The Shark Film Office. I've scraped most of the barnacles off the hull and have started to refurbish the old wreck a tad. The new (or relatively new) templates available on Blogger gave me the boost. I was a few months late in checking them out due to my hip injury (you can find out more about that on my animation blog here), but once I first rebuilt my main site, The Cinema 4 Pylon, it became clear that I was going to end up doing an overhaul to at least one more of my blogs. So far, on both sites, I am very happy with the responsive design element that has been added, though it is a bugger getting images to work on all platforms properly. Otherwise, I can't wait to dig into further tweaking of each site to make them more useful and appealing to my small (and thankfully patient) audience.

As a result of all of this injury downtime, hip fixing, site rebuilding, and premium time in Photoshop, the actual writing and posting of reviews and stories on my sites has been more than a bit lacking. The Pylon has been up and running again for a couple of months, but until quite recently, I had not posted here on The Shark Film Office for well over half a year. This was the exact opposite of what I had intended when I resurrected this site early in 2016. The intent was for this to become the place for information about upcoming films about sharks and other ocean life, and most definitely the #1 place people would go to read reviews about the history of sharks on film. TSFO really got rolling throughout the summer last year, then everything went kablooey. 

Oh well, over and done, and I am back to really dig into shark films (and television) for the new summer season. We've got Shark Week coming up on July 23 on the Discovery Channel, but we will get to that in a future post; likewise, with the premiere of the fifth film (in five years!) on August 6 of its ever increasingly ridiculous Sharknado series, Syfy will undoubtedly hold some sort of Sharknado Week as they did last year. Whether they also premiere over a half dozen other shark-related films like last year is another question, but recent news stories talking about Sharknado 5 have revealed both its subtitle, Global Swarming (suggesting a climate change theme, which the entire series has really), and its tagline: Make America Bait Again. Bloody brilliant, even in its stupidity...

On the big screen, we have a couple of major releases in theatres this summer that involve sharks. Another fifth film in a franchise, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, hit theatres in the last couple of weeks, and I have not been able to get to it yet... because Wonder Woman. That one has zombie/ghost/undead sharks of some form, and the trailer of their appearance is not all that enticing, but I still look forward to finally sitting down with the film, hopefully next week as my wife and I are planning things.

Opening next week (or in two weekends, real time) is 47 Meters Down, a film that was once advertised as Into the Deep, but decided to go with the less ambiguous title and tell us exactly what the predicament for the film's characters is in the film instead. I will tell you, giant great white sharks or not, this film looks pretty dopey from start to finish. But let's watch the trailers first. The YouTube clip I have embedded reads as "Extended," but what it actually means is the YouTube site combined two different versions of the 47 Meters Down trailer back to back, so that you can see as much possible early footage as possible. So, when one trailer gets over, hang on for the second one...

Hoo boy... OK, I have made plans to go see this in the theatre on the Friday that it opens, but I keep telling myself that maybe I will revisit that idea closer to the date. The film looks monumentally stupid, and that is even after one has to choke back the tears from realizing I would have to spend 100 minutes watching Mandy Moore attempt to act again. Another question plaguing me (FYI, I did look up the info afterward): Who the hell is Claire Holt and why does she have top billing over my girl Mandy?

I do not have any diving experience whatsoever, but I know enough going into this thing that those girls would shatter their eardrums if a dive cage broke off and fell into the depths that quickly. Also, their panicked breathing and their constant chatter would deplete what little air remained in their tanks pretty quickly. Even knowing that much, I did have some fun the other day going on to various boards about scuba diving and hearing experienced divers discussing the silliness at large in these trailers. Their reasons went far beyond my layman's awareness, but it was more pleasing to read that much of the concern from divers over the film was in how the the image of the great white may indeed suffer in the public eye once again because of films like this.

Look, I love Jaws as one of the prime examples of the suspense thriller, horror, and adventure film genres. It is in my Top 10 films of all time. But as has been proven time and again, most of the science involving sharks in Jaws (and even the plausibility of its action scenes, such as the exploding tank) is completely ridiculous. A film can get past a complete disregard for facts and science (much like our president does) and still be highly successful both with the public and with critics (unlike our president). Jaws even has its killer shark roar at a point or two (a trope which 47 Meters Down seems to be enacting as well), and that is complete bullshit. Bruce the Shark was no lion from M-G-M. Sharks don't effin' roar.

What I am saying is that I hold out the possibility that this film could be entertaining on some or even multiple levels. I got past my small problems with The Shallows and how it handled its star shark by getting involved in its quite Hitchcockian premise and enjoying the lead performance by Blake Lively (someone whom I ridiculed previously on the level of her acting ability as I did with Mandy Moore above). I honestly believe that, seen strictly as a pulse-pounding thriller and adventure survival story, The Shallows was quite enjoyable.

Will that be the case with 47 Meters Down? Well, I can spend all the time I'd like making fun of it and poking holes in its flaws through the watching of a couple of trailers, but when the time comes and I sit down in that theatre, my mind goes blank and I have to either accept the film for what it is or I have to admit that I allowed my preconceptions to win the day. And I just cannot allow that to happen.

I will see you on Judgment Day, 47 Meters Down. Better bring an extra tank or three...

RTJ