FILM · 2018 · CHINA
The Meg
62 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
62 Interesting Facts About The Meg
Interesting Facts (52)
- #001
In the book, the megalodons are pure white and almost glowing, since they live in an environment with almost no light.
- #002
The film never explains how or why megalodons — believed to be shallow-water predators — exist in a deep-sea trench, while the novels explore their evolution into an abyssal species in depth (they migrated to heated hydrothermal vents to escape the ice ages, developed a slower metabolism over thousands of years, and lost their skin pigmentation in the process).
- #003
For the sounds of the giant squid (Architeuthis dux), the sound editors parked a car in a quiet spot at Warner Brothers Studios and placed microphones inside it (along with stereo microphones and some contact microphones attached to the windshield), then stepped outside and began dunking the windshield with two or three different types of plungers. Sometimes they used a dry plunger and sometimes a wet one coated with dish soap to make a slippery, watery sound. The sound editors even found truly great materials for the giant squid's tentacles. So they would make a hard plunge onto the glass and then pull it back out.
- #004
(At about 1 hour) Just before the Meg attacks Suyin in the plastic shark cage, a fast-tempo version of the cello-themed music from Jaws (1975) can be heard.
- #005
The young boy on Sanya Beach who begs his mother to let him go swimming is another homage to Jaws (1975). His mother wears a swimsuit similar to the one worn by Alex Kintner's mother (the second victim) in the original film.
- #006
In the book, the Meg only attacked at night, because living in deep water had made its eyes sensitive to light. When it was blinded over the course of the book, it attacked only in daylight. In the film, however, the Meg surfaces in daylight with no consequences.
- #007
Ruby Rose nearly drowned while filming in a tank in New Zealand. She said her clothes and the thermals she was wearing made swimming difficult, and that her shoes filled with water and she began to sink. Safety divers pulled her out.
- #008
Adrian De Wet notes that real great white sharks can look almost too 'smiley' when confronted, as if flashing a huge grin. The Meg was therefore designed with a mouth whose sides curve upward less, to make it scarier. The giant shark's shape and proportions also had to be addressed.
- #009
Eli Roth was attached to direct before Jon Turteltaub replaced him. Roth left due to creative differences with the studio, namely that he wanted the film to keep both its R rating and its $150 million budget. Roth was said to want to play the lead role of Jonas in addition to writing and directing, but the studio did not believe he had the star power.
- #010
The animators studied how jaws behave when a shark attacks, what the gills do when it is enraged, and how fast the tail moves to propel the massive body, then added an extra few percent to exaggerate the action, creating a shark that is not only believable but also terrifying.
- #011
(At about 1 hour 30 minutes) The scene in which the Meg takes one floating pool, then two, then three, is a subtle homage to Jaws (1975) and its barrels.
- #012
In 1997, the year the book was first published, Disney nearly bought the film rights for close to $1 million. After Disney hesitated over competing with Deep Blue Sea (1999), the project went back into turnaround. Frustrated by the inactivity, Steve Alten wrote his own draft and showed it to Nick Nunziata, who later passed it on to Guillermo del Toro. Del Toro took the project to Lawrence Gordon and Lloyd Levin, who brought in Jan de Bont.
- #013
Very few sharks are known to live in abyssal zones (areas at depths of 4,000 meters (2.5 miles) or more). What moves below 6,000 meters (3.7 miles) in ocean trenches is a genuine mystery. Along with food scarcity, temperatures are said to be another possible limitation on deep-sea life. There are sharks that live in the deep parts of the ocean. These include goblin sharks and Greenland sharks, which have low metabolic rates. This means they move much more slowly than the energetic predators in the film. Although C. Megalodon roamed the seas worldwide, it tended to prefer warm, shallow waters. It even used coastal areas as nursery grounds.
- #014
Despite their enormous size, megalodons could still attack suddenly and without warning. Sharks are still ambush predators. As a result, their fins normally break the surface only when they are swimming around or chasing prey. When they go on the attack, they drop below the water and strike from nowhere.
