Meg 2: The Trench Ending Explained: Nature Will Listen
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being reviewed here wouldn't exist. This article also contains major spoilers for "Meg 2: The Trench."
Every summer movie season deserves a killer shark flick! After all, it was a killer shark movie that pretty much kicked off what we now know as the "summer blockbuster" way back in 1975, the immortal "Jaws." Because of that film's success, every killer shark (or Sharksploitation, as we scholars refer to it) venture is inevitably compared to that Spielberg classic, its three sequels, and the large number of copies that appeared immediately in its wake. In a subgenre that's been through the waves of popularity, postmodernism, and back, there's not a ton that's wholly new out there in the ocean.
For that reason, the Sharksploitation subgenre has generally settled into a pattern not unlike the slasher, an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" groove. That's precisely where "The Meg" came in. Based on the 1997 novel by Steve Alten, the movie was in some stage of development since the book was published, finally making it to screens in 2018. It told the "King Kong" meets "Jaws" story of rescue diver Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham), oceanographer Suyin Zhang (Li Bingbing), and their friends and colleagues as they discovered a world deep beneath the ocean previously unseen by humans, a realm beyond where people once thought the Mariana Trench ended. Once there, they roused the attention of a still-living megalodon shark, which wreaked havoc on a nearby beach before the team managed to stop it.
"Meg 2: The Trench" begins with a flashback to the Cretaceous period, following the vicious, natural circle of life as predators become prey, ending with the Meg victorious. Right from this moment, director Ben Wheatley establishes this film's ethos: nature can be corralled, even directed sometimes, but it can never truly be controlled or stopped.
A hidden ploy inside a hidden world
"The Trench" hits the ground running in terms of catching us up with the few surviving characters from "The Meg." In the interim between films, Jonas and James "Mac" Mackreides have been conducting secret missions sabotaging and exposing sea pirates and their environmental crimes, Suyin (Jonas' love interest from the first film) has mysteriously died offscreen, leaving her now 14-year-old daughter Meiying (Sophia Cai) in his care, and Meiying's uncle, Jiuming (Wu Jing) has merged the operations of the underwater research station Mana One with the billionaire philanthropist Driscoll (Sienna Guillory), the two of them running the Oceanic Institute.
Jiuming has made some huge advancements since his sister's passing, not only helping to construct new exoskeleton deep diving suits but managing to train a Meg in captivity. Well, almost — the Meg escapes one night, and while Jonas, Jiuming, Rigas (Melissanthi Mahut), and a stowaway Meiying are diving beneath the thermal layer into mysterious trench territory the "friendly" Meg chases them into. Turns out that it's a false alarm: it's mating season for Megs! Before the diving team can relax, however, they notice that there's a clandestine mining operation happening at the bottom of the trench.
The foreman of the operation, a mercenary named Montes (Sergio Peris-Mencheta) whom Jonas once brought to justice, is ordered by the owner of this secret station — Driscoll — to eliminate the divers before they can be exposed. Montes detonates several explosives, trapping the now-impaired submersibles in the trench.
Into 'The Abyss' and more
It's here that "The Trench" (based on Alten's 1999 sequel novel) reveals itself as not quite the Sharksploitation movie it may have seemed. That will come later, but for now, the film settles into an underwater suspense thriller, a melange of several classic examples of such. To wit, the survivors' trek across the perilous trench floor is reminiscent of 2020's "Underwater," the discovery that there's a mole on Mana One working for Driscoll and Montes (Jess, played by Skyler Samuels) ensuring that the survivors will perish in the secret station recalls 1989's "Leviathan," and the feats of water-based derring-do that Jonas and Jiuming undergo seems to echo James Cameron's "The Abyss."
There's also more than a dollop of Cameron's most recent movie present in "The Trench," last year's "Avatar: The Way of Water," as this section of the movie not only features a family unit attempting to survive an underwater station getting wrecked but also contains strong themes of environmentalism, looking at wildlife from a place of wonder as well as fear. That theme isn't a stranger to Wheatley's past work, either — his folk-horror/eco-horror features "A Field in England" and "In the Earth" line up perfectly with "The Trench" and its view of the natural world, specifically the idea that there are places on Earth that humans should not lightly venture into.
'Die Hard' on a research station
The underwater thriller isn't the only type of movie "The Trench" knowingly references, however. As soon as Jonas, Meiying, Jiuming, and Rigas escape the trench station, they join up with Mac and DJ (Page Kennedy, also returning from the first film) as the duo attempt to "Die Hard" their way around the mercenaries who've invaded the Mana One.
