I have a confession to make. It’s not easy, considering how I believe myself to be a champion of good cinema and drove fifteen miles to my friend’s house in order to vocally explain to someone why Transformers: Age of Extinction was the worst thing I’ve seen in years. Mark Wahlberg fights off a Transformer who is ten times his size and just impaled Optimus Prime on his own sword. Right. Optimus Prime rides a Dino-Bot. Of course.
We all have our guilty pleasures. One of mine is cheesy B-movies, particularly in the horror and science fiction genres. The worse they are, the better. What really separates a bad B-movie from an amazingly bad B-movie is casting. Anyone can write a script that makes no sense and add cheesy special effects and horrible cinematography, but the cast can really make or break a B-movie.
Sure, some cult B-movies have had some interesting unknown actors that aren’t totally horrible and act as a launching pad for their careers, but the real gems of B-movies cast actors who are well-known, and seem to be on their way down. If you told me that Anthony Hopkins was going to star in a movie about a giant Peter Dinklage attacking London, I would be waiting in line right now. I don’t know where, but I’d be waiting.
So when the word spread that the guy from the show “Beverly Hills 90210” (Ian Ziering) was still alive and was going to star in a movie with Tara Reid about a tornado sucking up sharks and dropping them into the city of Los Angeles, of course I was excited. Sharknado deserved my attention. Sure, Asylum had put out some crappy creature movies, but never before had I seen actors cast that had fallen so far. I became a believer in Sharknado, and enjoyed every horrible second of it.
Then came the dawn, and the revelation that a sequel would be made. This was less than a month after the original aired. I knew then that I had been duped. This wasn’t a horrible accident in film. This was a controlled demolition. The one that was left intact that made me keep believing in the original was the defeated look Ian Ziering and other actors had in their eyes. It was a knowing look, that this was the end.
Now that knowing look is all but lost after seeing the trailer for Sharknado 2: The Second One. That last bit of embarrassment by the actors that still made the idea of Sharknado is now gone. Why? Because Ian Ziering looks like he thinks his career is rejuvenated, and has taken his role as a chainsaw-wielding shark-buster to serious heights in the sequel instead of saying, “Guys, I was drunk and signed some random contract that stipulated I fight a tornado of sharks in a movie. I’m sorry.” We could have had a few laughs, and Ziering could have faded back into the unknown. Now we can’t help but hate on him, even if that drunken contract signing was for two movies.
So what can we expect from Sharknado 2? More flying sharks, but in obnoxiously stereotypical New York City setting, including pizza joints, subways, the Empire State Building, and probably a weird 9/11 reference thrown in there somewhere. Syfy has probably already cashed in on advertising. Will I be watching tonight? Yes. It’s hard not to look when you know a car crash caused by flying sharks in a tornado is coming.