January 13th, 2019 Movie – The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end and that includes the phenomenon known as Sharknado. Yes, when it was announced that the latest Sharknado movie would be the end of the series, I will admit that I was pretty sad to hear about it. I mean, ever since the first movie took the world by storm (pun somewhat intended), Every summer I would get a week of brand new shark themed movies to go along with the latest installment in the series. It is going to be very hard to let go of something that awesome. Anyways, after the last movie, and learning that the next installment would be the end, I was curious to see exactly how The Asylum was going to close out this franchise. Let’s see how they did with today’s movie, The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time.

The plot: During the Cretaceous period, a velociraptor is curious about a large, shark fin shaped rock but it quickly runs off when the rock explodes as a jeep drives through it. Inside the jeep, Fin Shepard turns to talk to his adult son Gil but notices that Gil has vanished. Suddenly, a hologram recording of Gil appears and tells Fin that due to the energy involved in time travel, a person can only go back in time once or else they vanish. Telling Fin that the time travel device is built into the pilot wings that Gil threw to Fin, Gil explains that Fin has to go through time and stop all of the past sharknado’s from happening if he wants to prevent the world’s destruction. When the recording ends, Fin goes looking for the bag that contains the cyborg head of his wife April only to see a dinosaur grab it in it’s mouth and run off. Fin drives the jeep after it and finds himself in a stampede, slamming on the brakes before he joins the dinosaurs in going over the cliff into the sea below. As Fin looks down the cliff, a megalodon breaches out of the water, causing Fin to step back from the cliff’s edge. A tyrannosaurus appears and Fin manages to avoid it and when it turns to attack him, the megalodon leaps out of the water and grabs the tyrannosaurus, dragging it into the sea. Fin then turns and faces the dinosaur that grabbed the bad and attempts to get it back when a masked figure suddenly leaps down from a nearby cliff, attacking the dinosaur with knives and forcing it to drop the bag and run off. As Fin grabs the bag, he is shocked to see that the masked figure is Nova, and she if joined by Bryan and a non-cyborg April, who rides in on a pteranodon. Fin is shocked as everybody had supposedly died and they explain that Gil had saved them all before they died and brought them there to help Fin stop the first sharknado. A meteor storm occurs just as the first sharknado appears and the group decide to use the meteors to destroy the sharknado but they aren’t powerful enough. Fin jumps onto the back of a megalodon caught in the vortex and as he forces it to swallow some of the meteors, he spots Gil riding on another shark and calls out to him but Gil disappears through time. Fin jumps back onto the pteranodon and Bryan hits a meteor into the megalodon, causing an explosion that destroys the sharknado. When a time vortex appears, they fly through it, thinking that they are returning to the present day but find themselves in the medieval kingdom of Camelot, and that Bryan has suddenly become a woman. The sorceress Morgana shoots down the pteranodon and attempts to take them prisoner but she is called off by Winter, who escorts them all to the castle, saying their arrival has been foretold. Winter introduces them to Merlin, who tells them that Gil had been studying with them for 10 years and Winter goes to fetch him only to see him sail off into an approaching sharknado. When she reports what happened, Fin and April want to try and save him but Nova tells them if they stop Gil from traveling through time to search for his parents, he won’t grow up and pull the others out of time to help Fin stop the sharknados from occurring. When an alert sounds from the bag containing the cyborg April’s head, everyone is curious about what is in the bag and Nova tries to grab it from Fin, only for the bag to open and the head rolls along the floor and lands at April’s feet. Fin explains to April that it was the only thing left of her when the world is destroyed and April tells Fin she forgives him but decides to hold onto the head. Fin and the others go to stop the sharknado but are stopped by Morgana, who tells them she has a potion that will destroy the sharknado but will use it only if Merlin agrees to remove the spell around Excalibur. Merlin agrees and Morgana uses an arrow to send the potion into the sharknado but instead of destroying it, it causes the sharks to start breathing fire. Fin and the others rush to defend the castle and Fin decides to try and use Excalibur, pulling it from the stone and revealing it to be a chainsaw sword. Fin uses Excalibur’s magic to stop the sharknado, with Morgana being killed in the process, and they then seal themselves into a large cauldron and are fired from a catapult so they can go fast enough to travel through time. They arrive in colonial America, with Bryan returning to being a man again, and they begin to wonder if their attempts to stop the sharknados might do more harm than good but when they see a sharknado approaching the colonial fleet, they decide to stop it before America ceases to exist, only to be captured by colonial soldiers. They are taken to General Washington’s camp and after explaining to Benjamin Franklin that they are there to help save the colonies from the sharknado, they are allowed inside to speak to Washington. Fin and Bryan explain their plan and after Washington allows them to proceed, Fin has the army fire their cannons into the sharknado, timing their attack to coincide with the lightning strikes to cause the cannonballs to become electrified. After destroying the sharknado and sending the British fleet retreating, Fin and the others try to figure out a way to get home but Nova, having encountered her ancestor, rushes off to talk to him. Nova hands her ancestor a note to be passed down to her grandfather but Fin takes it from her ancestor, causing an argument between him and Nova on her desire to change her past and save her grandfather. Fin and Nova rejoin April and Bryan so they can leave but Bryan, due to his being a history teacher, decides to stay behind and ensure America is put on the right path. With Franklin’s help, the three head off to the time vortex, where they end up landing in the Old West, where they come between a stand off between Billy the Kid and the town sheriff. Surprised at the arrival of the carriage, Billy is disarmed by the sheriff and runs off and the sheriff arrests Fin for his role in