Jaws vs. Meg 2023 - June 18

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us have a flashback to the Shark Week 2023 instead. Now, there has been some consideration about the new SW: Acolyte series, but at the end of the day? It does not deserve the hate that it is getting… or does it?

From my point of view, the people who hate ‘Acolyte’ are the same people who hated the SW Sequel Trilogy, aka films 7-9, and who were handled by Disney/SW… however they were handled. Regardless, they weren’t vanquished; already by the time of the ‘Mandalorian’ S3, when Disney/SW were beginning to bring, well, the SW universe from the 6^th movie’s setting to the 7^th, the old criticisms were coming back. They stopped when the ‘Mandalorian’ ended, but apparently did not go away, as they resurfaced once more when the ‘Acolyte’ came out. Now what?

So far, Disney/SW franchise is not backing down from the TV show the same way they did with the 8^th and 9^th films. Back then, they fluctuated between total support and full reboot, and the result was a big setback, much bigger than any other Disney branches had to deal with. Since then, Disney/SW tried to retcon and circumvent its’ rebooted/redesigned universe, but with more mixed success than they would like, and ‘Acolyte’ is part of this mixed bag. What will Disney/SW do next, now that the ‘Acolyte’ is not being as successful/accepted as they expected it to be? It is anyone’s guess, of course, but hopefully they will be more consistent with their response than how they acted during the SW Sequel movie trilogy… Back into the real world?

No, ‘cause the reason I’m writing this entry is because I got to see the Shark Week special ‘Jaws vs. Meg’. In this special feature, people made a CGI battle between the great white shark and the Megalodon, with the latter winning, because of course it did. Pause.

Here is the thing. The reason as to why I was watching the special in the first place was because of nostalgia for AFO (Animal Face-off), as well as JFC (Jurassic Fight Club) and DW (Deadliest Warrior). In the first show, episodes ended with two RL CGI animals faced-off, in the second – we had prehistoric animals, and in the third, we had a live-action re-enactment of a quasi-historical battle – say, a Spartan vs. a ninja, or a Viking vs. a samurai. Here, in ‘Jaws vs. Meg’, we also have a CGI battle, both of a modern and of a prehistoric animals, well – fish. What next?

Well, for one thing, there was no doubt that this was the fight for the great white shark to lose. In nature, especially among the vertebrates, (the invertebrates are another story, admittedly – just watch Monster Bug Wars), size matters, and bigger and stronger beings triumph over their physical inferiors. Lions dominate over leopards, leopards – over cheetahs, wolves – over coyotes, coyotes – over foxes, and so on. The bigger and stronger Megalodon would dominate the great white shark during the time the two species coexisted, simply because while the great white shark could hurt it, the Megalodon could kill it far too easier than vice versa – as the special feature’s CGI confirmed. The Megalodon was able to take the punishment that the great white shark threw at it, and kill the latter with a single lucky strike. Overdramatized, maybe, but regardless, this would how it happen… what else?

Co-existing with the Megalodon caused the great white shark to become a specialist – it specializes it hunting seals, fur seals and sea lions, mostly in tropical and subtropical waters. It is more modernized than the Megalodon was, but it still prefers warm and tropical waters than temperate and colder ones. These days, with the global warming (or whatever it is called), the shark is moving north (and south?), including the shores of Eastern U.S. and Canada. What will come out of this, is yet unknown.

Back in the past, the great white shark had to stay closer to the shoreline, because in the open ocean the adult Megalodon lived and dominated – other sharks. However, there were also the cetaceans…

The cetaceans’ overall evolutionary history still hasn’t been completely resolved, but what matters here and now, is that during the Miocene and Pliocene, the baleen whales were smaller than their modern counterparts are, and more vulnerable to attack from such as carnivores as the Megalodon and the predatory prehistoric sperm whale cousins, (including the Livyatan). Just as the great white shark specialized in the pinnipeds – seals and their cousins that usually stay closer to the coast than in the open seas, so did the Megalodon specialize in the cetaceans, which preferred the open seas to the coastlines instead. The two species co-existed by specializing in different directions, and the Megalodon’s closer cousins, the mako sharks, specialized in yet a third – they aren’t as massive as the great white shark, but are faster and more maneuverable than it is. If the great white shark is a lion of the seas, then the mako sharks are the cheetahs instead. They would not outfight the Megalodon (or most other prehistoric predators), but outpace and outmaneuver them instead. The killer whales, for example, are known to attack great white sharks – successfully, too – but the mako sharks? Not so much. However, where do they fit in?

The main reason as to why the Megalodon is not around anymore, no matter what fan favorite theories proclaim. During the end of the Miocene and the first half of the Pliocene, the two Americas formed a single continent finally, and the world began to enter an Ice Age. The Megalodon (and many of its’ prey species) couldn’t handle the climate change and died out; also, in the Megalodon’s case, the disappearance of the warm shallow seas between the two American continents left its’ young vulnerable – well, more vulnerable, to predation from smaller sharks, including the great white and the hammerhead species. Megalodon vanished during the Pliocene and Pleistocene periods, and the smaller sharks flourished.

The same situation goes for the whales: the modern whales are giants, true, but they are specialists as well. The baleen whales feed on plankton, and many of their species spend their lives migrating between the two poles, following the seasons and the currents, to keep themselves fed, (and the global warming is throwing a wrench into this), while the biggest toothed whale, the sperm whale, is a deep sea hunter, feeding mostly on the big, giant, and colossal deep sea squid species. Its’ closest relatives, the two Kogia whales, are tiny by comparison, and little is known about them, so let us put them aside for the moment. The point here is that the time of easy living in the ocean has ended for now even before the humans evolved on planet Earth; compared to the Miocene, when the global oceans were full of small and medium-sized baleen whales, the modern ocean has only big baleen whales, or giant ones. Megalodon would be outmuscled in the modern ocean – but the great white shark would have nothing to do with that… Anything else?

The CGI battle of ‘Jaws vs. Meg’ could have used some tweaking and twerking, but this is splitting hairs; the point here is that it was an enjoyable TV program, while the ‘Acolyte’, for example, is much more forgettable.

Therefore, we will end the discussion for now - This is it. See you all soon!