![]() Death scenes and dramatic climaxes are enhanced with choral accompaniment, which brings an almost hysterical human element to the horror. It has its own chillingly simple shark theme that uses a more conventional horror-style string arrangement as opposed to John Williams’ low woodwind, a creeping variation of which is used to imply the presence of the creatures among the vast dark water. Trevor Rabin’s tremendously evocative score understands the complexities of framing a scene with music. If Deep Blue Sea learned anything from Jaws, it was that music is more than background noise. She is, after all, the real villain of the story, and therefore is gobbled up in the closing minutes, delivering a satisfying and thoroughly unexpected conclusion to her unreformed character. When test audiences protested this original ending, Harlin cleverly listened to feedback, and rewrote it. Susan, meanwhile, would conventionally live and become the love interest of Carter. ![]() So when, in the middle of an epic morale-raising speech, he is suddenly attacked from behind and eaten by a shark, the rug is pulled from under the audience. Jackson was unquestionably the star of the show with the most audience pull, and his character’s background as the hardened survivor of an avalanche cements him as a strong figure who is destined to survive this ordeal too. ![]() One of the big talking points upon Deep Blue Sea’s release was the surprising turns of the plot - or more specifically, who dies and how. But this is where Deep Blue Sea manages to distinguish itself. All the best character tropes of the late ‘90s are embodied, which might lead the audience to believe that the movie would take them on a fairly conventional and predictable journey. Similarly, Michael Rapaport is there to be the goofy sidekick who makes fish puns and quips about a recently-deceased woman’s vibrator. Nothing eases the mood of an action movie quite like a green bird calling LL Cool J a dickhead. LL Cool J’s role in the first half almost constitutes a sitcom, in which he potters around the kitchen, whipping eggs and being sassed by his talking parrot. While his direction is sharp and delivers a very good-looking movie, bad CGI sharks aside, his inherently campy style is the accidental savior of the picture.ĭeep Blue Sea masquerades as a serious movie, but its tongue is planted firmly in its cheek. When Deep Blue Sea came around, he ventured on with his characteristic optimism and confidence in his work, going so far as to promise the audience would not be able to tell the difference between the real sharks and the CGI ones (don’t snigger!). To this day, he has sustained a steady reputation as a pretty hit-and-miss director, with no fewer than six Razzie nominations. Renny Harlin helmed the movie at an interesting point in his career. RELATED: Why 'Jaws 2' Was the Only Good Sequel of the Franchise Jackson is Russell Franklin, a financial backer of the project who has come to see where his money is going, and LL Cool J plays cook Preacher, because it was the ‘90s, so they needed a popular rapper to bring in the young crowd and contribute a song for the credits sequence. Carter Blake ( Thomas Jane) is the rugged blond muscleman with a shady past whose job is to wrangle the sharks and be the obvious hero of the story. Jim Whitlock ( Stellan Skarsgård), chirpy marine biologist Janice ( Jacqueline McKenzie) and goofy engineer Scoggins ( Michael Rapaport). Susan McAlester, a somber scientist whose personal experience with Alzheimer’s drives her to succeed by any means necessary. And every moment of it is unprecedentedly brilliant. beast story set in the real world, Deep Blue Sea leans fully into weird science, logical inconsistency and straight-up cheese. ![]() But in order to do so, they have violated a few ethical codes of conduct, and “as a side effect the sharks got smarter!” Where Jaws was a simple man vs. The very premise of Deep Blue Sea demonstrates its lovingly B-movie feel: a group of scientists working in an underwater lab have genetically engineered super-brained sharks in order to use their cerebral tissue as a cure for Alzheimer’s. While at a very different end of the shark movie spectrum than Jaws, it fit perfectly into the action/disaster cinema landscape of the late ‘90s, proving itself as wildly enjoyable popcorn entertainment, and ultimately, the "other" shark movie. Following a successful run at the box office, it grew in popularity with home video audiences, to the point that it became something of a cult movie. Many shark movies have come and gone in the decades since, but none has ever made the impact that Deep Blue Sea did. Almost 50 years after Jaws hit the big screen and became a defining work of cinema, its influence on the art of filmmaking and popular culture has never declined. ![]()
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