The time has come, this weekend is the premiere of The Last Sharknado: It's About Time! The title has double meaning, both that it's about time for the last Sharknado, and its about time travel! Why time travel? Because they have done literally everything else. This isn't the end just because it's getting old and the fans may be losing interest, but because they have used every trick in the book and there just isn't anything else to do with this. Even as they have pushed the limits, there just simply isn't another twist in this twister that the writers can come up with to make another movie. Let's review from the beginning, shall we?
Sharknado started with a basic premise, a waterspout at sea picks up a bunch of sharks and as it comes to shore it combines the threats of a tornado storm and sharks that swim in the resulting flood waters. The protagonist of this scenario is Finn Sheppard as played by accidental action hero Ian Ziering who was previously best known for Beverly Hills 90210 and his most embarassing role up until this was leader of the Mighty Ducks in an animated series Disney attempted to bank on that franchise turning the Anaheim hockey team into a team of anthropomorphic ducks from another dimension that fight reptilian aliens between games. Finn is a retired marine who owns a bar on the beach in California and at the start of the movie he's in a bit of a slump after a divorce from his wife April Wexler, played by Tara Reid, and surfs all morning until he opens his bar with bikini waitress Nova played by Cassie Scerbo, known best for this role. When the sharknado hits land precisely at Finn's bar, he and Nova have to make their escape inland to find Finn's family and try to save them from the sharknado as well. Throughout the movie, Nova is clad only in her bikini, and I can just imagine the pitch "She's only wearing her bikini because it's her work uniform and when the sharknado hits, they have to move so fast, she has no time to change clothes so she is only in her bikini the whole time. THERE'S NO TIME TO CHANGE CLOTHES, BIKINI ONLY!" Anyway, the story is pretty straight forward, the tonado chases them and destroys everything in it's path and whoever surves the tornado gets eaten by sharks. Everyone except Finn, nova and the Sheppard family. April's new boyfriend falls victim to a shark at the house before Finn gets April and their daughter out and continue driving away from the sharknado to find Finn's son who has joined the military and as a pilot has access to a helicopter that they can use to drop a bomb into the tornado and stop it from the inside which they explain in such a logical way and implement so quickly you don't have time to consider whether it actually abides by the laws of physics. In the process, Nova is eaten by a shark whole leading to the best and most iconic moment of the movie when Finn revs up a chainsaw and jumps into the open mouth of a shark, cutting his way out the other side and saving Nova who happened to be in this very shark unharmed by the shark and the chainsaw which coincidentally managed to not leave a scratch on her.
Sharknado 2: The Second One takes it from the west coast to the east coast, specifically New York City. At this time, the Sharknado is still considered to be an isolated incident but April wrote a book about it and is going to appear on Live with Kelly and Michael to talk about it and is on the way on an airplane with Finn when a sharknado hits th plane. When a hole is ripped into the plane, April is hanging out of it and shoots at the sharks until her left hand holding the gun and wearing her engagement ring as conspicuously pointed out seconds earlier is bitten off by a shark(I knew the hand was coming back the moment this happened, but let's not get ahead of ourselves). They manage a safe landing and April is hospitalized for her unfortunate amputation but seems to be okay otherwise. Meanwhile, Finn meets with his sister, brother-in-law(Sugar Ray's Mark McGrath) and childhood friend Skye (Vivica A. Fox), then the weather turns unseasonablycold because of the coming sharknado, but really because they filmed it in winter while setting it in the summer and covered it with surprisingly the least ridiculous plot device in the series. Finn desperately tries to outrun the sharks and the 'nado and rally the New Yorkers to stand with him in an impressive speech "I know you're scared of being eaten, so am I, I know I've been eaten...but I lived through it, and you will too...because we're New Yorkers and takes more than that to get a New Yorker down!" punctuated by him revving up a chainsaw while a shark conicidentally flies overhead at the precise angle and timing to get cut in half. The movie proceeds to have three moments that make this movie definitively better tha the first. First, Skye uses a sword to fight against sharks, which regardless of context is cool because swords just make anything cooler, period. Second, Finn falls into the sharknado and there is a scene of him flying through the tornado chopping up sharks as he goes along, which just took the most iconic scene of the first movie and raised it exponentially. Third, April comes to rescue Finn at a critical moment using a small buzzsaw attached to the stump that was her hand, and after the tornado is finally stopped, the last shark flies at them at the top of the Empire State Building and as Finn realizes he needs a weapon, he looks down to see the very shark that bit off April's hand at the beginning of the movie with the hand sticking out of its mouth still holding the gun, which he then uses to shoot the shark, takes the ring off the severed hand and uses it to repropose to April. I swear I actually got off the couch and gave that a standing ovation the first time I saw it.
Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! takes place a year later, starting in Washington where Finn is being inducted into the Order of the Golden Chainsaw, complete with a fully functional golden mini-chainsaw award. The president is played by Shark Tank's Mark Cuban who mentions losing a friend in last year's sharknado, a nod to the cameo by Daymond John. After the opening credits, the story shifts to Florida where April, who now has a proper prosthetic hand which conceals a mini-chainsaw because the motto of the marines and the Sheppard family is semper paratus "always be prepared", as in always be prepared for a sharknado, because at this point they realize sharknados can strike them at any moment. She is now nine months pregnant and she is at Universal Studios, for two reasons, one because Universal Studios is the parent company, and two because it give them excuses to make references to Jaws including shooting as many scenes near the ride as possible. Fin is trying to reunite with his family and en route meets up with Nova who has been researchign sharknados and the sharks that live in them, revealing in the plot twist that finally severs the last remnant of plausibility by revealing that the sharks are living in the clouds drinking ice crystals and eating birds. They make it to Florida where the sharknado chases them to Cape Canaveral and has escalated to the point that it can only be stopped from space with the help of Finn's father Gil played by David Hasselhoff, because you know you just haven't capped your cheese quota until you cast David Hasselhoff, and also, let's point out that both of them are named after body parts of a shark. Now, you'd think the climax of sharks in space with a light saber inspired laser chainsaw would be the highlight of the movie, but no, the topper is when Finn and April are both eaten whole and ride the sharks back down to Earth, shielded both from the heat of re-entry and the impact of the landing by the shark's bodies and Finn escapes for the second time in his life and goes over to rescue April to witness her using her mini-chainsaw hand to cut her own way out and then instead of getting out herself, hands out their newborn son that she just gave birth to on the way down. Ian Ziering absolutely deserved an award for keeping a straight face while attempting the most dramatically realistic reaction to this insane scenario. The movie ends with a cliffhanger as a piece of space debris lands on April and she may either live or die, leaving fans to wonder for a full year until the answer is revealed in the next entry.
Sharknado the 4th Awakens named after the Star Wars film that came out that year, goes forward five years. The story abandons plausibility with the premise that sharknados became such a significant concern that a company formed to control the weather and stop tornados before they start, never mind that if this were remotely possible there are plenty of real weather problems that need to be handled, but if you haven't diengaged your brain enough to not think about that by now you're trying too hard. Finn has been running a farm in Kansas as a widowed father since April did not survive (or did she?) and he has been called to a party in Las Vegas by the owner of the company that controls the weather at a tower that ambitously houses a large aquarium full of sharks tempting fate in the most obvious way possible. This time Finn is joined by his cousin Gemini, played by Masiela Lusha known best for playing George Lopez's daughter in his sitcom, who takes over the role of Nova as the girl with the stripper name and wardrobe who shows skin for a plausible reason then never has time to change into anything more sensible. The Vegas setting fits for one very significant reason, and that is so Ian Ziering's stint as a Chippendale's dancer can be referenced while one dancer dispatches a shark with a pelvic thrust. The story then pushes the envelope over the edge as the weather control system fails and five years of back pressure lead to a sharknado that chases Fin across the country and picks up more stuff to make it bigger and badder than ever. Al roker appears for th third time, destroying any of his remaining credibility as a meterologist by popping in with periodic reports describing the escaltion from a boulder-nado over the desert, a fire-nado after an ill-fated attempt to stop it with fire, an electric-nado after it hits a power line, and finally a nuclear-nado when it hits a nuclear power plant. April is revealed to be a cyborg reconstructed by her father played by Gary Busey and she now has super strength, flight, and a virtually infinite arsenal installed in her body to save the world. April is eventually reunited with her family as they fight the biggest fight of their lives. The movie has several high points, including a run through Texas where the cast of Texas Chainsaw Massacre run a chainsaw shop, because why not at this point, and even directly reference themselves while throwing chainsaws at the sharknado while saying "It's just not Texas without a Chainsaw Massacre!" a run though Kansas where Finns house is blown the next state over, lands on a woman who had been bad mouthing him the entire movie and he emerges on a literal yellow brick road to say "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore" and then the final showdown at Niagra Falls where David Hasselfhoff does a slow motion run with fellow Baywatch castmates and then the series topper of a Russian nesting doll when all the members of the Sheppard family are eaten whole by sharks that then eat each other and then are eaten by a whale and Finn's son Gil cuts them all out one by one.
Sharknado 5: Global Swarming has brought us to a point where we have utterly exhausted all domestic possibilities for Sharknado, and we are left with no choice but to go international. this time the sharknado has a spatial warp that forces them to randomly move from one location to another, from London to Australia to Japan where a godzilla like kaiju confrontation happens between the sharks and...ok, I'll be honest it's hard to kee track of this point, but the take away is that everyone dies by the end and Finn is carrying April's disembodied cybernetic head through a post-apocalyptic wasteland until he encounters his son Gil...but here's the wierd part, Gil is all grown up and played by Dolph Lundgren, revealing that in the last possible twist of this franchise after exhasting every last gimmick, trope and deus ex machina they had, the sharknados now have a temporal element and he has come back from the future and now they will go back to the past and save everyone by preventing the sharknado in the first place.
So...yeah, this is where we are. Next week, I will reveal how it all ends, in the meantime, don't forget to tune into the 12-hour marathon and check out the whole thing from beginning to end from 10AM to 10PM EST Sunday August 19.
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