Warning: Major spoilers for Meg 2: The Trench below!
Summary
- Meg 2: The Trench pays homage to the Jaws franchise with references and nods throughout, showcasing its love for the classic films.
- The sequel takes on a more comedic tone rather than trying to match the suspense and horror of Jaws, making it a fun and entertaining watch.
- The movie includes various Easter egg nods to Jaws and its sequels, from the use of poison-tipped bullets to recreating iconic death scenes and moments in creative ways.
Meg 2: The Trench is swimming in easter egg nods to the Jaws franchise. The Meg was based on a novel by author Steve Alten, with the film adaptation then spending over a decade in development hell. Various filmmakers like Jan de Bont (Speed) or Eli Roth tried and failed to get the project moving, but the eventual 2018 Meg movie proved to be a shock success worldwide. The grosses on the film made Meg 2 inevitable, and the only real surprise is that it took five years to arrive.
Naturally, the similarities between The Meg and Jaws movie franchises are somewhat unavoidable. Rather than trying to put distance between them, The Meg movies often pay loving homage to Jaws, with both entries being filled with references. Meg 2: The Trench doesn't even try to take on Jaws in of suspense or horror, with the sequel being a borderline comedy instead. Meg 2 director Ben Wheatly also cited Jaws as his main inspiration, but devotees of the saga can spot plenty of nods to its sequels too.
8 DJ's Poison Tipped Bullets
Around the hour mark of Meg 2: The Trench, some mercenaries take over the Mana One research facility when it uncovers an illegal mining operation in the Trench itself. When Mana One is being taken over, returning Meg survivor DJ (Page Kennedy) pulls a Desert Eagle from his "survival pack," and announces he even made poison-tipped bullets like in "Jaws 2." This references the sequence in 1978's Jaws 2 where Roy Scheider's Chief Brody makes some poison bullets to ward off the new shark stalking Amity. Unlike Brody, DJ actually manages to score a kill with his poison rounds.
7 Inside The Meg's Jaws
In keeping with the first movie, Meg 2: The Trench has a large bodycount but is also low on blood or gore. Meg 2's ending sees a trio of Megolodons attack an island and swallow up hordes of swimming tourists. One of the most memorable shots from this sequence places the camera inside a Meg's mouth as it bites down on luckless swimmers, with this image invoking a shot in Jaws 3. This saw intrepid oceanographer Philip FitzRoyce (Simon MacCorkindale) get attacked and swallowed whole by Jaws 3's shark, and shots from inside the shark's mouth show him being chomped to death by its clamping jaws.
6 Quint's Death Homage
The goriest death in Jaws comes at the climax, where the shark jumps out of the water and smashes the back of the Orca. This leads to shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw) sliding down the boat and straight into the shark's waiting jaws. Meg 2 pays visual homage to this moment when Jason Statham's Jonas is chased by a Meg on a dock, which is soon ripped apart by the beast. Soon, poor Jonas is sliding down a piece of the dock right into the shark's mouth, but uckily for him, the shark is being held back by some chains and Jonas is able to get himself out of trouble.
5 Pippin The Dog Returns
Those who saw The Meg might recall a cute little dog called Pippin appears in the finale and manages to survive the carnage. Pippin is another returnee to the Meg franchise, and in The Trench the unlucky Yorkie once again gets caught up in the Megalodons attacking beach goers. Pippin survives to the end - and will no doubt reappear in The Meg 3 - but the dog's name is actually a deep-cut Jaws reference. Just before Alex Kitner is attacked, a dog called Pippin is seen playing fetch in the water - only to ominously disappear shortly before Alex is killed.
4 The Helicopter Crash
Cliff Curtis' Mac is also back for Meg 2: The Trench, and gets more action the second time around. This includes piloting a helicopter in the finale when the Mana One team arrive on the ironically named "Fun Island," and Mac uses the chopper to help take down a giant squid that's feasting on the holiday goers. Sadly, the helicopter gets pulled out of the air by the squad's tentacles, which feels like a callback to Jaws 2's helicopter attack sequence. Unlike the pilot in that instance, Mac lives to fly another day.
3 Feel The Vibration
Jaws 2's climax sees Brody lure the shark away from a group of teenagers by banging an oar on an electrical cable. These underwater vibrations are enough to trick it into charging after Brody instead, who holds the cable in front of himself so the shark bites down on it instead of him. Meg 2 has an homage to this moment, when Jonas bangs a helicopter blade in the water to lure an attacking Megalodon away from Mac's crashed helicopter and to him instead.
2 Jaws Gets The Point
The aforementioned helicopter blade scene leads directly into Meg 2's next Jaws homage. When the Megolodon charges after Jonas, The Trench's resourceful hero then uses the helicopter rotor as a spear, holding it into the air and waiting for the Meg to charge. The rotor fatally impales the giant shark in the brain, and its body then floats to the bottom of the water. This moment is reminiscent of Jaws: The Revenge's theatrical ending, where Brody's widow Ellen (Lorraine Gary) spears the shark in the head with the broken bowsprit of her boat. Like Meg 2, this is followed by a shot of the shark's body floating to the bottom.
1 A Smashing Finale
One of Meg 2: The Trench's biggest visual riffs on the Jaws franchise comes from an early scene where Wu Jing's Jiuming is training a captive Meg called Haiqi. The Mana One crew observes this training through an underwater window, where Jiuming uses a clicker device that is supposed to make Haiqi refrain from attacking him. However, she charges towards him with no signs of stopping and nearly smashes into the window. It turns out Jiuming got pulled up in the nick of time, but this sequence recalls Jaws 3D's infamous glass smash shot.
This 1983 sequel's big finale saw the shark smash the window of an underwater facility, causing it to flood with water. The effects employed in Jaws 3's ending are notoriously poor, so the sequence isn't nearly as effective as it should be. Meg 2: The Trench may not smash the window in this aforementioned training scene, but later in the story, Skyler Samuels' Jess stands a little too close to a "Meg proof" window in Mana One. This glass isn't enough to stop a Megalodon from breaking through and devouring Jess in one bite.
