Once a month, a meeting is held in a Knights of Columbus Hall in the ocean by a handful of sharks from various movies and pop culture events. It’s run by The Shark From The Shallows. The goal of each meeting is always the same: to figure out ways to rehabilitate their public image. And since a new shark movie will be in theaters this weekend, we’re checking in on them again to see how it’s going.
INT. A KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS HALL, BUT SOMEWHERE IN THE OCEAN — DAY
The Shark From The Shallows swims in, scans the room, sees that everyone is in attendance, and then begins.
The Shark From The Shallows: OK, everyone. Settle down, settle down. It’s time to begin. I hereby call to order the Movie Shark Meeting for the month of August. Same as usual, we’ll be fielding ideas for how to rehabilitate our image. Not the same as usual, though, because we have a new member: The Shark From The Meg.
The Shark From The Meg: Hi, everyone.
The Shark From Shark Tale: Well, get a load of the size of you.
The Shark From The Meg: Ha. Yeah. I’m a big guy. I appreciate you all having me. I didn’t even know this was a thing that happened until very recently.
The Shark From The Shallows: Well, that’s because you weren’t a famous movie shark until very recently.
The Shark From The Meg: So you all do this once a month?
The Shark From The Shallows: Yep. Every month. Everyone, say hi.
The Shark From Deep Blue Sea That Ate Samuel L. Jackson: Hey.
The Shark From Jaws: Hi.
The Shark From Shark Tale: Hello.
The Shark From That Katy Perry Performance at the Super Bowl a Few Years Ago: What’s up?
The Shark From Open Water: What’s up, bro?
The Shark From The Reef: Yo.
The Shark From Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life That Got Punched by Lara Croft: Hey, man.
The Shark From Sharknado That Someone Chainsawed Out of: [Nods his shark head]
The Shark From 47 Meters Down: Hey there.
The Shark From The Meg: [Waves his shark fin at everyone] And the only thing you all talk about in these meetings is rehabilitating the public image of sharks?
The Shark From 47 Meters Down: I mean, other stuff pops up, but that’s the main point of the meetings, yes.
The Shark From The Shallows: Right. And speaking of: I haven’t had a chance to see The Meg yet. Do you do anything in there that’ll help with our PR campaign? Like, maybe is the movie about how you save a bunch of people when their boat capsizes? Or maybe there’s a plane crash over the Pacific and you do a Lassie-type thing and alert the authorities so they can be rescued? Is it a coming-of-age movie about your transition from shark adolescence to shark adulthood? Something that humanizes sharks, if you will.
The Shark From The Meg: Oh. Umm, no. None of that.
The Shark From Shark Tale: Oh, man. Did any of y’all see Lady Bird? It was so good. I’ve probably watched that opening scene on Shark YouTube at least 15 times. It’s perfect. The thing she says about wanting to live through something really got inside my bones.
The Shark From That Katy Perry Performance at the Super Bowl a Few Years Ago: Lady Bird is incredible. One of my favorite movies of the last five years, no question, and possibly a top five coming-of-age movie this century.
The Shark From The Reef: The part where Lady Bird meets Timothée Chalamet at the coffee shop is my favorite. I always wonder if Chalamet is really that good of an actor doing the Heady High School Rebel bit or if that’s just how he actually is as a person.
The Shark From Shark Tale: That’s a great question. You could prob—
The Shark From Jaws: Just shut up about Lady Bird already. That’s not what we’re here for.
The Shark From The Reef: Bro, what are you so upset about?
The Shark From That Katy Perry Performance at the Super Bowl a Few Years Ago: He’s not the biggest shark at the meeting anymore. He’s grumpy. He’s a cute little grumpy shark.
The Shark From The Reef: Hey, hey, The Shark From Jaws, I guess you’re gonna need a bigger boat.
The Shark From Shark Tale: [Laughs]
The Shark From The Shallows: [To The Shark From The Meg] So what do you do in the movie?
The Shark From The Meg: I just eat a fucking lot of people.
The Shark From The Shallows: Dang. Is it, like, a lot a lot? Or just a normal amount?
The Shark From The Meg: It’s a bunch. Like, so many. Maybe more than any other shark movie.
The Shark From The Reef: Do you get killed by an oxygen tank? But, like, a bigger oxygen tank than normal? Not a little one.
The Shark From Shark Tale: [Laughs again]
The Shark From The Shallows: [To The Shark From The Meg] Well, I guess that makes sense, what with you being a giant shark and all.
The Shark From The Meg: Can I ask a question? Am I allowed to do that?
The Shark From Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life That Got Punched by Lara Croft: Sure.
The Shark From The Meg: Great. And I don’t want to offend anyone here, but: Why do movie sharks need their image rehabilitated? Nobody’s out there telling bears they need to be nicer in movies, you know what I’m saying? The Bear From The Revenant ate the fuck out of Leonardo DiCaprio and Leo got an Oscar off that. And didn’t The Bear From The Edge win an Oscar himself or something after eating Mercutio alive? Everyone’s cool with bears eating up people in movies. Why not sharks? What’s really going on here? Something sounds crooked to me.
