- Accidental Aesop: Like a lot of Attack of the Killer Whatever movies of its era, the film's stance seems to be that scientists are cold, aloof, and unethical in their pursuit of progress, and shouldn't be tampering in God's domain. If not for the fact that McCallister takes all the blame and Franklin is absolved of all responsibility, it could easily have made a valid point about how profit-driven pharmaceutical companies drive research scientists to cut corners to get a product on the market faster under threat of having their funding cut off.
- Alas, Poor Scrappy: Susan realizes her attempts to cure Alzheimer's were All for Nothing and she pulls a Heroic Sacrifice to ensure the death of the last shark.
- Alternate Character Interpretation: While Susan gets most of the blame for genetically modifying the sharks, Whitlock was also involved, and she never outright says that it was her idea. Whitlock's A God Am I attitude towards their work doesn't exactly rule out the idea that he may have been behind the enhancements.
- Base-Breaking Character: Susan went from The Scrappy to this over time. Many viewers loathe her for a variety of reasons: the fact that the entire mess is her fault, her continued justifications, generally unpleasant nature, and Saffron Burrows' Dull Surprise performance, unintentionally making the character come across like The Sociopath. Even test audiences infamously hated her so much they were shouting "Die bitch!" during the screenings, which the studio obliged to and went back and reshot the ending just to kill her off. However, there are some, especially in modern times, who like or at least sympathize with her due to her desire to find a cure for Alzheimer's coming from having to watch her father succumb to it, point out that she genuinely begins to feel remorse for her actions after witnessing how badly she screwed up, and even performs a Heroic Sacrifice to take out the last shark. While her haters tend to be larger in number, she has gained an amount of defenders since the film's release.
- Broken Base: Depending on who you ask, Susan stripping down to use her rubber wetsuit to avoid electrocution is either tasteless gratuitous Fanservice, enjoyable gratuitous Fanservice, or a way to show the character being resourceful and vulnerable.
- Character Perception Evolution: Susan was originally viewed as The Scrappy for genetically modifying the sharks, which results in several people being killed. Even test audiences hated her so much that the ending was reshot to have her killed by the sharks. These days, however, viewers see her in a more sympathetic light due to her motivation for modifying the sharks being based on trying to find a cure for Alzheimer's after watching her father succumb to it and she suffers a massive Break the Haughty throughout the film. While she still gets plenty of flak for causing the events of the film, modern viewers tend to see her as more of a tragically flawed Anti-Villain rather than an insufferable sociopath.
- Common Knowledge: A regularly shared image on Facebook indicates that LL Cool J’s character Preacher is the first black character to survive an entire horror movie. Not only is he not the first, but he’s not the second, or even third. Despite what the Trope Black Dude Dies First would have one believe, there are actually a notable number of black characters to survive the whole film going all the way back to the '70s with Dawn of the Dead (1978). For added humor, LL Cool J had been in Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later just the year prior and survived that film as well.
- Ensemble Dark Horse:
- LL Cool J's character Preacher spends most of the movie alone, separated from the main cast, who never even seem to remember he's there. This makes one wonder if he was even originally intended to be in the movie, but eventually he turns out to be a lot more intelligent and even more likable than the other characters. He was popular enough that the movie was rewritten to give him a bigger role in the climax.
- Despite being The Load and having less screen time than almost everyone else, Janice is fairly well-liked. Her sunny and skillful delivery of the film's exposition and her role as the only one of the three scientists who respects the laws against genetic engineering both make her endearing.
- Fan-Preferred Cut Content:
- Several deleted scenes further develop Jim and Janice's relationship and have Susan show a warmer side during her birthday party. Many fans wish they'd remained in the movie for the sake of better Character Development.
- Most fans prefer the theatrical ending, where Susan, the scientist who creates the sharks for Alzheimer's research, is dramatically killed while using herself as bait. There are a handful of fans, however, that would have preferred to at least see the alternate ending where she survives.
- Fanfic Fuel:
- It's interesting to wonder what would have happened if Franklin hadn't been killed. Would he have been able to save more of the others? Would he have fought one of the sharks himself?
- And what if the sharks had escaped? Given that they're essentially a Non-Malicious Monster simply trying to escape back to their natural habitat, what would a smart shark even do? Would their intelligence eventually allow them to become genuinely evil?
- First Installment Wins: There are two Direct-to-Video sequels. The first film is the one that's most remembered.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: The characterizations of Carter and Susan and their dynamic with each other are eerily similar to Owen and Claire’s from the 2015 Jurassic World movie. Carter and Owen are both ruggedly handsome men of action who specialize in working with dangerous animals, while Susan and Claire are both professionally brilliant yet emotionally detached career women who act as the directors of their facilities. Each leading character also shares Unresolved Sexual Tension with their opposite gender counterpart, though Owen and Claire have a Relationship Upgrade that carries over into their film’s sequels, while Carter and Susan’s tension remains unresolved due to Susan’s death.
