The Meg Movie's Biggest Homages to Jaws

WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for director Jon Turteltaub’s The Meg, in theaters now.

It's almost an unspoken rule that any movie involving a giant shark, or any shark, for that matter, must borrow from the 1975 classic that launched an entire subgenre, Jaws. What Steven Spielberg created four decades ago made audiences terrified to go into the water, and it's what movies like The Shallows try to recreate, painting the creature as antagonist.

While director John Turteltaub has the advantage of modern special effects for The Meg, he still honors Spielberg's classic with scenes that can be considered pure homage. Let's take a look at the sequences that pay tribute to Jaws, and its sequels.

5. The Motion in the Ocean

The megalodon that escapes a mysterious trench off the coast of China draws heavy influence from the Jaws movies in how it stalks its prey. In almost every scene, it plays a cat-and-mouse game, swimming beneath boats, swimmers and kayakers. All we can see is the outline and color of the 75-foot monster, ghosting past its intended victims.

Turteltaub is aping what Spielberg did in Jaws, where the shark stalked its victims off the coast of Amity Island. We rarely saw the shark apart from a few key scenes, with Spielberg choosing to instead use this technique to build tension and of course, horror. The Meg adopts a similar strategy, which creates intrigue and immense tension as you never know just when it'll surface for a meal.

4. Taking Aim at the Fish

Jason Statham's Jonas Taylor is called in to save the day as he's had experience with the meg, so when the creature reaches open water he must hunt it down and kill it. Of course, the first part of that task involves tracking it, and so he jumps into the sea when they finally meet the behemoth, looking to place a tracker on the fin.

That's similar to the ending of Jaws, in which Roy Scheider's Chief Brody is on a sinking boat, trying to snipe the shark with a rifle. It had just swallowed a pressurized scuba tank, and with one shot, he'd blow it up. And so he did, a victory shot that The Meg blatantly apes as Jonas makes the first moves toward the creature's demise.

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3. The Deep, Dark Stare

After the meg escapes the trench, it visits the Mana One underwater research facility and chomps some whales for breakfast. Just before that, however, the scene in which it scares young Meiying (Shuya Sophia Cai) pays tribute to Jaws 3-D. Here, the shark stares at the little girl before sinking its teeth into the aquarium glass and swimming off.

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It's a familiar shot for those who loved the 1983 sequel in which Dennis Quaid's Mike Brody & Co. are locked in an intense stare-down with a Great White. Similarly, Turteltaub sends chills down our spines, honing in on the dark, lifeless eyes, throwing a nod to what director Joe Alves did more than 30 years ago.

2. Swarming the Bathers

When the meg decides to have lunch, it swims out to Sanya, a popular Chinese beach resort. There, a young kid watches the creature's fin cutting through the water are people are pulled beneath the surface. It begins to drag down rafts, life boats and everything in between, but it's the kid staring in horror that resonates, due in no small part to nostalgia.

The kid has that same look of fear we saw in 1975 with young Mike when the shark swam into the bay, giving Chief Brody one of his earliest looks at the damage it could do as it attacked children on a raft. Then, there's also the famous "Get out of the water" scene in which the fin cuts through the water as the sharks attacks a group of unsuspecting bathers, which The Meg definitely recaptures in all its blood and gore.

1. The Boat Assault

Midway through The Meg, the prehistoric shark attacks a boat, opening its jaws wide as it grabs the body of the first dead megalodon that escaped the trench. The trailer deceives folks a bit, as it seems the shark is attacking the people on the vessel, but it simply wants its mate back. It does, however, assault the boat right after in a sequence in which we see most of its body out the water, flailing in rage.

That evokes the Jaws finale, in which the Great White attacked the boat Chief Brody was on. As the shark chomps at the vessel, Quint (Robert Shaw) slips into its mouth. A meg doing the same, only this time it's a way bigger boat, and the enormous creature causes a lot more chaos.

In theaters nationwide, director Jon Turteltaub’s The Meg stars Jason Statham, Li Bingbing, Masi Oka, Cliff Curtis, Page Kennedy, Ruby Rose, Winston Chao and Rainn Wilson.