helping Billy escape. As Fin is taken to jail, April and Nova hide in the carriage and are shocked to see Skye appear. In jail, Fin speaks to another prisoner, who was supposed to be rescued by Billy the Kid, and as the prisoner is taken from his cell to be hung, Fin realizes that the prisoner is a grown up Gil. Nova and Skye break Fin out of jail and Fin explains that they screwed up and Gil is about to be killed and Skye goes to rescue him, just as a sharknado approaches. Fin and Skye rescue Gil, who races off into the vortex, while April and Nova use cyborg April’s head to destroy the sharknado. After a standoff with Billy the Kid, who wants to go to the future, Fin, April, Nova, and Skye get onto a train and use it to travel through the time vortex. They end up on the Santa Monica beach in the 1950’s and as a sharknado approaches the beach, they rush to save the people on the beach only to be shocked when they see Fin’s parents, Gilly Shepard and Raye Martin, working to stop the sharknado. After the adult Gil makes it through the vortex and the sharknado is destroyed, Nova sees the prototype capacitor that Gil had left behind and shows it to Fin. They see the date on it is the date of the first sharknado that hit Santa Monica and realize that that is their next destination and borrow Gil’s Cadillac to make the trup but Nova reprograms the capacitor to take them to 1997 San Francisco so she can try to save her grandfather. Fin tries to talk her out of changing her past but Nova refuses to listen to him and heads off. Nova reaches the charter boat that her grandfather owns and heads on board, with Fin and the others getting on board as well. The group head out into the ocean and as Nova watches her grandfather interact with her younger self, Fin again talks to Nova about what she is planning on doing. Nova argues her reasons for saving him, and after noticing the ripped up note she gave her ancestor framed and mounted on a wall, she rushes to warn the captain, inadvertently causing the boat to crash on some rocks. Realizing that she is the reason her grandfather died, Nova starts to freak out but Fin helps Nova’s grandfather and younger self escape on a raft. Nova attacks some sharks to give them time to escape and ends up falling overboard, with the cyborg April’s head falling with her. As a shark attacks Nova, April tries to save her and ends up getting dragged overboard, where both her and Nova are killed. Realizing that the only way to save them is to keep stopping the sharknados, Skye grabs the capacitor while Fin hooks a shark and the are dragged behind it, allowing them to warp to the future but instead of the year 2013, a malfunction causes them to end up in the year 20013. They find themselves attacked by a robotic flying shark and once Fin kills it, they are captured by an army of April clones. The clones take them to their base, where they are confronted by the repaired cyborg April, who reveals that she had perfected time travel and rescued April to use her DNA for cloning her army. As Fin rushes to April, Skye confronts the cyborg April and ends up encased in carbonite, then tells Fin that she brought him there to be her queen. Fin tries to attack the cyborg April, who tries to stop him by showing him robotic versions of his children Matt and Claudia, as well as a robotic Nova, but Fin continues his attack, killing the replicas. Cyborg April attacks Fin but her attack also disables the stasis chamber that April is in, who leaves the chamber and begins attacking her cyborg doppelganger. The cyborg April easily overpowers the original but as she attempts to kill her, her power strikes the capacitor just as Fin grabs it, sending him back to 2013. Fin lands on the boat owned by Captain Santiago, whose crew has just brought cyborg April’s head back to the surface. When Santiago orders his men to throw it overboard, Fin convinces them not to and the cyborg April is happy to see that Fin came back for her. Santiago goes to kill Fin but as the sharks on the edge of the sharknado begin killing his crew, as well as his traitorous business partner, Fin convinces him to work together to destroy the sharknado. Santiago and Fin use Santiago’s weapons to attack the sharks but Santiago is swept up by the storm and killed. Cyborg April’s head says that her lasers are recharged and they have to destroy the sharknado or else time will unravel but before Fin can aim her at the sharknado, Gil appears. Fin is happy to see his son and embraces him and Gil tells him that he can fix everything but he needs the capacitor. Fin moves to hand it to him but when Gil messes up the Shepard family motto, Fin realizes he is an imposter. Gil is revealed to be the future cyborg April, who tries to get the capacitor from Fin so that he can’t destroy the sharknado. Fin and cyborg April’s head are sucked up into the storm, with cyborg April’s head being swallowed by a shark. Fin and future cyborg April struggle for control of the capacitor and when Fin is knocked away by some debris, future cyborg April laughs as time begins unraveling. Suddenly, the shark with cyborg April’s head appears and destroys future cyborg April, then tells Fin they have one shot; activating her self destruct button in her head which will either destroy the sharknado and restore time or wipe out the universe. Fin kisses the cyborg head, activating the self destruct and April’s head explodes, restoring time. In a sharknado free 2013, an explosion is heard off the coast of Santa Monica and the patron’s of Fin’s bar wonder what it could be. As Nova, Matt, and Fin’s brother-in-law Martin Brody stare out the window, a shark suddenly slams against the glass and Nova feels sorry for it, as she loves sharks now. Fin and April, who is pregnant with Gil, are planning to retire to Kansas and are turning over the bar to Martin, who tries to convince Nova to stay but she is going to college thanks to a loan from Fin. Bryan tells everyone to check out the TV, where the see a political add for Skye, who is running for President. As Gemini enters the bar, and Wilford and May Wexler talk with April about the baby, Claudia hands Fin a letter from The Colonel, which contains his flight wings, in case he doesn’t make it back from space in time for Gil’s birth. Fin offers a last round on him to everyone at the bar and giving a heartfelt speech about how much they all mean to him. Just as he finishes, April’s water breaks and the Shepards, as well as Wilford, May, Nova, and George (a regular bar patron of Fin’s), head out the door to go to the hospital, while a TV weather report has Al Roker telling the audience that there is not a cloud in the sky anywhere in the world so people should go out and enjoy it as there won’t be another like it ever again.

