Mehnificent

There are films that amuse and films that aspire, and then there are the corporate offspring, movies conceived in committee meetings, designed to be clicked, not felt. A Minecraft Movie isn’t just brand extension, it’s brand substitution: a video game adaptation that doesn’t so much build as prefab, a film that wears the pixelated mask of Minecraft but, beneath the surface, runs the codebase of something else entirely. It is, in the argot of the very medium it adapts, a reskin. Or, to use a more distressing analogy from contemporary gaming: Fallout 4 on the bones of Skyrim, everything familiar, just differently textured.

While I am not a huge fan of creature features, I approached "Meg 2: The Trench" with a blend of anticipation and caution. The first installment, "The Meg" (2018), perfectly balanced exhilarating action with a touch of self-aware humor. Directed by Ben Wheatley and featuring a capable ensemble led by Jason Statham, "Meg 2" aimed to plunge back into the depths of its prehistoric world.