What shark movie was Cool J in?
Renny Harlin directed the 1999 American science fiction horror film Deep Blue Sea.It has Saffron Burrows, Thomas Jane, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Rapaport, and LL Cool J.Set in an isolated underwater facility, the film follows a team of scientists and their research on mako sharks to help fight Alzheimer's disease.Multiple genetically engineered sharks go on a rampage and flood the facility.
Harlin had not made a commercially successful film since 1993 and Deep Blue Sea was a test for him.The film was primarily shot at Fox Baja Studios in Rosarito, Mexico, where the production team constructed sets above the large water tanks that had been built for James Cameron's 1997 film Titanic.There are some shots of real sharks in Deep Blue Sea, but most of the sharks are computer generated."Say What" and "Deepest Bluest (Shark's fin)" were contributed to the film by LL Cool J.
Deep Blue Sea was released in theaters during the summer season.Critics praised its suspense, pacing, and action, but criticized its unoriginality and B movie conventions.Within a limited genre that has been dominated by Steven Spielberg's 1975 film Jaws, Deep Blue Sea is seen as a successful shark film.Deep Blue Sea 2 is a sequel.Deep Blue Sea 3 was released on July 28, 2020.
In a remote underwater facility, doctors Susan McCallister and Jim Whitlock are doing research on mako sharks to help in the re-activation of dormant human brain cells like those found in Alzheimer's disease patients.Russell Franklin was sent to investigate the facility after one of the sharks escaped and tried to attack a boat full of young adults.When Susan and Jim woke up in the laboratory, Jim's arm had been bitten off by the largest shark they had ever studied.The operator of the tower calls a helicopter to evacuate Jim, but as he is being lifted, the cable jams and he falls into the shark pen.The largest shark grabs the stretcher and pulls the helicopter into the tower, killing the pilots as well as causing massive explosions that severely damage the facility.
The shark smashed the stretcher against the window of the laboratory's main window, killing Jim and flooding the facility.The group is going to the facility's wet entry to escape.Susan admitted to the others that she and Jim genetically engineered the sharks to increase their brain size, as they were not large enough to harvest sufficient amounts of theprotein complex, which made them smarter and more deadly.The group discovers that the submersible has been damaged when they reach the wet entry.Russell was dragged into the pool by one of the sharks and eaten.
At the risk of destabilizing the pool, the remaining crew decided to climb up the elevator shaft.As they climb, the ladder breaks and they fall into the water.Carter tried to save her, but one of the two remaining sharks devoured her.Sherman "Preacher" Dudley, cook at the facility, kills the first shark with an explosion in the partially flooded kitchen.He encounters Carter, Tom, and Susan in the elevator shaft.While Carter and Tom are in the flooded laboratory, Susan heads to her room to collect her research material.The largest shark storms in, killing and ripping Tom apart, as Carter and Tom reach the control panel.Susan encounters a shark in the other room and uses a power cable to kill it.
After regrouping, Carter, Susan, and Preacher swim to the surface.Despite being grabbed by the last shark,Preacher is released when he stabs the shark in the eye with his crucifix, though he escapes with injuries to his leg.The sharks made them flood the facility so they could escape through weaker mesh fencing at the surface.Susan tried to distract the shark from escaping to the open sea by cutting herself and diving into the water.Despite Carter's attempts to save her, she is devoured by the shark even though she managed to distract it.While Carter is grabbing hold of the shark's fin, Preacher shoots it with a harpoon and pierces his thigh.Carter ordered Preacher to connect the trailing wire to a battery and to blow up the shark's harpoon as it broke through the fence.Carter andPreacher saw a workers' boat on the horizon after Carter freed himself in time.
A shark attack on a beach near Duncan Kennedy's home inspired the creation of Deep Blue Sea.He had a nightmare of being in a passageway with sharks that could read his mind after the tragedy.The challenge of approaching a shark film without replicating Steven Spielberg's 1975 film Jaws motivated him to write a spec script.Development on the project did not start until two years after Warner Bros. bought the script.When Renny Harlin was chosen to direct the film, Kennedy's screenplay, which had already been re-written by several writers at Warner Bros., was presented to Donna Powers and Wayne Powers, who turned it into the final script.The movie became what we wrote, according to Wayne.The draft we were presented by Warner Bros. was much more of a military espionage, high-tech action movie.To play it more as a horror film, we wanted our team to include more blue-collar types and not to have weapons to fight back.[5]
Harlin had not made a commercially successful film since 1993 and Deep Blue Sea was a test for him.Harlin's main goal was to bring the horror genre back to the serious and high-budget production values of films like The Exorcist, Jaws, and The Shining.Harlin wanted to make it impossible for the audience to know who was going to die or survive in Alien, which was an influence on the casting process.To achieve this, he combined relatively unknown actors who could deliver solid performances and meet the physical demands of the diving and stunts with a star, Academy Award nominee Samuel L. Jackson, who "anchors the whole piece".Harlin wanted a character who could bring a lot of warmth and humor to the film without it being joke-type humor, so he forced the studio to hire rapper LL Cool J.[7]
August 3, 1998 is when the principal photography for Deep Blue Sea began.Most of the film was shot at Fox Baja Studios in Rosarito, Mexico, where the production team constructed sets above the large water tanks that had been built for James Cameron's 1997 film Titanic.Some of the sets were designed so that they could be submerged, while others were built on sound stages with fishtanks.The cast worked with sharks at Fox Baja Studios.The shark used in Jaws was 25 feet long, so Harlin decided to increase it to 26 feet.Jackson said, "When they first brought it into the lab, we were all in awe of the size of this machine."They said it felt like a real shark when I walked up to it.The gills were moving and they had a mind of their own.The license plate found in the tiger shark carcass from Spielberg's film is an homage to Jaws.It was [13].