So I had a lot of expectations going into this movie and while it did hit several things that I wanted it to, I was honestly a little disappointed and felt like they could have done more. The movie was the same ridiculous fun that all of the others have been, and all the returning characters did great in their roles. Ian Ziering was great finishing off his role as Fin Shepard, while Tara Reid and Cassandra Scerbo were just as good reprising their roles of April and Nova respectively. I actually think April was written a little better in this movie, as she did more than just scream all the time. I liked that they brought Judah Friedlander (Bryan) and Vivica A. Fox (Skye) back and the interaction with the other characters was pretty good. Some of the cameos were pretty funny, such as Neil deGrasse Tyson playing Merlin and Dee Snider playing a sheriff, but most of the cameos felt a little flat, as if they were running out of ideas on how to make the most of them. I will say that I was kind of glad that they used some archive footage from the first movie to have John Heard’s character George show up at the end. The story was ok but the way they brought up time travel into things actually made the story feel rather disjointed. I did think it was funny how they tried to reference Back To The Future a couple of times during the movie, such as the capacitor looking like the flux capacitor as well as Gil telling Fin he has to be going 88 mph to start the time travel. The special effects were ok for the most part, though there were times where they honestly were a little worse than I was expecting, but that makes these movies that much more fun to watch. So it was a good way to end the series but I still think that they could have done a better job with it.

Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5

January 17th, 2018 Movie – Sharknado 5: Global Swarming

For me, one of the highlights of the summer is always Sharknado week on Syfy. This past year had several really fun movies, some of which have yet to be released on DVD, aside form today’s movie. Every year they seem to be going bigger and bigger with these movies and I enjoy every one of them but I know that the train will end up going off the rails soon. So let’s enjoy this while it lasts and have some fun with today’s movie, Sharknado 5: Global Swarming.

