Just like the first movie, The Meg 2: The Trench is a co-production between Warner Bros. and Chinese venture capitalists CMC. The first movie did massive business in China and clearly, they are hoping to repeat that for the sequel. Chinese trailers are always very different from Western trailers. Western trailers like to try and avoid spoilers and frequently indulge in misdirection. Chinese trailers tend to reveal more, in a more straightforward way. This is true of the final Chinese trailer for The Meg 2 which tells us much more about the plot.
The good news is that it’s less bombastic and silly than the Barracuda soundtracked first trailer, the visual FX appears more finished, and there are flashes of what many hope Ben Wheatley will bring to a PG-13 monster mash-up. The bad news is that it builds out the role of Sophia Cai as Meiying Zhang, the little girl from the first movie who is now a fourteen-year-old, and look destined to fulfill the “sassy, resourceful kid in peril” role that so frequently derails other movies.
Sophia Cai in the first movie
All we know about the plot of The Meg 2: The Trench so far is that a few years after Jonas Taylor and his team defeated a megalodon, a prehistoric giant shark, the team is called back to duty to fight off an even larger, more frightening, and even hungrier apex predator from the depths of the trench. Along the way, they will confront more undiscovered creatures from the vast depths, and find themselves pitched against an undersea mining consortium with a sinister purpose.
Some of this chimes with the plot of Steve Alten’s second novel, also called The Trench. The trailer also hints that we may well see Angel, a captive megalodon that is a major focus in several of Alten’s novels.
We expect a Western version of the final trailer any day now. The Meg 2: The Trench is out on August 5th.
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