You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
Read because of the movie coming out soon, mainly to see how well it gets adapted. It turns out that I'm hoping that it's not much more than a loose adaptation.
Years ago, Dr Jonas Taylor, marine paleontologist and former deep sea explorer, had a disastrous experience in the Mariana Trench that resulted in death and disgrace. Since then Jonas has made a career on speculation that the Megalodon, an extinct giant version of the Great White Shark, still exists in the Trench. (Spoiler: he's right!) When a friend of his begins to lose automated devices planted in the Trench to a series of some sort of attack, he agrees to help investigate, catalyzing a catastrophic series of events that sees a Megalodon return to the surface waters with murderous results.
This book is over twenty years old, and in some ways it really shows. In terms of character portrayal, particularly of women, this is about 70's B-Grade horror movie depth. Even for the time, this stuff is staggeringly sexist. But it's hard to pick on that exclusively because most of the characters are incredibly shallow (ironic, given the book's early focus on depth) and caricatures at best.
"But wait!", you say. "You're reading this wrong!".
Yeah, I probably am. Most of the one-dimensional characters are actually future shark-food for the B-movie action plot. From that point of view, it's much the same as the classic horror movie plot of a group of horrible people entering a haunted house, all of whom are going to get offed in satisfying ways. These are the people who go off by themselves after abusing their friend/partner etc. You're meant to cheer on the monster.
I get it, I do, and there's definitely fun to be had here. I do think the movie is going to do a lot of it better, because you just can't get away with a lot of these tropes in 2018. I guess we'll see.
Years ago, Dr Jonas Taylor, marine paleontologist and former deep sea explorer, had a disastrous experience in the Mariana Trench that resulted in death and disgrace. Since then Jonas has made a career on speculation that the Megalodon, an extinct giant version of the Great White Shark, still exists in the Trench. (Spoiler: he's right!) When a friend of his begins to lose automated devices planted in the Trench to a series of some sort of attack, he agrees to help investigate, catalyzing a catastrophic series of events that sees a Megalodon return to the surface waters with murderous results.
This book is over twenty years old, and in some ways it really shows. In terms of character portrayal, particularly of women, this is about 70's B-Grade horror movie depth. Even for the time, this stuff is staggeringly sexist. But it's hard to pick on that exclusively because most of the characters are incredibly shallow (ironic, given the book's early focus on depth) and caricatures at best.
"But wait!", you say. "You're reading this wrong!".
Yeah, I probably am. Most of the one-dimensional characters are actually future shark-food for the B-movie action plot. From that point of view, it's much the same as the classic horror movie plot of a group of horrible people entering a haunted house, all of whom are going to get offed in satisfying ways. These are the people who go off by themselves after abusing their friend/partner etc. You're meant to cheer on the monster.
I get it, I do, and there's definitely fun to be had here. I do think the movie is going to do a lot of it better, because you just can't get away with a lot of these tropes in 2018. I guess we'll see.