- #015
(At about 1 hour 40 minutes) In the book, Meg gives birth to three pups, two of which die; the sole survivor, Angel, would become the poster child of the later "Meg" books. In the film, a baby shark is seen escaping from the mouth of a dead shark that is presumably a pup.
- #016
At the end, when the shark is killed, the same sound effect is heard as when the shark is killed in the original Jaws (1975) and when the truck goes over the cliff in Duel (1971), also directed by Steven Spielberg.
- #017
In the novel, Jonas became a paleobiologist after his last dive attempt (he allegedly saw the head of a giant great white shark), which is how he could immediately identify the giant shark as a megalodon. In the film he does not actually see the megalodon at first and later becomes an alcoholic, yet he can still identify the megalodon immediately at first sight.
- #018
As in the original novel, one of the characters is Jonas's ex-wife — but unlike Maggie, who is open to reconciliation in the book, Lori is both friendly toward Jonas and immediately volunteers to help eliminate the Meg once it becomes clear the crew will have to do it themselves.
- #019
The megalodon consistently ignores smaller prey when larger prey is available, and at any given moment attacks primarily whatever makes the most noise or emits the most light. This includes completely ignoring a small dog in the water in favor of a nearby large, noisy, splashing crowd of people, as would be expected of a real-life predator. The exception is when it is enraged or driven into a feeding frenzy.
- #020
When Meiying first encounters a megalodon, she is wearing an angel costume. In the books, the main megalodon, which appears in most of the sequels, is named Angel.
- #021
(At about 1 hour 30 minutes) In the film's climactic scene, with hundreds of people on the beach and a megalodon in the water, a character is inside a 'Zorb' ball, an inflatable hamster ball for people used to roll across the water's surface. At a certain point the 'Zorb' ball bursts, a sound Jon Turteltaub was obsessed with getting right. Erik Aadahl said: "We went through many iterations of that sound. We did this extensive balloon-popping session on Warner Brothers' Stage 10, where we had enough room to inflate a 16-meter weather balloon. We popped a lot of different balloons there and accidentally popped the weather balloon, but luckily we were rolling and we got it. So the combination of those sounds created the 'Zorb' ball pop."
- #022
The gliders used in the climax are named after Richard E. Byrd and Ernest Shackleton, the first two explorers of the Arctic and Antarctic.
- #023
In the book, the Meg is killed when Jonas drives his submersible down its throat and cuts its heart with a fossilized megalodon tooth. In the film, Jonas cuts the Meg and impales it with a harpoon, inviting hundreds of ordinary sharks to devour it.
- #024
The first Meg dies in a manner similar to the shark in the novel "Jaws" (changed for the 1975 film version): while pursuing Brody in the water, it suddenly succumbs to the wounds inflicted on it by the crew of the Orca, dies and sinks into the depths. In The Meg, the first shark dies from the poison injected into it while pursuing Jonas and Suyin, and sinks into the depths.
- #025
The effects team built a Meg for use underwater when Jonas interacts with it — for example, for the blows Jonas stabs into the Meg's eye, a physical, life-size replica of the Meg's face, or at least the part Jason Statham had to grab onto and climb. So once the animators locked the Meg's design, they went to a manufacturer and made a full-size half face. They soon discovered, however, that it could not be towed underwater at any appreciable speed because of the great water resistance and drag forces.
- #026
Although Jonas never sees the Meg at first, he does see on the hull a bite mark from one of the Meg's attacks. A little research afterward could have helped Jonas understand what attacked the submersible and could have provided an explanation for why he turned to drink after realizing what it was.
- #027
The film's opening shows Jonas trying to rescue the crew of a sunken nuclear submarine, presumed to have been sunk by the megalodon on which Heller was serving. This is probably a nod to the first novel, in which the Navy tries to hunt and kill the megalodon by submarine. It did not work perfectly in either version. In the novel, Heller's brother was a crew member of the submarine.