The plot: In a cave close by Stonehenge, Nova discovers a mural depicting a history of sharknados and contacts her team waiting above and tells them to contact Fin Shepard. Fin, along with April ad their son Gil, are in London for a meeting with NATO about the sharknado threat when Fin gets Nova’s call and goes to meet her. April and Gil are shown the secret lab where British scientist are working on anti-sharknado weapons and Gil is given a helmet that will allow him to survive inside a sharknado. Back at Stonehenge, Fin descends into the cavern and Nova shows him the mural and tells him that sharknados have appeared in the past but humanity fought back and won. An artifact called the Harness of Dakuwaqa is in the cavern and she had Fin brought there to help her get it. Making their way through the booby traps, the find the artifact and grab it but set off a chain reaction leading to the formation of a sharknado. Fin and Nova head back to London, with April saving them when their helicopter is attacked by sharks. Nova commandeers a bus and heads towards Buckingham Palace and when they get there, April flies off to try and stop Big Ben from being destroyed. Fin has Nova look after Gil while he leads the palace guards in a charge to rescue the Queen, who is trapped inside the palace, but despite Nova’s best efforts, Gil ends up being sucked up into the sharknado and disappears. When they regroup, Nova apologizes for what happened and both Fin and April are upset that she lost their son. Nova is upset with herself but receives a signal from Gil’s helmet showing he is alive and currently in Holland. Nova convinces Fin to head to the NATO meeting, as the best minds on the planet are there to discuss the sharknado problem. When another sharknado forms and attacks the meeting, Fin, April, and Nova are directed towards a specialized blimp piloted by Dr. Angel and they had out after the sharknado with Gil in it but Dr. Angel is killed and the Blimp catches fire and crashes over Switzerland. Fin, April, and Nova manage to get out before the crash and seeing some ski equipment, he hands April a ski and tells her to spin and form a vortex that will attract the sharknado that Gil is in towards them. The idea works but it also causes an avalanche and Fin, April, and Nova are forced to ski/snowboard to safety. With the sharknado moving away from them, Fin, April, and Nova get on a dog sled and use it to get close to the vortex before cutting the dogs free, allowing the sled to get sucked into the vortex. Inside, Fin and the others see Gil and try to grab him but are unable to and as Gil disappears again, Fin, April, and Nova find themselves somehow transported to Australia and surrounded by sharks. A helicopter shows up and throws a ladder down for them to climb to safety but as April tries to protect Fin, she is bitten in half by a shark. When they reach shore, Nova leads Fin towards the Sydney Opera House, which serves as the headquarters for her sharknado Sisterhood, telling him that they will be able to repair April. Nova then goes to contact her Sister in the China area overseeing the removal of the Nuclear waste from the last sharknado attack in America, as China had overtaken the project, and Fin is shocked to discover that it is his cousin Gemini, causing him and Nova to get into an argument. In the China Sea, a sharknado attacks the ship, absorbing the nuclear waste material into it. Back in Australia, the rebuilt April reunites with Fin and is told her flight systems no longer work and that if she receives to much of a charge, her circuits could overload. When they get a signal that the sharknado Gil is in is heading towards them, Nova has the Opera House transform into a battle station to defend Australia from it. Fin and April head to the bridge to try and bungee jump into the vortex to save Gil, with April secretly stealing the artifact from Nova before they leave. Fin and April manage to jump inside but are unable to grab Gil, who disappears into the vortex, and Fin and April end up transported to Brazil. They are picked up by a man named Rodolfo, who works for Nova, and he takes them to a woman named Vega so she can explain about the artifact, unaware that they are being followed by a mysterious man named Zico. At Vega’s place, she explains that the artifact could be used to summon a sharknado but that it should be returned to Stonehenge. While they are talking, Vega’s assistant grabs the artifact and hands it to Zico and when they discover it is missing, Fin and April chase after him. As the sharknado hits the city, Fin and April follow after Zico and they end up driving through the vortex and arrive in Rome. Fin and Zico start to fight but Zico ends up being killed by some sharks and the artifact is swallowed. Fin kills the shark and takes the artifact back but the sharknado disappears, leaving them with no idea what to do. April throws some coins into the Trevi Fountain and they are approached by an emissary of the Pope, who gives Fin a special chainsaw to help him save the world. Fin and April decide to try and summon the Sharknado to them so they can save Gil and they manage to grab him but a shark slams into them and they lose their grip on Gil and end up landing in Japan. As they check the montier to make sure Gil is alive, they see that the sharknado that had absorbed the nuclear material had mutated into a giant blob of sharks which the media dubs Sharkzilla. Nova and her Sisters fly over Sharkzilla and jump into it in an effort to rescue Gil, while the military fire missiles at Shakzilla to try and destroy it. The explosions disperse the blob but Gil is sucked into the vortex again while Nova falls to the street, where she ends up dying in Fin’s arms, apologizing for failing to save Gil. As more sharknados attack the world, Fin calls his son Matt, who tells him that Claudia, The Colonel, and Grandma are all dead just before he is killed as well. Fin and April end up in another sharknado and are transported to Egypt, where they discover hieroglyphics showing how the ancient Egyptians fought against sharknados. Realizing that the artifact is a key to a hidden chamber, they find the machine the Egyptians used and activate it, stopping the sharknados across the world but the machine doesn’t shut down and begins making even stronger sharknados. April notices a staff which serves as a key for the machine and tells Fin to grab it, then decides to try and absorb the excess energy from the machine in order to shut it down, sacrificing herself in order to do so. Carrying April’s head around in the hopes of being able to restore her, Fin searches for any survivors among the wreckage of the city and is approached by a man in a Humvee, who turns out to be an adult Gil. Gil explains that the sharknados had sent him back in time and he had been working on a way to get back to him, able to figure out how to use them as a time machine. Gil then says that they have to go back to the beginning in order to save April and the rest of their family so Fin gets in the Humvee and they head off.

This was another fun installment in the series but watching it now, I can admit that it felt a little weak. The acting was decent for the most part, though Tara Reid still seems bad (especially when she is screaming). I loved the cameos, with several of them being very funny (like Geraldo Rivera opening a tiny safe and finding it empty). The story honestly felt a little weak, as it felt like they were struggling to come up with a way to make the sharknados bigger and badder. I did like the nod to Indiana Jones that they had in the beginning of the movie and the obvious Back To The Future nod at the end but I felt like they could have done more with the movie then use it as a time travel gimmick. The special effects were good, and I did like the “Sharkzilla” aspect, which really made me laugh. A fun movie to watch but it does make me a little worried for how they will handle the next one.

