‘MEG 2’ is not a tribute to Meg Ryan or Meg Foster but the sequel to “The Meg”, the hit shark movie in 2018 that starred Jason Statham battling a megalodon, the biggest shark ever. People just love shark movies and we’ve seen so many shark movies through the years.

We enjoyed “The Shallows” with Blake Lively battling a shark alone, “Open Water” about a couple left in the middle of the sea that’s a hit so it even had a sequel, and such B movies as “Sharknado” and “Shark Attack” that had so many sequels.

But of course, the one that it started it all is “Jaws” in 1975, based on a best selling novel and directed by Steven Spielberg which had two sequels.

“Meg 2” is based on the 1999 novel, “The Trench” by Steve Alten. To make it bigger than the first movie, this one is populated not only by giant sharks but also by dinosaurs and a giant octopus with huge tentacles or kraken.

The film opens in pre-historic times showing bigger creatures eating the smaller ones, with the megalodon being the ultimate champion devouring a dinosaur. From there, we meet the film’s hero, Jason Statham as Jonas Taylor.

He is shown apprehending some unscrupulous environmental criminals who are dumping toxic waste in the Philippine sea five years after the events in the first movie.

Jason’s love interest in the previous film, Li Bingbing as Suyin, has died and leaves her daughter, Melying (Sophia Cai), to be raised by Jonas.

But the movie is co-produced by the Chinese, so Statham is not the only protagonist here but also Jiuming (Chinese action star Wu Jing also known as Jacky Wu), who is the brother of Suyin and now owns the huge underwater laboratory, the Mana One, along with a wealthy financier, Hillary Driscoll (Sienna Guillory), as his shadowy associate with her own personal agenda.

The laboratory is holding a megalodon called Haiqi, who has been trained by Jiuming since it was a baby shark. He thinks he is successful in domesticating it and it follows his orders. But Haiqi manages to escape from her cage.

Jiuming and Jason then go on an underwater journey to explore uncharted ocean depths, but somebody is out to sabotage their mission. To survive, they are forced to walk to their rescue station several miles away, only to find out that their escaped pods have been sabotaged.

They eventually discover an illegal mining operation for rare minerals that turns out to be secretly operated by Driscoll who thinks she can earn billions from it. They also discover that the trench has been raptured, releasing from captivity many prehistoric creatures, including the sharks, the dinosaur-like lizards and the kraken.

Jason and his team get to a nearby resort called Fun Island that is full of tourists on holiday. They try their best to warn the tourists about the coming creatures that could endanger their lives. Driscoll and her cohorts also go to Fun Island for the movie’s action-packed climax.

Since Statham is the main “bida” or hero, he is given several action sequences, including being chased by the Meg while he’s on jetski and then battling the shark with a harpoon where he attached some explosives. The bad guys of Driscoll also try to kill him and he fights them all back fiercely.

But since Jiuming is also a “bida”, he is also given his own action sequences. One involves a runaway helicopter that is brought down by the tentacles of the rampaging kraken. The pacing in the last half of the movie is truly very fast and the action is nonstop.

The fight scenes with the monstrous creatures are executed quite well and done with unabashed gusto, thus providing a lot of cheesy fun. Some critics are saying that it lacks character exposition and the dialogue is bad. What the heck, looks like they’re looking for a movie that should get Oscar nominations. Director Ben Wheatley knows viewers are watching because of the sharks and they get other monsters, too. So just get on and enjoy the ride and all the monster mayhem.