Harlin insisted the team go to The Bahamas to shoot with real sharks after the shoot at Fox Baja Studios.Thomas Jane, who played shark wrangler Carter, said that he was in a cage for the first day, but the next day they swam him 30 feet down.I don't want to remember it.The idea was to mix footage of real sharks with computer generated sharks to ensure a smooth transition between them all.Harlin decided to show Deep Blue Sea more prominently because he felt that audience expectations had changed since Jaws.[15][7]
The scene where the cast is trying to get back to the elevator after hooking up an actor to a helicopter is actually an accident.Jackson explained, "At one point three tons of water got thrown on us by accident and we got swept toward those cargo bays and everyone thought we were going into the drink and people were tumbling around this metal grating."Jackson's management team did not like the idea of him playing a chef, so Harlin created the role of Russell Franklin for him.LL Cool J's character was supposed to die early on, but the director decided to keep him.The production team couldn't afford to have a fully trained parrot for LL Cool J's character, so they used two parrots: one that was good at flying, and another that could sit on his shoulder.10
The film's ending was changed before it was shown to the public.The original plan was for the character to escape the water and live.The audience that saw the film less than a month before its release disapproved of the ending because she was behind the shark experiments.The production team did a one-day reshoot in the Universal Studios tank and did some computer generated work on the sharks to change it.Harlin said that Deep Blue Sea was the hardest film he had ever made because most of the shooting days involved the team standing in water.He said that being in the water all day was the practicality of putting a wet suit on.All your paperwork has to be made of plastic paper.Things that you wouldn't think would float.You can't find them anywhere if things that you hope would float actually sink.[17]
The film score for Deep Blue Sea was composed.Rabin's music was noted for its use of both dramatic and easily accessible themes."Say What" and "Deepest Bluest" were used in the end credits of the soundtrack.The soundtrack albums were released for the film.The first album, Deep Blue Sea: Music from the Motion Picture, was released on August 3, 1999 and features a set of hip hop and R&B tracks by several artists.On August 24, 1999, the second album, Deep Blue Sea: Original Motion Picture Score, was released by Varse Sarabande.[18]
When Deep Blue Sea opened in 1999, it finished third at the US box office and earned $18.6 million.The film made an estimated $11 million and finished in fifth place, behind The Blair Witch Project, Runaway Bride, and The Thomas Crown Affair.Deep Blue Sea made over $73.7 million in the United States and Canada and $91.4 million internationally.The film's performance was compared to The Mummy and The Haunting, both of which had a similar budget and made a significant impact on the box office in the summer of 1999.[23]
Critics gave a mixed review to Deep Blue Sea.The film has a "Rotten" rating based on 112 reviews."Deep Blue Sea is no Jaws, but action fans seeking some toothy action can certainly do worse than B-movie thrills."The film has a score of 54 out of 100, based on reviews from 22 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on a A+ to F scale.Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and praised it as a skillful thriller, saying that Deep Blue Sea is essentially one well-done action sequence after another.He concluded that the film keeps spectators guessing.[28]
After the "dismal swamps" of Cut Island and The Long Kiss Goodnight, Kenneth Turan of Los Angeles Times thought Deep Blue Sea was a return to form for Harlin.The film was described as an example of how expert action filmmaking and up-to-the-minute visual effects can surpass a workmanlike script and bring excitement to conventional genre material.Desson Howe of The Washington Post said that the film's premise feels familiar, but it "knows its audience and knows what will get them going".He said that Deep Blue Sea might not be Harlin's finest two hours, but he managed to build something that, if nothing else, gives you a great big shock every few minutes.Robert Lasowski of The Florida Times-Union highly praised the film's pacing, intense action, and chase scenes, stating that Deep Blue Sea is a great popcorn movie.[31]