- #028
The megalodon is not malicious, since it does not specifically target humans over other prey and is shown swallowing giant squid and whales at other points in the film; when it reaches the surface they become available, and it kills people several times apparently by accident. In fact, it attacks beachgoers only when they panic and cause so much movement and activity that it enters hunting mode. Toward the end, a recording of a whale song is enough to draw it away from a crowded beach on its own, even though by then it has already killed many people.
- #029
The second shark's attack closely resembles Lake Placid (1999). The heroes believe they have killed the only prehistoric creature, but are then attacked by a second, previously unknown creature.
- #030
In addition to the shark, Imageworks had to imagine an underwater environment, parts of which required large amounts of coral. The studio had developed a scattering tool for plant life called Sprout on Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017), and it was also used for the underwater coral in The Meg.
- #031
When the scene descends underwater, director Jon Turteltaub wanted the audience to feel extremely uncomfortable, as if it were an alien place and you did not want to be there. The sound had to make that sonic shift underwater to give viewers the feeling that something bad could happen at any moment.
- #032
In the book, Jonas was a DSV pilot for the navy, whereas here he was a rescue diver (the film's Jonas retains his status as the ace pilot of the original's submarines). This is used to briefly explain why he is chosen specifically for the rescue mission despite being seen as crazy: he is the only person to have carried out a rescue at such depth and survived.
- #033
Heller's dislike of Jonas in the film's early sections parallels the novel; it is unsurprising that Heller believes Jonas caused his friends' deaths and that his story is strange. However, unlike Heller in the book, who maintains his hostility toward Jonas from beginning to end, the film's version apologizes directly to Jonas once the truth of the matter comes out, becomes a vital member of the team hunting the Meg, and makes a Heroic Sacrifice to save Jaxx, letting the Meg eat him so that the Meg is delayed long enough to reach safety.
- #034
Since real sharks cannot make sounds but Hollywood sharks can, director Jon Turteltaub wanted to approach the megalodon's voice in his film. Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura said that before the film was made, the most important thing sonically for the megalodon was to sell its speed and power. Sharks have no organs for making sound, but they are very large and powerful and can displace water. Sound editors Erik Aadahl, Ethan Van der Ryn and Jason W. Jennings used some artistic sonic license to create the rapid sound of them moving around and displacing water. Of course, when they surface, they have a massive mouth cavity that you can have a lot of fun with in terms of the water swelling and producing terrifying, guttural sounds.
- #035
The dog shown on the boat at the wedding is named Pippin. In Jaws (1975), the dog eaten while swimming to fetch a stick is named Pippit.
- #036
In terms of role, Suyin can roughly be compared to Tanaka's son DJ in the novel; she does not believe Jonas about the truth of the Meg and is proven right in a self-surpassing way on the ocean floor. Here she survives and lives to the end.
- #037
Asked how they benefited from Meiying's encounter with the Meg, Erik Aadahl said: "It's a fun scene because there's a young girl, the daughter of a scientist at this marine research facility in the South China Sea, and she's gone up to this observation deck. It's under construction, in a way, and there's no one else there. The girl is playing with this little toy - a gyroscopic ball rolling on the floor, iPad-controlled. This special sound... you hear this little ball being flung and rolling on the floor. It reminds me a bit of Danny's tricycle in 'The Shining.' Very simple and quiet. The rhythm creates this atmosphere and puts you in a lonely mood. It's definitely one of the film's biggest jump scares." Jason W. Jennings elaborated further: "We separated the sounds there so that the attack would be powerful when it happened. Before the attack, the ball rolling and the simple tick-tock sound of it going over the seams in the floor really calms you down. Then, when you see the shark, there's a great moment where the shark and the girl have a staring contest. You don't know who will make the first move. There's also a perfect moment. A handshake between sound design and music. The music is very sparse, just a bit of violin, making your spine tingle. Then WHAM!, the sound of the attack shakes the whole facility."
- #038
The humpback whales Lucy and Gracie appear to take their names from 1950s TV housewives Lucille Ball of I Love Lucy (1951) and Gracie Allen of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (1950). In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), the whales were named George and Gracie, with George belonging to George Burns.