- For that matter, the plots of both movies have quite a few similarities. The main threat in each film is a genetically altered/engineered carnivorous animal whose abilities and intelligence go beyond what their creators expected of them, and their rampages and attempts to escape lead to the deaths of numerous people and the destruction of the facilities they were made in.
- After being eaten by a shark in this movie, Samuel L. Jackson would go on to voice a shark in The Boys (2019).
- Jerkass Woobie: Susan has watched Alzheimer's ravage her father, is forced to destroy the medical research she's devoted her life to, and has a couple of extremely terrifying run-ins with the sharks, the last of which she doesn't escape. However, her blatant disregard for basic safety protocols and ethical experimentation (directly leading to the rampage), initial lack of remorse, and generally unpleasant nature still leave her as a fairly difficult-to-like-character.
- Magnificent Bastard: The Mako Sharks are a trio of genetically engineered sharks that were created by Chimera Pharmaceuticals to help find a cure for Alzheimer's disease. The sharks were illegally modified by Dr. Susan McCallister to have larger brains than normal, which gave them enhanced size and intelligence for their species. One of the sharks manages to escape its undersea pen at Aquatica despite being under constant surveillance and attacks a boat of teenagers before being recaptured. As one of the sharks is being experimented on, it bites off Dr. Jim Whitlock's arm and forces him to be airlifted for medical treatment. The sharks grab his stretcher when it lands in the water and drag the helicopter into a nearby tower to destroy it. They then use Jim as a battering ram to flood the facility and stalk the survivors through the flooded corridors, picking them off one-by-one. The survivors realize the sharks have been herding them through Aquatica so they can flood it and break through the weaker fences at the surface. The last surviving shark devours Susan and nearly succeeds in escaping into the open ocean before it's blown up.
- Memetic Badass: The shark killed Jules Winfield, Mace Windu, Nick Fury and a boatload of badass muthafuckas that Samuel L. Jackson have ever played. Clearly it has had it with these muthafuckin' humans on this muthafuckin' film.
- Memetic Mutation:
- Pick any Samuel L. Jackson memes out there. Good. Now, pretend that the shark does just those memes with Sam as the victim this time. One of the most common ones is...Shark: [as it eats Russel while interrupting his Rousing Speech] Oh, I'm sorry, did I break your concentration?
- "Black history - in 1999, James Todd Smith aka LL Cool J, became the first black man in horror history to survive the whole movie..."note
- Pick any Samuel L. Jackson memes out there. Good. Now, pretend that the shark does just those memes with Sam as the victim this time. One of the most common ones is...
- Narm Charm: "You ate my bird!" Simultaneously the most awesome and goofiest Pre-Mortem One-Liner ever.
- One-Scene Wonder: The four teenagers Carter saves from an escaped shark do a good job showing fear during the attack and come across as a bit more endearing than the average horror movie Make-Out Kids.
- Retroactive Recognition: For Marvel fans, the team includes The Punisher, Victoria Hand, Nick Fury and Dr. Selvig.
- Signature Scene: Russell being eaten by the shark mid-Rousing Speech.
- So Bad, It's Good: A cast of highly gifted actors giving totally ridiculous performances + every shark movie cliche ever + the incredibly ridiculous death scenes = pure B-movie cheese.
- Special Effects Failure: Renny Harlin challenged audiences to notice when the mechanical sharks ended and the CGI ones began. Form a line, folks...
- Notably during the infamous scene of the shark grabbing Samuel L. Jackson, as the shark itself looks too rubbery and the way it grabs him seems to defy all known physics. Even the VFX team at Hammerhead Production admit to it having flaws.
- Take That, Scrappy!: A rather famous invoked example. Susan's death is very much this, seeing as it came about after test audiences shouted "die bitch!" during the original cut where she survived.
- Took the Bad Film Seriously: A review of the film said that it works because everyone isn't taking it seriously, making it quite fun. The exception is Saffron Burrows, who "behaves as it was an art film" (and unlike most of the examples of the trope, her performance is generally not well-regarded).
- Unintentionally Sympathetic: An interesting example. While originally intended to be a sympathetic character, poor fan reaction to Susan led to modified All for Nothing ending, clearly looking unfavorably on Susan for the rather reckless and illegal methods she chose in order to cure Alzheimer's Disease. While most viewers agree with the message, a small segment hold this view, noting just how devastating Alzheimer's is, how many people's lives it damages, and believing that the risks and ethically questionable decisions Susan made were absolutely worth the risk.
- Visual Effects of Awesome: That said, while the CGI is spotty at best, the animatronic sharks still look amazing even today.
- Watch It for the Meme: Okay, so how many of you are watching this for the chance of seeing a super badass shark that could kill Samuel L. Jackson??
- Win Back the Crowd: A lot of critics praised this for being a better film from Renny Harlin after the failures of Cutthroat Island and The Long Kiss Goodnight.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/DeepBlueSea
Go To