Rating: 4 out of 5

August 17th, 2017 Movie – Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!

My apologies for being late with today’s post. I had to go in to work early today and spent 75% of the day in one meeting after another. Not exactly the best way to start off the day. So now I get to come home, fairly exhausted, and try and finish watching today’s movie (because I managed to watch a little bit of it this morning) and write up my review before I pass out on the couch. I know, this is not exactly a funny or endearing story about today’s movie. Well, to borrow the tagline from yesterday’s movie, Shark Happens. Now, onto today’s movie, Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!.

The plot: Fin Shepherd is racing through the streets of Washington DC until he is met by a pair of Secret Service Agents, who are there to take him to the White House. As he is en route, Fin calls April, who is pregnant and currently in Orlando with her mother May and their daughter Claudia. As the car gets stuck in traffic, Fin chooses to get out and continue running to the White House, where security stops him until White House Chief of Staff Gary Martin Hayes shows up and escorts him inside, where President Marcus Robbins awards him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. At the banquet afterwards, Fin is making the rounds, stopping to say hello to his brother-in-law Martin, who is there as a guest, when he is surprised to see the Mayor of New York City there, who awards Fin with a golden chainsaw for his efforts in saving New York. Stepping outside, Fin checks some weather data he asked for and when the President joins him, Fin says he can sense when a sharknado is going to form and says that DC isn’t safe. Fin and President Robbins head back inside just as a sharknado forms and begins attacking DC. As the storm hits the White House, Martin manages to save Vice President Sonia Buck, while Fin and President Robbins are forced to shoot their way out after all of the President’s Secret Service are killed. As they make it outside, the storm suddenly dissipates and before Fin can wonder about it, he and the others quickly lift up a fallen flag to kill a shark that is falling towards them. With flights grounded in DC, Fin rents a car and starts driving to Orlando, calling April and Claudia on the way to tell them he will be there tomorrow. April, Claudia and May are at Universal Studios Resort and May for Claudia’s birthday and May gives Claudia some money as she leaves to go have fun with her friend Jess. Claudia is met by an employee and given VIP passes that allow her and Jess to skip to the front of the line on rides but Jess sees a boy, Chad, that she starts flirting with so Claudia ends up riding on the roller coaster with his friend Billy but as she leaves the roller coaster, Claudia accidentally forgets her phone. Meanwhile, Fin is driving when he encounters a dense fog and as people start running out of the fog in a panic, he realizes the fog is actually a “fognado”, with sharks swimming inside. As Fin fights off a shark that smashes through the window, an armored RV shows up and two masked people emerge, with one fighting off the sharks while the other takes out the fognado. As the fog clears, one of the people approaches the car and takes off the mask and Fin is surprised to see that it is Nova. As the two talk, Nova introduces Fin to her partner, Lucas Stevens, and she explains that the collect all the data they can on the sharknadoes in order to be better prepared, showing him a dead shark and explaining that they are finding birds in their stomachs now as well as ice crystals in their blood, indicating that they are staying in the atmosphere longer and able to survive. Nova asks Fin to help her but Fin says he can’t as he needs to get to Orlando, and Nova is upset to learn that he and April are back together and having a child but offers to give Fin a lift there. Lucas is upset at first but Nova tells him that they have been tracking the storm’s epicenter and it has been heading south so it is on their way. In Orlando, April and May are discussing baby names when a shark lands in a nearby pool. April goes to save a lifeguard, with her robotic hand able to turn into a chainsaw, but May stops her from doing so. Fin calls to check on April after hearing about the entire East Coast of the US is in jeopardy and April is not surprised to learn that Nova is with him. After hearing about the shark attack, tells her to get Claudia and get somewhere safe, then tells Nova that they need to hurry but they find the bridge is washed out. Since they are near Charleston, Fin tells Lucas to head towards the Charleston Air Force Base, where General Gottlieb, the base commanding officer, is a family friend. After being cleared to go inside, Fin talks with Gottlieb, who agrees to let him take their training plane to Orlando and Nova tells him that she can fly, as Fin’s son Matt had trained her how to fly before he deployed. As Fin and Nova get in the plane, a sharknado hits and Lucas heads towards the Beast to take car of it but he is severely wounded by sharks, which bite off one of his legs and arms. Crawling towards the fail safe device on the roof of the Beast, he loses his other arm and leg and is forced to hit the button with his chin, blowing up the RV and dispersing the sharknado. Nova sees what happens and cries out but Fin tells her that they have to leave or else Lucas would have died in vain. As they make their way towards Orlando, Nova asks Fin how he handles dealing with the sharks and he tells her he thinks about his family, which includes friends like her. As they pass over Daytona, they see a sharknado forming over the Daytona 500 and they use the extra fuel tank as a means to destroy the sharknado, or at least kill the sharks, but once they succeed, an errant shark hits the plane and they end up crashing into a lake but emerge unscathed (and without their clothes (seriously R.A.F.)). They head into the park to try and find April and Claudia, just as more sharks begin falling from the sky and attacking people. Meanwhile, April uses a tracking app to track Claudia’s phone to the roller coaster, and goes with the operator, Bruce, to see if she is stuck in the cars. Elsewhere, Claudia, Billy, Jess, and Chad are riding the “Disaster” ride when Chad is killed by a shark, while Jess gets killed as they run from the ride. Fin uses his app and meet April on the roller coaster but they find no sign of Claudia. Bruce realizes that they are talking about Claudia’s phone, which he hands to them, but a shark ends up killing him and activating the roller coaster. Fin is trapped in one of the cars and ends up flying off the course and crashing into the “Twister” ride, where he kills another shark before leaving. Fin meets back up with April and May, and they are then joined by Claudia, Billy, and Nova. Seeing the sharknado approaching, Fin has them all take shelter inside the Universal Globe, which is sent rolling around by the sharknado before landing on a nearby tower. Everyone is ok except for May, who had hit her head during the globes’ spinning, and she is taken away in an ambulance. Nova shows Fin and the others Lucas’ theories on dispersing the merged sharknadoes and rather than using several nuclear explosions, he chooses to call his father, Colonel Gil Shepard, and try to get him to use his contacts with NASA to help. Fin heads to the diner that Gil owns and works on convincing him to help by launching a space shuttle and detonating the fuel tanks to create a column of heat big enough to destroy the sharknadoes. As the sharknadoes form a massive storm wall that ranges the entire East Coast, Fin and Gil get ready to board the shuttle but April, who didn’t know Fin was going on the shuttle, pleads with him not to go but the sharknado destroys the gang plank and April is forced to board the shuttle with Fin. With more sharks falling, the national guard works on keeping the sharks away from the shuttle and when two guardsmen are killed, Claudia and Billy take up their weapons and start killing the sharks while Nova uses a jet to help clear a path. As the shuttle goes to launch, Claudia and Billy head back inside mission control but Billy is killed after he pushes Claudia inside to avoid a falling shark. The shuttle launches and they detonate the tanks but it does not dissipate the sharknado wall. Gil then says he has a Plan B, and heads towards a nearby satellite, which is a cover for part of the fabled Star Wars program, planning to use the laser to vaporize the storm wall. When they are unable to remotely activate the satellite, Gil does a space walk to the satellite in order to manually reboot the system and fire the laser. The laser succeeds in destroying the storm wall but Gil tells Fin that they only have enough fuel to either come get him, or enter re-orbit, but not both. Suddenly, some sharks that were blown up into space by the laser begin attacking the shuttle, and Fin works on killing them but one of the sharks swallows April, while a second one destroys the shuttle. Fin ends up swallowed as well but as the shark drops back to Earth, Fin is able to punch a hole into the charred flesh and use his emergency chute to safely land. Crawling out of the shark, Fin sees more sharks falling from the sky and hears a chainsaw coming from one of them. Heading towards the shark, Fin reaches inside to pull out April and instead sees his new born baby emerging from the shark. Fin grabs his baby, then pulls April out of the shark as well and the two hug each other and their newborn son. Claudia and Nova come running up to them and Fin introduces them to the baby, calling him Gil after his dad. They all look up towards the sky and Fin throws a salute at the moon, where unknown to them, Colonel Shepard has managed to make it to the moon’s surface. Fin looks for his dad’s wings that he had given him before they left and April sees them nearby and goes to pick them up when a piece of the shuttle falls towards her and as they all scream out, the debris lands on top of April as the screen goes black and the word “Fin?” appears on the screen.

Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! met with negative reviews from the critics, holding a 36% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The critical consensus on the site is, “Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! bites off more than it can chew, leaving viewers with an overlong mess that isn’t even bad enough to be good.” Once again, the movie featured several references to Jaws, but also had people make references to what they are most well known for, such as Lou Ferrigno telling someone “Don’t make me angry.”, or George R.R. Martin being killed next to a bride during a wedding. Sharknado 4 was announced during the premier of Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! and fans were asked to use Twitter to vote on if April would survive for the 4th movie, using the hashtags #AprilLives or #AprilDies to cast their votes.

The Sharknado movies are still a lot of fun to watch, but I will admit that this one was a little lacking compared to the previous one. The acting was good, with Ian Ziering (Fin) and Cassandra Scerbo (Nova) doing a good job reprising their roles, while I actually liked Tara Reid (April) in this outing. Ryan Newman did a good job in taking over the role of Claudia Shepard, while David Hasselhoff and Bo Derek were great playing Fin’s father Gil and April’s mother May respectively. The story was honestly a little weak, as I felt like they could have done a better job in setting things up instead of just blatantly making it a doomsday scenario almost right from the start. The cameos definitely added a lot of humor to the movie; either by who they were or what they were doing in the movie, or an inside joke or reference to previous roles the people had. The cliffhanger at the end was actually a good way to keep people invested in the franchise, as I don’t recall as much hype over this movie compared to the previous two. The special effects were pretty good and I liked a lot of the shark scenes but there were definitely a couple of times where they looked too fake, with sometimes it being really funny, such as the guy being eaten by a shark hanging from a sign thinking it was the fake shark for the Jaws photo op, but a few times the fakeness hurt the scene. Still, everything together added up to a solid entry in the series and is well worth watching and laughing at.

Rating: 4 out of 5

August 16th, 2017 Movie – Sharknado 2: The Second One

When word of mouth causes a made for TV movie to get more viewers each time it aired, the idea for a sequel made perfect sense. After the success of Sharknado, I could hardly wait for it to occur. Then they announced the title and tag line for the movie, and it honestly felt like they were going to do a good job of keeping the advertising simple and letting word of mouth generate the buzz, which worked because I knew a lot of people were going to be tuning in to watch it. As for me, I did what has since become a tradition and went to my friend Emily and Mark’s house to watch this movie when it debuted and I was not disappointed in the least and quickly went online and pre-ordered it as soon as it became available to do so. So let’s get down to business with today’s movie, Sharknado 2: The Second One.

The plot: Fin Shepard and April Wexler, who are attempting to work things out after the events of the previous movie, are flying to New York for a book signing of April’s book that she wrote about the sharknado. As the plane starts to hit some rough weather, Fin sees some sharks flying through the sky and thinks he is seeing things at first. After a shark takes out one of the engines, the pilots start descending to a lower altitude only to have more sharks attack the plane. Several passengers are killed as sharks make it inside the plane and both of the pilots are sucked out of the cockpit when a shark breaks through and attacks one of them. Fin heads to the cockpit to try and land the plane and April follows after him but when the plane door is blown off it’s hinges, she is forced to grab onto to a nearby strap to keep from being blown out of the plane. The sky marshal goes to help her but ends up trapped by a food cart and, seeing a shark approaching April, throws her his gun to defend herself but the shark bites off her hand. The sky marshal is eventually able to pull April back in the plane while Fin manages to land the plane in New York. Downtown, Fin’s sister Ellen Brody and her husband Martin are there with their kids and arrange to meet at April and Fin’s hotel that night before they split up; with Ellen going to Liberty Island with their daughter Mora while Martin is going to a Mets game with their son Vaughn. Meanwhile, Fin is interviewed after the plane lands and he tries to warn the city about the coming storm but the police don’t seem to believe him. After accompanying April to the hospital, Fin is told by her doctor that she is stable and should make a full recovery. Fin heads to her room and they talk for a while before seeing a news report about the storm approaching New York. At Liberty Island, Ellen and Mora meet up with Ellen’s friends Polly and Chrissie, who ask Ellen about Fin and tell her about the plane crash. Ellen calls Fin and he tells her that she has to get off the island and when Mora can’t reach Martin, Ellen asks Fin to go get him and Vaughn, saying she had sent April a ticket for him. Fin agrees to go and kisses April before he leaves and hails a cab, where the driver, Ben, recognizes