A small, but stable branch of Animal Planet is creating monster
quasi-documentary films. There was “Dragons: Fantasy Made Real”, “Mermaids: The
Body on the Beach” and “Mermaids: The New Evidence”, and now “Megalodon: Monster
Shark Lives” – and it is this movie that I am going to rant about. Let us
begin.
What is so special about megalodon? In the previous films AP
can shoehorn mythical creatures, dragons and mermaids, into real life while
doing it realistically. Seriously, a dragon or a mermaid in a
sci-fi/fantasy show is expected, it belongs there – in a documentary show not
so much. AP had to come up with some really fancy explanations how dragons and
mermaids really worked and where they come from...with a mixed success, in my
opinion (do not get me started on the mermaid/aquatic ape theory).
Megalodon is another story. It already is a real-life
creature (albeit one that is supposed to have died out during the Ice Age) – a shark,
that may be 15 m in length on the average, but nothing more. People have encountered
and studied sharks for a while now, and outside of its length megalodon does not
appear to be very different: extreme in its size, but nothing else.
But...
Ever since humans have encountered sharks they feared them. The
sharks are some of the biggest predators in the oceans and unlike their
terrestrial counterparts – lions, tigers, hyenas, etc – they cannot be
controlled. Nowadays it is relatively easy to track down a lion or a tiger if
they become man-eaters; a shark – not so much.
Shark attacks are also random: lions and tigers tend to
treat humans as a steady and regular source of food once they start eating them
– sharks do not. To a shark a human has considerably less blubber and more bone
(sharks do not really eat marrow) than a seal or a sea lion of a matching size
does. That is why they tend to leave us alone...after they bit off an arm or a
leg or a chunk of torso – not that that is any consolation to a shark attack
victim, you know? Sometimes one bite is enough to kill you, if the shark is big
enough or the bitten place is vital enough in its anatomy.
Sharks are also highly mobile and thus unpredictable. A
great white or a tiger shark can travel – in fact, it almost constantly travels
across the world for different places to get a meal: one week it is in South
Africa, the next – at Mexico or Hawaii: why not? It is humans who are aliens in
the underwater world of fish and other creatures of the depths, and the sharks are
perhaps some of Mother Nature’s most formidable reminders that that is so,
alongside giant octopi and squids. Naturally humans fear them – megalodon is
just the uttermost manifestation of those fears inflated to an extreme size –
big enough to sink a boat in one bit and swallow a human in another.
How realistic are those fears? Firstly, people want to
believe that sharks are giant carnivorous monsters that just want to eat people
attacking them from below (as in “Jaws”) or from above (“Sharknado”). There is
probably nothing that can change this picture so the idea of the monster-movie
megalodon is going to persevere for decades to come.
Secondly, cryptozoologists want to believe that megalodon
exists. Basically, this is the same point as the one above, save that fear has
been replaced by awe. They are going to seek out proof that megalodon exists no
matter what. So far official science says that no, it does not, but when ever
did this stop people? Ergo no, I do not think that the hype around sharks in
general and megalodon in particular will ever go away.
As for the movie itself... the name “megalodon” was used
mostly as a brand: people know this name and associate it with a giant shark,
so AP just appropriated it for their newest monster. They showed it quite
realistically too, save for the fact that in real life megalodon (well, Carcharodon
megalodon, if you want to get technical) was not a deep-sea fish: the depths of
oceans and seas are cold, have little food and not much more oxygen – hardly a
place for a warmth-loving whale-eating shark!
Furthermore, megaldon did not start out as a whale-eating
giant: the first years of its life were probably spent in shallower coastal
waters (BBC Sea Monsters) hunting smaller prey – dugongs and manatees,
dolphins, sea turtles, maybe even large fish - and avoid the adult megalodon
which would probably eat the youngsters instead (as modern sharks tend to do).
This would have brought them into contact – and conflict – with humans much
sooner than “just now” and I do not know who would have won...
Then we have the humpback whales – that was probably the
most annoying part of the movie. Why humpback whales? There are 15 species of
modern baleen whales (you know, the ones that feed on plankton as the humpback
whales do), plus the sperm whale (that has teeth rather than baleen), all of
which can be food for megalodon if it existed in modern day and age.
Why the humpback? Sharks do not have the sort of food specialization
that the carnivorous mammals, birds and reptiles may have. Great white shark
prefers to eat sea lions and fur seals, but it will probably try anything to
see just how edible it is. The bull and the tiger sharks eat anything,
including garbage that ended up in the sea; so does the blue shark but it is a
fish of the open ocean and encounters people less often than the great white,
bull and tiger.
And so probably had megalodon – it was willing to eat anything
if it was big and meaty enough. If it lived in modern times, the humpback whale
would have had no preference: megalodon would have eaten it just as willingly
as it would have eaten the blue and pygmy right whales, for example.
The closest I can come up with for the reason behind the
humpback whale is that it is one of the more popular and well-known species of
whales among people (at least for now): its footage is easily obtainable, the
audience would just look at the humpback knowingly and return back to
concentrating on the shark. Fair enough.
As for megalodon's coloration – dark above, light below – I believe
that it is called cryptic countershading and many of ocean-dwelling animals
have it. The fish have it: not just the sharks, but also jacks, mackerel, tuna,
etc; the penguins have it as well, especially smaller species like the African
penguin: it helps them blend in with the waters around them. (Terrestrial
animals often have lighter bellies than backs as well, but for slightly
different reasons.) This does not make megalodon some sort of an unstoppable
super ocean monster, but-
“Megalodon: Monster Shark Lives” was released as part of
Discovery Channel’s 2013 Shark Week, when the Discovery channel does its best
to cash in on the shark hype that was discussed before. And it seems that 2013”s
version is going to be the most commercial Shark Week yet, as Discovery Channel
is actually airing “Jaws” and “Sharknado”, regardless of the fact that they are
fiction. They are about sharks, they are popular with the TV audiences, so
Discovery Channel is airing them.
And “Megalodon: Monster Shark Lives” is just a manifestation
of the same hype. People wanted to see it because it was a movie about a
monster shark that lives in the ocean’s depths – a giant bogeyman rather than a
real-life monster, a creature no more real than the mermaid is. If that is what
they expected they got it; if they did not – they probably turned it off and
watched a megalodon-related documentary on YouTube or elsewhere. Still, as a
movie “Megalodon: Monster Shark Lives” was a decent one, without any particular
political hype, unlike the mermaid duology, even if it was also taking place in
South Africa – but I’m guessing that someone in AP management has a very
complicated or weird relationship with South Africa and just cannot let it go.
Oh well.
The final bit of weirdness was the movie script. “Megalodon:
Monster Shark Lives” did its best to cash in on the hype and fear that
surrounds sharks, especially the mythical giants. The fact that it did not end
with Collin Drake and his crew duking it out with Meg in a Captain Ahab-Moby
Dick style a la “Jaws” was a good thing in my opinion but in the first parts of
the movie it certainly sounded like it was going to end thus. I am guessing
that someone remembered that Animal Planet is for nature conservation, not
destruction, and changes had to be made...just not very thoroughly.
In any case, I believe that I am rating “Megalodon: Monster
Shark Lives” three and a half stars out of five; well, maybe three and three
quarters. It was not the best megalodon-related movie that was ever made, especially
a documentary one, but it was not the worst either.
Peace out!
