Neither critics nor audiences seem hugely enamoured with 2018’s “The Meg,” the giant prehistoric shark film starring Jason Statham.
That film pulled in a 43% (5.3/10) critics, and 46% (3/5) audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and similarly managed a 46/100 critics and 5.5/10 audience score on Metacritic – scores which are essentially on par with the critics being slightly harsher.
The just-released Ben Wheatley-directed sequel, on the other hand, shows a larger divergence between the two groups. This time critics are outright panning the film much harder, whereas the audience scores have had a notable uptick.
“Meg 2: The Trench” has pulled in a 28% (4.5/10) critics and a 69% (3.8/5) audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and similarly managed a 40/100 critics and 6.2/10 audience score on Metacritic.
The film is on track for a $25 million domestic opening this weekend, which puts it chomping distance of both the third weekend of “Oppenheimer” and the first weekend of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” which are both tracking for $27 million from Friday to Sunday.
Both those films have scored some of the best reviews of the year thus far – not so “Meg 2: The Trench” which will see some of its target demographic being targeted next weekend by “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” and then both “Strays” and “Blue Beetle” the following week.