Fin and asks him some questions about being swallowed by a shark. Back at Liberty Island, Ellen, Mora, Polly, and Chrissie notice hundreds of sharks swimming in the waters around the island and when the ferry gets there, they quickly board it. Fin arrives at the ball park, with Ben giving him his card in case he needs another ride, and he heads up to find Martin and Vaughn when he runs into Skye, his old girlfriend who was at the game with Martin, Vaughn, and their friend Brian. Skye kisses Fin but he pulls back and tells her he is back with April and she apologizes. Fin heads to their seats and tells Martin and the others that they need to leave before the storm hits but Brian refuses to leave, believing that this is a simple rain delay. When an announcement comes over the loudspeaker that the game is cancelled, the crowd boos in disappointment but when a sharknado appears heading towards the stadium, they all quickly flee the stadium and head to the subway station. AS the train leaves the station, two subway workers are heading into the sewer tunnels to shut off the valves so the tunnels don’t flood but one is killed by an alligator and the second is killed when the tunnel floods, with a shark killing the alligator. The flood hits the subway and sharks begin attacking the cars, with one killing Brian, but Vaughn hits the emergency brake and they are able to get everyone off the train before the flood waters push it down the tunnel. Heading back to the surface, they manage to get a ride from Ben, and Fin asks him to take him to a hardware store but the one Ben knew was closed so he takes them to Times Square, where they split up to find weapons and supplies for Fin to make bombs. Meanwhile, Chrissie is killed by a shark on the ferry and as Ellen, Mora, and Polly disembark and start heading to the hotel to meet the others, they are forced to run as the head of the Statue of Liberty is broken off by the storm and comes rolling down after them. After managing to avoid the rolling head, they keep making their way to the hotel, eventually grabbing some bikes so they can move faster. Back at the hospital, the patients are being evacuated to the basement as a sharknado heads towards them but April, after helping a scared girl to the basement, leaves the hospital to go find Fin and the others. Back at Times Square, the group meet back at Ben’s cab and head for the hotel but before they get there, the streets end up flooded. Using Ben’s tow rope, they throw it over a traffic light so they can use it to swing across to the hotel. Martin, Vaughn, and Sky make it safely across but Ben is killed as he tries to swing across, dragging the rope into the water with him. Martin says he will try to find some more rope but Fin says there is no time, and proceeds to jump on the sharks’ backs to make it across (prompting Martin to joke about him jumping the shark). Heading inside the hotel, Fin tells Martin and Vaughn to wait in the lobby for Ellen and the others while he and Skye head up to the roof and try to destroy the sharknadoes. Ellen and Mora reach the hotel but Polly, who had lagged behind them, is killed when a whale shark falls on her. Fin and Skye reach the roof and use a slingshot to try and destroy the sharknadoes before they merge but the sharknadoes are too cold. He decides to make a bigger bomb but all that does is cause the sharks to catch fire and he and Skye are forced to leave the roof and head back downstairs. Meanwhile, the lobby becomes flooded and Martin, Ellen, Vaughn, and Mora head up the stairs to escape the rising water. They meet Fin and Skye partway up and are forced to use the fire escape to get away from the danger on both fronts. They leave the hotel, where they are surprised to see April in a fire truck there to pick them up. The group heads to the empire state building, where the Mayor and Fire Chief have a command center made ready and hand him a chainsaw to use. Seeing that the merged sharknado is about to converge with a third sharknado, Fin decides to blow the Freon tanks atop the Empire State building to try and freeze out the sharknados and Skye goes with him to help. When they reach the observation deck, Skye goes to make the connection as Fin prepares to use the lightning to trigger the explosion. As a shark starts to fall towards him, Fin can’t get the chainsaw started but he is saved by April, who had Vaughn make her a make-shift handsaw gauntlet for her injured arm. When Skye is finished, Fin tells her to get April out of there while he triggers the explosion but the cable becomes disconnected and Skye is forced to hold the cable in place. The explosion occurs and Fin and Skye are thrown into the air, with Skye being killed by sharks, but the massive Sharknado is broken up, with the crowd below grabbing any weapons they can find to deal with the falling sharks. Fin uses his chainsaw to kill some of the sharks near him as he falls but when it is knocked from his hand, he grabs a chain and usesit to snare aThe popularity  shark and ride it down to the observation deck. As more sharks fall towards him and April, he looks for a weapon and notices the dead shark by April is the same one that bit off her hand. Reaching inside it’s mouth, he grabs her severed hand and uses the gun it is still holding to kill the falling sharks. Afterwards, he takes the ring off the severed hand and asks April to marry him again, which she happily accepts as the crowd below celebrates their victory.

