Film / Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus

"Holy shit!"

— Airline passenger, about to be eaten by a 50-ton Flying Seafood Special With Teeth.

An Exactly What It Says on the Tin movie, clearly aiming for Cool Versus Awesome. Whether it reaches that is up to you.

A prehistoric giant octopus and a giant shark have been frozen in an Alaskan glacier for millions of years when they're suddenly freed by illegal sonar experiments or a panicked pod of whales or a crashing helicopter or global warming or ice melting due to the proximity of a hot scientist in a minisub — it's not clear which. They immediately take up where they left off — eating everything in, on, and even above the ocean in order to fuel their vast bulk. Two scientists, a Professor and a Jerkass Man In Black— aided by the US and Japanese navies — team up to combat this undersea menace.

As with most Asylum films, the action sequences are few, and rely on terrible CGI, but the writing and acting are dramatic enough to endear it to some fans, particularly those of the Kaiju genre.

Followed by Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus, Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark and Mega Shark vs the Kolossus (which is The Mockbuster to Attack on Titan, with the title opponent being a Humongous Mecha version of the Colossal Titan)

The Angry Video Game Nerd, on Cinemassacre, has reviewed this movie in "Top 40 Shittiest Shark Movies."

It seems to have spawned a subgenre of its own, as there are now several other films of the "Mega [Insert Animal Name]" variety, including Mega Python vs. Gatoroid. The two animals were even merged in Sharktopus, by another studio.

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The movie contains examples of:

