Shark Week: Sharktopus

I'll admit, it took me awhile to get around to watching this one. There's only so many shark movies an IQ can take before it begins it's decline. This is another one of those movies where the title is pretty self explanatory. The movie wastes no time at all and right in the first minute of the movie, we see Sharktopus killing the fuck out of a pussy, normal great white shark. We are then shown a "high tech" laboratory where they are controlling the beast and they explain that Sharktopus is a top secret weapon designed for the Navy. Now, just think for a moment: if you were asked by the government to design a hyper effective military war machine and given a huge budget to do so, what would your perfectly sane, college educated mind go to?

Well, a fucking remote controlled shark/octopus hybrid of course.
Despite the title of the movie and how catchy the nickname "Sharktopus" is, the monster is rarely referred to as such because the project goes by the uninspiring "S-11". Run in terror.

Whatever the Navy was planning on using this unwieldy bastard for, we'll never know because the very first test they attempt, which was simply to follow a speedboat carrying two innocent, unsuspecting civilians, was a failure. A bump over the head and the collar that controls Sharktopus is knocked loose and that's all it takes to turn it into a reckless killing machine. The first thing it does is send the boat into a rock formation which causes it to explode in a fiery ball of CG.

As hilarious as the first kill is, some of the many other ones are even funnier. Take this one for instance where a hapless bungie jumper is picked off in mid fall:

Or even better, a zip-liner who apparently zoned out Sharktopus murdering everyone at the tropical beach resort he was residing at.

I always knew those things were dangerous.

When you're not watching Sharktopus shred everything in sight, you're plugging your ears lest you be subjected to the abhorrently cast actors in the film, most of whom only existed to die and could've been effectively cut out if need be. The main characters are, for the most part, tolerable but just about every extra is either so over-the-top you'd think you were watching The Wiggles or they're duller than cardboard.

I was actually surprised that I recognized one of the actors. The scientist who created Sharktopus, who sort of takes the role of a bad guy, is played by Eric Roberts, who you may recognize as Salvator Maroni from The Dark Knight. His daughter is like the co-creator or something, but it's weird because not only do the two actors bear no resemblance but they're not even the same race (and no, there's no mention of adoption or anything) and the daughter seems to be hiding an accent of some sort because she occasionally slips in and out of it.

The way the "scientists" go about explaining things is hilarious. They weren't even trying with this one and honestly, as annoying as it was, they made it much more "believable" in Super Shark. Here, it's just utter gibberish that basically means nothing at all. It's like whenever they're asked about it they pull the ol' college know-it-all and completely circumvent the question but try to make it sound like a legitimate answer. It's not like it's even important anyway, it's a fucking shark/octopus that kills people.

So the whole premise of the movie is that the Navy wants it's million dollar project back and they just can't get the damn thing to stop murdering people. Eric Roberts, who's character is named Nathan Sands (yes another sand related name), is trying his darndest to get Sharktopus back unharmed because it's his life's work... God, can you imagine if you live your whole life in scientific pursuits and all you have to show for it was Sharktopus? Anyway, he tells his bounty hunter to use specialized darts to inoculate it so he can haul it in and repair it, I guess. Unfortunately, he only has two of them, so if they miss twice, it's all fucking over. My only question is why not get more darts? Really? Two? This isn't something he built in his backyard, it's a US Navy project. He had the budget to engineer the shark but he didn't have enough to buy more darts which are the only thing standing between success and a complete project shutdown given the highly likely chance that a contingency plan is needed?
Eventually, Nathan Sands dies and the bounty hunter guy, sick of Sharktopus and his shit, takes it upon himself to kill the thing. What I don't understand is that the military was literally standing by just before Sands was killed, Sands just kept refusing to give the order so his precious baby wouldn't be hurt. The Commander actually says,

"If you can't [capture it], I'll send a team in to terminate it. They can be there in an hour, turn that freak of yours into chowder and leave no sign that it ever existed." 

So, if the military has this capability, why didn't the main characters use it? Instead they go after it alone and get about a dozen more people killed along the way.

The thing just goes around impaling people on it's tentacles in all of it's CG splendor. I figure by now it should go without saying that it looks like shit. It's awful. Certainly not as bad as Snow Shark but at least in that movie they had an excuse; it was a damn film festival submission, Sharktopus was made by Syfy (keep it up, by the way). It's hard to really gauge exactly how shitty it really is until you see it in action.

Walking always seems to induce that exaggerated head swinging.

I don't know, it's just such a weird movie. There's a scene where, after searching with a metal detector for all of five seconds, a beach babe digs up a fucking gold doubloon only to have it taken by an old guy after he watched her getting eaten by Sharktopus; The Shark keeps changing sizes, halfway through the movie it randomly goes into that stylish, multi-panel thing from 24 and then never does it again, there's a scene where a girl screams but the actor's mouth doesn't move, characters go from hating each other to being abruptly intimate, the bounty hunter manages to miss the shark from literally five feet away with his fully-automatic machine-gun and there's even a Wilhelm scream thrown in there. Not to mention, some of the dialogue is just really bizarre. Take this one for example:

"He was a nice guy, smelled kinda funky but he was still a nice guy."

Like, what fuck is going on in this film? It may have a lot more action than Super Shark but it's a hell of a lot dumber even considering the random bikini girls, serving no purpose but to be hot that litter that film, a crime which Sharktopus is no less guilty for.

Sharktopus doesn't really come under the "so bad it's good" genre and it's more of the "so bad it's bad" variety and I don't recommend it.