I'm going to be honest: I love the SyFy network. It has a couple of great shows, like Eureka and Warehouse 13. Those are awesome. And before I got BBC America on my T.V, this was about the only place that I could get my Doctor Who fix. Now those are both legitimate reasons for liking the network, but oh man, are they not my only reasons. No, probably the most enjoyment that I've ever gotten from SyFy has been from the gold mine of hilariously awful movies that they are constantly putting out. There are so many to choose from, but my personal favorite, and possibly the greatest monster movie I have ever witnessed has got to be: Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.
This title alone let me know that I was in for something awesome. Horrible, cheesy, completely ridiculous? Yes. Awesome? You have no idea, and that's why I'm here.
Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus is exactly what it says on the tin. There's a giant octopus, and a shark that can be reasonably described as “mega”, and they have to fight. Why? Well, apparently they were fighting thousands of years of years ago, and somehow got flash frozen, cryogenically preserved for thousands of years, and ice cube like prisons somehow floated to opposite ends of the earth. Now, they've thawed out, and they're tearing up everything in their path to finish their epic struggle.
Our main heroes here are oceanographer Emma MacNeil (Deborah Gibson), her old professor Lamar Sandars (Sean Lawlor) and Dr. Seiji Shimada (Vic Chao). They are trying desperately to determine what's causing all the damage being done to the ecosystem and to marine equipment. Oh, and what happened to an airplane. That's right, the Mega Shark leaps thousands of feet out of the water to chomp down at a trans-continental airplane. It is possibly the most glorious thing I have ever seen. Just look at this.
If that was not the greatest thing you've ever witnessed, then you officially have no soul. Anyway, the three heroes are working on the schedule of the nefarious Allan Baxter, our resident gun crazy military officer. He's evil because he wants to employ high powered explosives or nuclear weapons to destroy the giant creatures before they kill again. And this is a bad idea because...well...I don't really know. Radiation? I mean, it's certainly not going to kill much life in the middle of the ocean. Not much lives in those areas. I'm not up on how radiation effects the water cycle, so maybe that would have some adverse effect?
Hilariously, MacNeil and Shimada fall for each other, as shown to us by absolutely nothing. I'm serious, they're working together, aren't even talking to each other that much, and suddenly they're just doing it in a supply closet. Weird. The fight, of course, is just a string of low budget, close up CGI where you can't tell what in the hell is going on, but with scenes like the airplane one, that's totally fine. It also goes without saying that the acting is atrocious, but hey, it's a SyFy original. What did you expect?
All in all, Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus is hilariously over-the-top, horribly acted, and just a glorious cheese-fest. If you've nothing to do, check it out.