- #039
Jonas's name is likely a reference to Jonah, who in the Bible was swallowed by a great sea creature, probably a whale. The Bible refers to this creature as "dag gadol," meaning "great fish."
- #040
The film contains many Star Trek references. There is a whale named Gracie (as in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)), Morris Heller says he is a doctor "like Bones," and Morris tells his helicopter to "hit it again" (a whale carcass) like Khan in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982).
- #041
Asked how they could build the tension of an approaching attack or escalate an attack, sound supervisor Ethan Van der Ryn said: "It's important to feel this creature's power, so a lot of work went into feeling the impact of the Meg on whatever it touches. It's not so much about the sounds that come directly from it (like vocalizations) as about what it does to the environment around it. So if it's passing by, you feel its weight and power as it passes you. When it attacks — for example, biting the window — you feel the incredible power of its jaws. Or when it attacks the shark cage, it feels incredibly shocking because that sound is so terrifying and powerful. It's more about feeling this creature's strength, power and aggression through its movements and attacks." Jason W. Jennings added: "In terms of creating the tension that leads to an attack, what matters is stripping all the elements apart beforehand. Before the attack, you'll see everything go quiet, calm and a bit sparse. Then suddenly there's a big burst of power. What matters is clearing a space for the attack so it means something."
- #042
Asked what the most challenging scene was in terms of sound, Erik Aadahl said: "There's a rescue scene at the deepest part of the ocean, a rescue from this nuclear submarine. They're trying to get the survivors out, and at one point a sound comes from inside the submarine and you don't know what it is, but it could be the teeth of a giant megalodon scraping against the hull. This sound that occurs in this long tracking shot was what the director focused on most. We kept going back and forth and trying new things, and it was a challenging sound to change. In the end, it became a combination of these sounds. Jay and sound effects editor Matt Cavanaugh went out and recorded this giant metal cargo container. They placed microphones inside and took all kinds of different metal tools and made some scraping, stuttering, screeching and other friction sounds. That's where the sound comes from." Jon Turteltaub said at one point that he wanted it to sound like an oar dragging on top of the submarine, and the sound editors took him literally to that. Aadahl said: "We went to record that container on one of the hottest days of the year. We had to put Matt (Cavanaugh) inside and close the door! So we did short takes. On the roof I was dragging oars, rakes, a garden hoe and other tools. We produced a ton of great material from it. As with every film we do, we don't want to rely on stock sounds. Everything we put together for these films was made specifically for them."
- #043
One of the first things director and picture editor Steven Kemper mentioned was that they wanted to create a character out of the underwater environment. They really wanted to feel the difference between being underwater and being above water. There's a great scene where Jonas (Jason Statham) is in the water with a harpoon, trying to fire a tracking device at the Meg. He's floating on the surface, and it's made up entirely of ambient sounds as the water gently laps against his body. Then he dips his head underwater to see what's below. The sound editors shifted the perspective there, and it's really extreme. It's this deep underwater noise, like the feeling of a seashell.
- #044
Sound editor Ethan Van der Ryn said: "In terms of perspective in the scene with the giant squid, when you're outside the submarine you get a wide shot and you can see the squid's arms flailing around. There we use the sound of water movement, but when we go inside the submarine it's like a plastic sphere. There we used Atmos to make the audience feel the squid's tentacles wrapping around the theater. Little suction cup sounds sticking and stuttering. When the squid moves away, we can direct each of those suction cups to a specific speaker in the theater and be very precise about it."