"The Trench" isn't shy about going full-bore into action movie territory, letting Statham and Jing demonstrate their considerable athleticism at certain points throughout the film. What might be most surprising is the way it expands the character of DJ, who in the first "Meg" was a nervous engineer who was none too happy about being involved in the attacks by the giant prehistoric shark in that movie. Using the power of the sequel, DJ is now a far more savvy and confident survivalist, packing a literal bag with all sorts of emergency supplies, including a .45 caliber pistol complete with poison-tipped bullets — "just like in 'Jaws 2'" he explains.
While the world of Sharksploitation is far too large for me to say whether or not this is the first killer shark movie that has a character reference to "Jaws" in it, suffice to say it's pretty rare, given how much of a touchstone that movie is to the subgenre. In a lot of ways, "The Trench" feels as winking as Renny Harlin's "Deep Blue Sea" does, and that's no accident, as Page Kennedy eventually performs a shark-themed rap song during the end credits (shout out to LL Cool J's "Deepest, Bluest (Shark's Fin)") and the evil Jess is dispatched by a Meg mid-sentence (a la Samuel L. Jackson's poor, doomed monologuist in "Deep Blue Sea"), the Megs having emerged from the trench thanks to Montes' explosion making a hole in the natural thermolayer.
It's a Jurassic — erm, Cretaceous — World after all
As Jonas and company survive yet another attack on a water-bound station, they're dismayed to learn that the escaped Megs are headed in the direction of a vacation resort for the wealthy known as — wait for it — Fun Island. They head to try and help, dodging the bullets coming their way from Driscoll's mercenaries all the while.
However, that's not all our heroes have to contend with, as the Megs aren't the only form of prehistoric wildlife to escape the hole in the trench. Joining them are several Sea Dinos, Velociraptor-like creatures who turn out to be amphibious, as well as a giant, Kraken-like octopus. It's here that Wheatley pulls out all the stops when it comes to his mean-spirited sense of humor (a quality that anyone who's seen "High Rise" or "Free Fire" can attest to). The monster-movie satire of "Piranha," the "Jurassic Park" franchise, and the first "Meg" are alive and well in the way not-so-innocent people are chewed up, squished, or otherwise attacked by the various beasties unleashed on Fun Island, chief among them the slimy Driscoll herself as she's carried off screaming into the jungle by the Sea Dinos.
Everyone gets their hero moment: Meiying saves some people in danger, Mac and Jiuming commandeer a helicopter to save Meiying, Jonas defeats the Megs with explosive harpoons and has his last stand with Montes (who is eaten by a Meg, naturally), a Meg gets to show the octopus what's what, Jiuming and Jonas save Mac after the chopper is downed, and even DJ gets to use that .45 to put a Sea Dino in its place. Phew!
Nature listens ... for now
One lingering question — if "The Trench" has any lingering questions, that is — involves whether or not Megs and human beings can ever coexist. After all, sharks are still respected and feared as uncaring predators to be avoided, so what does that say about a top-of-the-food-chain mega shark?
Jiuming still insists, much to Jonas' consternation, that his pet Meg has been trained to perfection, and will avoid swallowing him whole as long as he uses his sonar-based device to indicate. As this Meg approaches Jiuming, Jonas, and Mac while they wade helplessly in the water, it seems Jiuming is hopelessly misguided in this belief ... only for the Meg to turn and follow a pack of dolphins at the last second. Jonas observes that the Meg was only following its predatory nature, while Jiuming maintains that the Meg listened to his call.
Sure, it's not exactly the spinning top at the end of "Inception," but it's a legitimate question for the survivors to ponder as they all enjoy each other's company (and some libations) on the beach after their long day of strife.
Beneath the surface lies the future
Beyond the more academic debate of whether or not nature can ever truly be tamed lies the question about what, if anything, may lie beyond "The Meg 2." Where the "Jaws" franchise steadfastly followed through its sequels a narrative of killer sharks attacking the Brody family (with diminishing returns), Wheatley's steering of "The Trench" into broader waters means that this may not be a franchise stuck with depicting the same old shark attacks again and again, should it continue.
Perhaps its biggest promise lies in that titular trench, a realm akin to the dinosaur islands of the "Jurassic" series and Skull Island from "King Kong." There are clearly many more creatures great and small down there, and plenty of opportunities to encounter them either in their habitat or in ours, should they escape. There are also Jonas' attempts to police the open waters while raising a daughter, Jiuming's advancements in diving tech, and all those rare minerals worth millions still lying in the trench. To some, maybe "Meg 2: The Trench" and all these disparate plot threads and elements are indicative of the film biting off more than it can chew. Yet in this current trend of maximalism that's happening within blockbusters and franchise filmmaking, it seems entirely possible that there's more in "The Meg" to discover.