The Meg: Why Being Rated PG-13 Hurt the Shark Blockbuster

While 2018 shark blockbuster The Meg was a financial success, simply increasing the rating from PG-13 to R could’ve helped it be much more satisfying. If there’s one thing pretty much everyone can agree on when it comes to killer shark movies, it’s that nothing will ever top Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. That film still holds up nearly 45 years after its initial release, and there’s no reason to think it won’t be a favorite of generations to come. Still, variety is the spice of life, and shark horror lovers don’t just want one option to choose from.

In recent years though, most killer shark flicks have been relegated to home video or made for cable releases, such as the many Sharknado movies produced by Syfy, or the many other low-budget shark schlock produced by B-movie legend Roger Corman, such as Sharktopus. In the summer of 2018, horror fans got to sink their teeth into The Meg, a big-budget, action-packed shark tale starring action hero Jason Statham and an absolutely enormous shark.

While The Meg wasn’t a critical darling, many horror and action fans found the film – an adaptation of Steve Alten’s popular 1997 book Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror – to be a fun spectacle, even if some of the plot twists were pretty silly. The Meg was a financial success, with a sequel in the works, but it could’ve been so much more satisfying for killer shark fans if it had an R rating.

The Meg: Why Being Rated PG-13 Hurt the Shark Blockbuster

First off, it’s fair to point out that Jaws was itself rated PG, albeit in a time before the PG-13 rating existed. The difference between Jaws and The Meg though is that Jaws’ focus is much more on the human characters trying to capture the shark than it is the shark itself, and holds off on showing the titular beast in full for quite awhile. In The Meg, the megalodon monster is the star of the show from the moment it appears, realized in its full enormous glory by impressive-looking CGI effects. Most of The Meg‘s human characters are also very thinly written archetypes, such as Statham as the grizzled but damaged hero, and Rainn Wilson as the corporate jerk who puts profit above people.

All of The Meg‘s most exciting scenes involve the huge shark either attacking or being attacked, but the problem is that there’s none of the carnage having such a big predator around should cause. Even when Wilson’s aforementioned character gets eaten, we don’t get to see it happen, with the camera cutting away prior to him getting munched. The Meg also swims through a heavily populated area, yet barely eats anyone at all. Its mouth is big enough to swallow about 50 people at once, but that scenario isn’t realized.

Star Jason Statham even agrees with this take, arguing that he wanted The Meg to be a bloodier, and gorier, R-rated affair. For his part, director Jon Turtletaub said some R-rated deaths were actually shot, but they were indeed cut to get a PG-13 rating, and there are no plans to release them for fan consumption. Given The Meg‘s gargantuan box office take, one assumes a sequel will also be PG-13. If that’s the case, audiences should expect another two hours of all sizzle and no steak when it comes to the potential of what The Meg could really do.

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