• Acrophobic Bird: An Air Force pilot tries to avoid this trope, but is ordered to fly lower by the Jerkass The Men in Black. He dies, naturally.
• America Saves the Day: Averted as both the United States and Japan co-operate to destroy the monsters, presumably due to Japan's extensive experience in this area.
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • The scientists play up the standard idea that only insensitive ecological morons would kill such wondrous creatures, and insist that they will only help if the military promises only to capture the monsters. They ignore the fact that feeding these things would require the destruction of most of the ecological systems of Earth.
  • Giant octopods and Megalodons apparently produce the same pheromones as each other.
• Artistic License – Military: Military default is not Nuke 'em. Military default is minimum effort for maximum effect. Nuking is last resort. Which is why they're not considered a conventional solution.
• Artistic License – Physics: The megashark sea-to-air missile scene.
  Commenter: So let me get this straight. This giant-ass shark managed to match speed with a 500 mph JUMBO JET. Or, since it broadsided the jet, it somehow had to see the jet coming, from water deep enough for it to swim in, far enough off both laterally (to time the jump) and straight-ahead (so it could get a good run up, or should I say swim up, to arc on its jump, plus the arc distance itself)...then it had to haul its own ass right out of the water with enough force to travel in said great arc, that given the altitude it had to reach (747 cruising altitude tends to be about 30,000 feet), was definitely ten miles long at the bare minimum. And it managed to hit this small-ass fast-moving target it had no way of seeing from its underwater swimming patterns and these great distances. It managed to bite into an airplane traveling at great speed and in a different direction and instantly slow it down just by sinking its teeth in. That plane should have continued on, in pieces, plummeting to the ocean, taking most of that shark's teeth with it. I also wonder what shark whiplash looks like, because that certainly would give a shark whiplash. Not to mention, should the shark have asphyxiated during that massive midair trajectory? They breathe air out of the water with their gills, and this shark managed to achieve an altitude that would oxygen-starve even the air-breathing humans. How long was it out of the water for? At least several minutes, if not more. That would kill a normal shark, to say nothing of this mega shark that would have increased oxygen requirements (understatement of the fucking century right there, folks) and less surface area for gills relative to its mass thanks to the Square-Cube relationship.
  This is before I get to the fucking CGI airplane. Those wings are curved up more than Katniss Everdeen's bow and that should never happen to wings outside of a computer structural-failure analysis. (This has already been pointed out below by other commenters, I mention it for the sake of completeness.) When the lightning strikes close to the craft, shouldn't it have actually struck the craft? It's made of metal, something known for its electrical conductivity! And we clearly see the fucking plane over a giant layer of clouds (as it should be at cruising speed and altitude, which it certainly would be if it were flying a transcontinental route over the Pacific), yet the interior shot looking out the window at the shark's gaping maw clearly shows a view of the water that should only be possible if the jet was flying at low altitude and banking in that direction.
  • For the record, here's the schematics behind how the Megashark took down the plane.
  • There's the minisub that somehow races ahead of a predator traveling at "jet speed". Research subs are about as agile as tortoises, and move at speeds that couldn't outrun a kayak, let alone a jet. Or a perfectly ordinary shark, for that matter.
• Artistic License – Ships: Stock Footage of an Iowa-class battleship is identified as a destroyer. This makes the subsequent scene where the megalodon is attacking it even more ridiculous. Made worse when the "destroyer" fires its deck guns, the camera follows the rounds as they somehow manage to travel horizontally under the water. Also, the ridiculously wimpy visual and sound effects when the guns are fired. This is what a broadside of 16-inch guns looks/sounds like!
• B-Movie
• Big "NO!": What the Air Force pilot screams instead of trying to avoid the giant tentacle that is about to swat his fighter from the air.
  • One that continues to sound even after the jet had been destroyed by said tentacle.
• Dolled-Up Installment: A lesser-known shark movie from around the same time called Malibu Shark Attack was later re-titled Megashark In Malibu for DVD release. That's right - someone out there wanted to ride the coattails of this film.
• Double Standard: At one point the Asian scientist makes a joke about Hurricane Katrina. Not long after, the MIB agent says he can commit Hari-Kari if he doesn't want to work with them. Guess who the female protagonist says is horrible?
• "Eureka!" Moment: After having sex the scientists realise pheromones are the key. To capturing the monsters, that is.
• Fatal Family Photo: "I'm getting married in two days", said by a guy just seconds before his plane is eaten by a giant prehistoric flying shark.
• Genre Blind: Never EVER tell someone you're getting married in two days when you're in a plane above the ocean. This is made even worse by the fact that he had no reason or lead-in to say it AT ALL.
• Giant Equals Invincible: It's a kaiju film. Comes standard.
  • The sequel proves Mega Shark's immunity to depth charges, as it swims through a phalanx of explosions and only gets annoyed.
• Helicopter Flyswatter: Uses the standard version when the octopus swats a fighter plane, and takes it far beyond credibility when the shark leaps 30,000 feet up to nom an airliner.
• Hollywood Tactics: The navy fires deck guns at their undersea opponents, instead of using depth charges or anti-submarine missiles.
• Idiot Ball: Luring two giant sea monsters towards heavily populated cities so they can be captured. Yeah, right.
• Jerkass: The pony-tailed, misogynist and equal-opportunity racist The Men in Black Allan Baxter. Surprisingly he avoids becoming an Asshole Victim, though a "Making Of" clip on the DVD implies it was written in at one stage.
  • He also suggests the use of nuclear weapons... in front of the Japanese scientist.
• Laser Sight: When the soldiers burst into his house, The Professor gets one dot on the head and another over his heart (despite the fact that both rifles are pointing at his chest). Do they think he's going to attack them with a megalodon tooth?
• Made of Iron: The megalodon's teeth chomp through planes, bridges and warships with impunity.
• The Men in Black: Seen standing with blatant obviousness on the beach, as the female scientist examines a beached whale. At least they avoided an Incredibly Obvious Tail in a black van — the scientist only thinks the feds are following her.
• Monster in the Ice: Both titular monsters were frozen in glaciers before they inevitably thaws out and proceeds to go on a rampage.
• Nuke 'em: The Army (well, one jerk with a ponytail) wants to do this, but is opposed by the scientists. Think of the damaged ecosystem! The risk to the population! The tsunamis! Much of which could have been avoided by not luring these monsters into shallow water near populated areas.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The movie review site Braineater counted how long the shark and/or octopus are on screen. End count? Including cutaways during their brief battle, five minutes and twenty seconds — cut by a third if you exclude repeated footage. Worse yet, half the footage is repeated from earlier in the film. There are, perhaps, five unique effects shots of the title characters.
• Screen Shake: Seen during the Hot Sub On Squid/Shark Action. Not everyone shakes in unison.
• Sequel Hook: On being shown infra-red photographs of an unseen something in the North Sea, the protagonists rush off to their next adventure.
• Shout-Out: "It rises!" (seen here at 0:28). Which was a surprisingly cool Shout-Out to the 1956 Moby-Dick.
• Space Whale Aesop: Insert the requisite Green Aesop where it's suggested that TV dinner monsters are Nature's way of getting back at us for global warming. Fortunately it's only a single line so we can get on with the movie.
• Stock Footage: Of naval warships, aircraft, and a dockyard which we're supposed to believe is a Japanese maximum security prison. A shot of two guards passing each other gets reused as well.
  • The truth of it is, every single shot with SFX in it is repeated at least five times in both this film, and its sequel.
• Sunglasses at Night: Worn by The Men in Black soldiers guarding the scientists, even in poorly-lit laboratories and interrogation rooms.
• Super-Persistent Predator: The monsters have a strange desire to eat metal objects like jet planes, oil rigs, warships, and the Golden Gate Bridge. When the protagonists come up with a Takes One to Kill One plan, the monsters are described as having an obsessive hatred for each other that makes them Duel to the Death, instead of merely trying to drive a rival for its food source out of its territory.
• Technicolor Science: Seen in the Hard-Work Montage, which involves large amounts of pouring liquids from test tubes into larger test tubes. All of these liquids are colored. Later they come up with the idea of making pheromones, so it's back to the lab. More colored chemicals are poured. When the mixture glows, the scientists know they've succeeded.
• Tempting Fate: You never tell the flight attendant you're going to be married in two days, because you just know a giant prehistoric shark will leap 30,000 feet into the air to chomp your Boeing 747! I mean, it's just common sense, right?

Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus:

• Deadline News: A news copter is reporting on the carnage when the crocasaurus swats it out of the sky.
• Mama Bear: The Crocodile is extremely protective of her eggs and young. The explanation the two monsters are fighting is the shark is attracted to the cherping sound emitted by the eggs and the Croc is fighting to defend them. They even come to her aid when she's in trouble.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Had one of the heroes not had the bright idea of bringing the Crocodile and her eggs back from the jungle, she'd probably never have been a threat.

Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark:

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: After getting hit a few too many times the Mecha Shark goes rampant in Sydney. Yes, in Sydney, it has extendable tank treads. However, subverted with Nero himself, the drone mode takes control away from him and once it's deactivated he is once again on the good side.
• Animal Nemesis: Admiral Engleberg has a special hatred for the megalodon because it killed his brother. It gets him too during the battle of Sydney, but not before he gets to drop a lot of bombs on it and even shoot at it with his handgun.
• Artificial Intelligence: The Mecha Sharks are assisted by an AI named Nero.
• Attack Reflector: The megalodon has a nasty tendency to smash away torpedoes fired at it, never with pleasant consequences for the US navy.
• Call-Back: The infamous Flying Seafood Special scene from the first film is referenced on the front page of a newspaper in a Freeze-Frame Bonus.
• Flying Seafood Special / Helicopter Flyswatter : Like in the first film the megalodon goes for an airplane, but this time the Mecha Shark tackles it out of the sky just in time to save the plane.
• Giant Squid: A couple of Architeuthis physeteris attack the Mecha Shark Mk.I during its test run, but it's not treated as a serious danger and they are easily repelled.
• Going for the Big Scoop: Heather, the ANN reporter, is determined to cover all about the megalodon story. It doesn't end all too well as she ends up in front of the out-of-control Mecha Shark.
• Human Popsicle: Like its predecessors this megalodon is also frozen in ice when the movie begins, and is released as the chunk of ice it's in is being towed to Alexandria to help out with a drought.
• Humongous Mecha: The titular Mecha Sharks are piloted, AI-assisted, and heavily armed versions of the megalodon.
• Idiosyncratic Wipes: Transitions to other parts of the worlds are done by zooming out on a map and then zooming in on the new location.
• Monumental Damage:
  • The initial megalodon attack in Alexandria's harbor sends a boat flying into the Great Sphinx (hundreds of miles away in Giza), shattering its head.
  • During the battle for Sydney, the Mecha Shark is knocked into the Opera House.
• Orbital Shot: The shot of Mike and Rosie embracing at the end does this to a dizzying degree.
• Running Gag: Every time Jack starts telling an anecdote about his father, he gets interrupted.
• Shock and Awe: The Mecha Sharks have an "Eel Skin" ability that, when online, shocks anything touching the hull.
• The Stinger: Mike thinks he can finally get away with lighting a cigarette. Nope.
• Tank Goodness: When the Mecha Shark goes rogue, it unfolds tank treads and goes on a murderous rampage in Sydney.
• Time Lapse: Used several times to establish time passing for everyday people in Sydney.
• Your Size May Vary: Most flagrant when the out-of-control mechashark's mouth shifts from a few feet across when it tries to eat the little girl to several yards across when it's rolling through Sydney's main streets. It's blatantly-obvious that they switched between the small model mechashark and the larger CGI-or-model-mouth version.

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