Did you watch Discovery Channel’s two-hour blockbuster Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives Sunday night? If you did, you wasted two hours of your life. The channel’s lead-in to its 26th “Shark Week” was a fraud.
Faker than Obama’s latest pivot to jobs.
Megalodon, about a real giant shark that went extinct millions of years ago, supposedly keyed off of “unearthed” evidence that the pre-historic monster shark was photographed off South Africa by the Nazis and attacked and sunk a boat near the same location this year. The lamely acted conflict between the two lead researchers — one, a skeptic that the big shark still lives, and the other, a true blue believer that the monster is still out there chomping whales and boats — was a big tip-off. The movie-style cinematography was another. When the research crew decided to roll more than 40,000 pounds of chum into the water to attract the megalodon — and every other shark in the hemisphere — to the cameras, it was game over.
Yeah, I watched for a while, then finally bailed when it was obvious that the whole thing was another Mermaid special. I watched that too, but it was hilarious — and obviously fake from the start. Discovery tried selling Megalodon as real, apparently right up to the very end.
I tuned back to Shark After Dark Live for a while after Megalo-lie, but that turned out to be mostly about a dude in a shark suit building his Twitter following, and bringing moonshiners who just happen to have Discovery Channel shows on to talk about their shows.
The only time that Discovery directly called their Megalodon special out was at the very end, after lots of bad acting, weak Photoshopping and two full wasted hours.
None of the institutions or agencies that appear in the film are affiliated with it in any way, nor have approved its contents.
Though certain events and characters in this film have been dramatized, sightings of “Submarine” continue to this day.
Megalodon was a real shark. Legends of giant sharks persist all over the world. There is still a debate about what they may be.
Even that’s incomplete. The “conflict” between the “researchers” who dominate the mockumentary was fake. The researchers were fake. Shark Week fans are not amused. Many are giving Discovery a rough time on Facebook.
Shark Week continues this week, but Megalodon’s fakery was a terrible way to kick it off. I’ll watch the Mythbusters take, because they’re the Mythbusters, but nothing else. If I want fake documentaries, I’ll watch Michael Moore.
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