The Shark From The Reef: Aw, man.
The Shark From The Meg: What?
The Shark From The Reef: You should’ve said, “Something sounds … fishy to me.”
The Shark From The Meg: Oh shit. Good one.
The Shark From Deep Blue Sea That Ate Samuel L. Jackson: It’s likely a combination of different things. For one, there actually are a bunch of movies where bears are nice and have good relationships with humans. The Jungle Book is an easy example. Winnie the Pooh is a nice bear. There was a bear in that one movie Brendan Fraser did when his career was falling apart. That’s never been the case for sharks. We have only ever been seen as bad, or as villains, or as black-hearted killing machines.
The Shark From Shark Tale: Umm, excuse me. I exist, thank you.
The Shark From Shark Tale: I love Brendan Fraser. Encino Man was an all-timer.
The Shark From Deep Blue Sea That Ate Samuel L. Jackson: [To The Shark From Shark Tale] Pretending to be nice doesn’t make you nice. [Turns back to The Shark From The Meg] For two, the fur makes a big difference. Bears have fur. Sharks don’t. Bears can be pet. Sharks can’t. Humans like to pet things. It’s just the way they’re built. They pet things and they think it gives them dominance over them.
The Shark From The Meg: This all just feels a lot like PC culture, you know? I’m supposed to do the opposite of what I’ve been evolutionarily hardwired to do for hundreds of millions of years because straws are bad now or whatever?
The Shark From Deep Blue Sea That Ate Samuel L. Jackson: I … I don’t see how those things are related.
The Shark From The Reef: Me neither.
The Shark From The Meg: I’m saying, am I really supposed to stop eating humans because they’re offended by it? Grow up.
The Shark From Sharknado That Someone Chainsawed Out of: Well, in fairness to the humans, they aren’t offended by it, they’re killed by it. That’s probably why they don’t like it so much.
The Shark From 47 Meters Down: I have an idea. I was giving this a lot of thought, and one thing I came up with was: How about if the next time we see a human in the water, we only bite off, like, one of their arms or something like that? Because normally what I like to do is just eat the whole person.
The Shark From Jaws: Same.
The Shark From The Shallows: Yeah, eating a whole human is pretty great. I like the way they kind of squish around in your mouth when you first bite into them. It’s like one of those Gushers candies.
The Shark From Deep Blue Sea That Ate Samuel L. Jackson: You know what I like to do with Gushers candies? I like to bite down on them real hard so that they get all pressed in between my teeth. It feels so good for some reason.
The Shark From Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life That Got Punched by Lara Croft: I do the same thing with Butterfingers. I don’t know why it’s so satisfying, but it is. It feels like whe—
The Shark From 47 Meters Down: Hey, hey, hey. I wasn’t finished with my thought. What I was saying was: I remember at that one meeting last year where we talked about how we could just stop eating children because that seemed to really upset the humans. Everyone voted against that. And so what I’m saying is: Let’s just not eat entire humans. Just take a single bite. Maybe a leg, maybe an arm, maybe a head.
The Shark From That Katy Perry Performance at the Super Bowl a Few Years Ago: I can’t believe I have to say this, but, I’d like to point out that if you bite off a human’s head, the human will die. The head is, like, their most important part. Don’t bite that off.
The Shark From The Meg: This all just sounds so dumb to me. I’m a shark. A human is a human. Our relationship is supposed to be us eating them. That’s how Shark God intended for things to be. If we weren’t supposed to eat them, then why are they so delicious? And why are they always getting into the water? I’ll tell you why: because they want to be eaten. A human getting upset that he was eaten by a shark in the ocean is like a steak getting upset that it was eaten after it laid down to take a nap on a plate in a steakhouse.
The Shark From Deep Blue Sea That Ate Samuel L. Jackson: That … that, uh, actually makes a lot of sense.
The Shark From The Meg: Of course it does. True things make sense. If you tell me, “Hey, The Shark From The Meg, the humans are mad that you keep eating them in Target,” then that I understand. Or if you say, “Hey, The Shark From The Meg, the humans are mad that you keep eating them when they’re in line at the bank,” then that I understand. Sharks aren’t supposed to be in those spaces. But if you tell me that humans are mad that they keep getting eaten in the place where I live and eat, then I’ve got some news for you: Fuck that. Don’t run a route across the middle of the field if you’re not interested in getting flattened by a linebacker, you know what I’m saying?
The Shark From Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life That Got Punched by Lara Croft: I have no idea what you’re saying.
The Shark From 47 Meters Down: Nobody does, I don’t think.
The Shark From The Meg: Sharks eat humans, is what I’m saying. It is what it is. And I’m gonna try to eat as many as possible. And I urge everyone here to do the same.