- #045
Asked about the sub-bass sounds in the scene where Meiying encounters the Meg, Erik Aadahl said: "You have the mass of this multi-ton creature hitting the window, and you want to feel that inside you. It should be an instinctive physical experience. Meanwhile, re-recording mixer Doug Hemphill is a master at using the subwoofer. So during the attack, in addition to the cracking glass and those giant teeth clicking into this thick plexiglass, there's a low end that will shake the theater. This is one of those moments where you want everyone in the theater to jump out of their seats and throw their popcorn everywhere. To create this sound, we used a number of elements, including some recordings we had made a while earlier involving breaking glass. I decided not to throw it away because I wanted to record it first; it's an Audio-Technica AT825, which has a fixed 110-degree stereo polar pattern and a large diaphragm, so it captures a really nice low-frequency response, and in the end I smashed it with a sledgehammer. You can get a super-low-level response on such a large surface because the surface acts like a diaphragm. So that was one of the many elements that made up the attack." Jason W. Jennings said: "Another element recorded specifically for this sound came from a recording session where we were trying to simulate the sound of the Meg's teeth on a plastic cylinder for the shark cage scene later in the film. We found a good-sized plastic container and filled it with water, put a hydrophone inside the container and a contact microphone on the outside. After that point, we started abusing the thing with hand saws and a hand rake; sharp points, all kinds of objects, even sharp ones. We got great material from that session, sounds where you can feel the nature of something sharp cracking on plastic. In the editorial building where we worked, we set up all the sound systems to play from all the subwoofers at once. Then we placed microphones to record the building's response to all that low-level energy. The subwoofers hit the building all at once. Then the scene cuts to the rest of the team in the conference room. They start to hear the facility vibrating and rattling. From this recording session we were able to produce a lot of material that gives the feeling of the building's real sound being shaken by extreme low frequency."
- #046
Sue Rowe adds that the idea used for the sharks was this: "If you look at a thoroughbred horse and see how its muscles twitch, it creates waves through their body. From that you understand that this is a really muscular, powerful character. So we said, 'Let's do the same for the Meg.' You'll see a small twitch in the muscles or gills. We absolutely reinforced these things using Ziva."
- #047
Imageworks had managed to create a realistic shark and a realistic underwater environment, but there was one more element needed to help sell the shots: bubbles. More specifically, the cavitation of bubbles around the submarines, propellers and even the Meg.
- #048
Just before the continuing title sequence begins, the film ends with the French word "fin," meaning "end," just like the endings of the films in the Sharknado series.
- #049
The door hinge on the door of "Jonas's" cabin on Mana One is from the outside of a Land Rover Defender.
- #050
Sound editor Jason W. Jennings praised the scene in which Suyin (Bingbing Li) waits for the shark to arrive in the diving shark cage. "It becomes a full-on adventure where she's getting battered around inside the cage. The boat holding the cable starts to pull away. It was fun to work on. I also enjoyed the end of the film, where Jonas and Suyin are in the underwater gliders and try to lure The Meg somewhere they can trap and kill it. The gliders were inherently very musical. They had great tonal qualities that made it fun to play with using Doppler shifts. We hit the propeller sounds we recorded in the pool with these swishing sounds as the gliders pass the camera, and there's the sound of the bubbles the camera throws off."
- #051
"When production manager Adrian De Wet and visual effects producer Steve Garrad came to us, they knew this third act was going to be difficult because story points at a film's climax are always evolving, and they knew they would need a really strong engine behind them to finish this work," Sue Rowe tells VFX Voice. "So the deal we made at the start was: 'Hey, we'll give you maybe 400 shots and we want you to turn them around very quickly and then hand them over to editorial, and then we'll develop further from there.'".
- #052
Sue Rowe explained about the final frames: "I always tell people new to the industry: 'The computer can solve the problem in a certain way, but if it doesn't ultimately look the way the director wants, then we have to make sure it fits the film.'".
Characters & Cast (1)
- #053
Jason Statham plays a character named Jonas Taylor. Jason is an anagram of Jonas. This is a coincidence, since the name came from the novel, written about 20 years before Statham was considered for the role.
Easter Eggs & References (5)
- #054
(At about 1 hour 7 minutes) The scene in which Jonas realizes from the Meg's bite pattern that it is too small to be the one that left the tooth marks at the station is a nod to Hooper's similar realization about the tiger shark in Jaws (1975).
- #055
The submersibles are named 'Origin' and 'Evolution', a reference to Charles Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species', which set out his theory of evolution.
- #056
(At about 1 hour 27 minutes) Some children on the beach ride a "banana" boat. This is most likely a reference to Jaws: The Revenge (1987).
