Mega Shark VS. Giant Octopus

Year of Release: 2009
Genre: Sci-Fi / Horror
IMDB Rating: 2.8 / 10
Level of Awful: High

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Well, if nothing else, Sharktopus now makes a little more sense to me. With the discovery of this home video by Mega Shark and Giant Octopus, Sharktopus’ parents, it makes sense that the amazing hybrid hunter was such an angry and aggressive creature and it’s upbringing couldn’t have been easy. The affair that resulted in Sharktopus’ birth was evidently a brief and tumultuous one where there was a lot more fighting that lovin’ with the two one-time lovers being pitted against one another in a battle to the death. Let’s investigate this difficult time in order to better understand the psyche of our beloved Sharktopus.

The logistics of this tentacle attack are just baffling...

It all started nearly 2 years ago as the next ice age was approaching: two ancient monsters, a mega shark and a giant octopus, were locked in a deadly battle to the very end. In the midst of this great battle the ice age happened instantly, freezing the ocean and the creatures solid. Flash forward to the present day and our intrepid heroine Emma MacNeil is busy piloting a submarine off the Alaskan coast and observing a pod of whales who are busy migrating. From out of nowhere a helicopter flies in and drops a device into the ocean that starts letting off very strong ultrasonic waves, disturbing the whales’ communication with one another and causing them to go off course. As a result the whales start bashing into the nearby ice shelf, cracking the ice and causing pieces to start falling into the sea. Of course, as bad luck would have it, this is the ice shelf that Sharktopus’ feuding parents are trapped in and, as the whales continue to smash into it, Mega Shark and Giant Octopus are released from their 2 million year tomb and both swim away to begin their reign of terror while Emma, not sure of what she just saw, tries to make it back to the surface safely.

In the event of a flying shark attack your body may be used as a snacking device.

The first sign that something is wrong in the world’s oceans comes when a whale is found beached with enormous wounds across its body. Not wanting to believe that something living could have done this the US navy quickly declares that the whale (which is remarkably hairy) must have been trapped in a net and hurt itself. The whale also has nothing to do with the Japanese oil rig that was attacked by some mysterious sea creature that the Japanese government is trying to cover up. Emma, of course, doesn’t believe this and, with the help of her old college professor Lamar and Japanese scientist Seiji, sets out to discover the truth about what is stalking the oceans. Emma steals a piece of something from the corpse of the whale and takes it to Lamar’s home so that they can try to figure out where it came from. After many hours, many viles full of luminescent liquid and a complicated and detailed looking computer analysis the home PC at their disposal spits up the word ‘tooth’. From here they simply have to go to any old book on the shelf to discover that it’s the tooth of a Megalodon, a now extinct species of giant shark. When tapes from the submarine mysteriously land up at the house they quickly realise that a giant octopus is also loose in the ocean and surmise that the two were once bitter enemies that were trapped in ice until the migrating whales set them free.

I'm guessing that this was when Sharktopus was conceived.

As is often the case with good scientists in a bad movie, as soon as they make their discovery they are arrested by the government and co-opted into trying to catch the creatures before they manage to attack anyone else. The plan? Pheromones. Attract them into natural bays where there’s no way for them to escape and try and capture them. That obviously doesn’t work because if it did we wouldn’t have the ‘VS’ part of our movie title. Plan B is to use the pheromones again but this time draw them to one another and let them finish the battle they started 2 million years ago. The use of the pheromones, of course, is based on the very scientific observation that, after 2 million years locked in ice, the creatures will be very horny. Tricked into believing that they’re gonna get lucky and armed with a natural predatory instinct the two sea monsters (who are capable of changing their size from shot to shot) are brought together for one final, sexually charged showdown to prove which one of them is the ultimate ruler of the waves.

Based on the natural enemies status of his parents, it’s really no wonder that Sharktopus is such an angry creature. Based on his lineage he is, in theory, his own natural enemy. It is my humble opinion that this ingrained self-hatred led him to go on the rampage that he did. Nevertheless the love, power and horrible CGI effects of his parents will forever live on through him.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Whales don’t swim. Their visuals just loop back constantly.
• Giant sharks can jump over 10 000 feet into the air and catch planes.
• Sex leads to amazing scientific discoveries.
• pheromones have a luminescent green colour.
• Tropical sea creatures are perfectly at home in the Arctic Circle.
• Missions are always a success when the officials in charge of them have no clue what happened.
• Japanese people in Japan speak to each other in English with an American accent.
• Any old Irishman can just walk onto a US Navy submarine.

MEGA SHARK VS GIANT OCTOPUS TRAILER