Sharknado 2: The Second One met with mixed to positive review from the critics, holding a 61% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The critical consensus on the site is, “The schlock factor for Sharknado 2: The Second One is not as entertaining as its predecessor’s, though fans of the brand will likely enjoy it.” There were numerous nods to other movies throughout the film, primarily Jaws, Airplane, and Star Wars, while the original film’s popularity allowed The Asylum to use numerous people in cameo appearances as well. In it’s initial airing, it garnered 3.9 million viewers and prompted Syfy and The Asylum to almost immediately make plans for another sequel.

All the craziness from the first movie was amped up in the sequel and it paid off in a fun way. The acting was great, with Ian Ziering doing a great job as Fin, while Mark McGrath (Martin), Vivica A. Fox (Skye), and Kari Wuhrer (Ellen) doing good jobs in their roles as well. Tara Reid (April) didn’t seem as bad in this one as she was in the first movie but I have to admit that her screaming was just awful. The story was great, basically using the same concept from the first movie but doing a good job of trying to show how the tornadoes were forming with the different weather and pressure systems converging on New York City, while doing nothing to explain all the sharks (because where would the fun be in that). I also liked all the nods to the various movies that were used, as well as the cameos, but some of the funniest cameos were the ones that hinted at the actor’s previous roles; such as Robert Hays being the pilot (a nod to Airplane) and Judd Hirsch driving a cab (a nod to his character in Taxi). Even the short bit with Jared Fogle sitting underneath a sign for Subway while eating a Subway sandwich was pretty funny. The special effects were a little better than the original movie in regards to the sharknadoes, though I didn’t honestly see much improvement in the sharks themselves. Still, this movie was a lot of laughs and definitely something worth watching.

Rating: 4 1/2 out of 5