- #057
Given that the shark is 70 feet long, credibility was already being stretched to its limits. Even so, this did not stop production visual effects supervisor Adrian De Wet from referring closely to real shark behavior and using it as a jumping-off point for the film's Megalodon.
- #058
The scene with the giant squid may be a reference to Peter Benchley's 1991 novel "Beast" (Benchley also wrote "Jaws" in 1974). It was adapted into the 1996 television film The Beast in the 1990s.
Deeper Meaning (3)
- #059
The Meg swims past a beach full of people without showing any aggressive behavior. Only when everyone sees it and panics does the shark attack; that panicked behavior is exactly what draws a shark's attention to its prey. This is true to life: sharks do not hunt humans except when competing for the same food source, and nearly 100% of all shark attacks are cases of mistaken identity caused by human behavior. Sharks respond to electrical stimuli given off by living things in the water (which is why they are drawn to blood, since iron increases the water's conductivity) and to indistinct shapes; they can see only up to 15 meters and are colorblind, so when they attack they generally cannot see what their target is (the megalodon's eyesight was even worse). A person whose heart rate is racing and who is thrashing in the water can therefore easily be mistaken for a seal or a large fish (such as a tuna, which can grow up to 4 meters long).
- #060
Asked how they handled the sound of the underwater world, Erik Aadahl said: "Jay [Jennings] had just put a new pool in his yard, and it became the underwater Foley stage for the film, so we had our hydrophones there. There are underwater vehicles in the film for which Jay did a lot of experimentation, especially for the underwater propeller sounds. The thing about hydrophones is that you can't just put them in the water and expect them to make sound. If you're agitating the water, you often need air pushed underwater over the microphones to create the rippling sound we associate with being underwater. Over the years we've done a lot of underwater sessions and found that you really need waves or agitation to get that classic, powerful sound of water current or water rippling, or you need to take a high-powered hose into the water and bring it close to the surface with the hydrophones." Jason W. Jennings also explained: "For this particular recording session we had six different hydrophones. We had a pair of Aquarian Audio H2a hydrophones, a pair of JrF hydrophones and a pair of Ambient Recording ASF-1 hydrophones. These are all microphones of different quality — some cheaper and some extremely expensive — and you get a different frequency response from each pair. After setting up the microphones, we had several different rigs for recording. The most interesting was a high-powered drill of the kind you'd use to mix paint or plaster compound. We had various paddle attachments connected to the drill because we were trying to create a new source for all the underwater propellers for submarines, ships and jet skis; we see all of these from underwater. We recorded the sounds of these different attachments churning back and forth in the water. We recorded them above water, underwater, close to the microphone and far from it. We came up with an amazing palette of sounds that needed no additional processing. We used them exactly as recorded. We got a lot of use out of these recordings, especially for the high-tech, electrically powered glider vehicles with two turbine cyclone propellers behind them. We had a lot of fun designing the sound of these vehicles using our special recordings in the pool." Aadahl added: "There was another hydrophone recording mission that the crew, including Jay, went on. They set out to capture the migration of humpback whales. One of our hydrophones got caught in the boat's propeller because we had a captain who was overly eager to move to the next spot. So there was a casualty in our artistic process."
- #061
Sue Rowe and her team studied numerous cavitation references (cavitation actually occurs when propellers cause water to boil and be expelled behind them). Noticing that the cavitation trail was quite elongated, Imageworks initially approached the simulations in Houdini that way. Rowe noted at one point: "The director saw a few shots where the cavitation really rises rather than coming out flat. Even though it isn't physically correct, he really liked that look."
Career & Awards (1)
- #062
The film was considered among the first favorites for the Golden Raspberry Awards (also known as the "Razzies" or "Anti-Oscar"), including for Worst Film, but was nominated only in the Worst Remake, Rip-off or Sequel category. The organization attributed this to an error that may have affected the voting. Normally, only paying members of the Raspberry Award Foundation may vote for films to be nominated, but a technical glitch allowed non-paying visitors to the website to vote as well.
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