What can I say – ask and you shall receive.
When the world became enamored with the most preposterous Syfy title to date, Sharknado, the random weather/sea creature hybrid horror movie took over the internet and social media in a way no B-Movie has ever done. Premiering last month before 1.4 million bloodthirsty viewers and becoming an instant trending hashtag on Twitter, literally everyone in the world caught a piece of Sharknado – except for me. I saw Pacific Rim instead that night. Crazy, right?
Anyway, Syfy saw a ridiculous spike in ratings because of their laughable gamble, and word of mouth buzz reached insane heights that movies like Ice Spiders and Piranhaconda never could, so another swirling cyclone of carnivorous destruction was put into production in the form of a Sharknado sequel. But the giving people at Syfy wanted to thank the Twittersphere for turning their film into a pop culture phenomena, so they ran a contest that would let one lucky follower name the sequel. And so, without further adieu, I give you the genius title created by the Interwebs – Sharknado 2: The Second One. Well, it could be worse. No?
Thomas Vitale, Syfy’s Executive Vice President of Programming had this to say about the title naming contest while talking to Entertainment Weekly:
“Since Twitter played such a huge role in the success of the original movie, we wanted to use that platform to ask our fans to name ‘Sharknado 2.’ This response is another reminder of how ‘Sharknado’ has become a pop culture phenomenon. We want to thank all our viewers for their wonderful contributions to keeping up the shark-mentum.”
That’s right people, you heard correctly – keep riding the shark-mentum. There’s no doubt in the days leading up to the inevitable Sharknado premiere that optimistic fans were building and hyping Syfy’s demented brainchild up to be this juggernaut of awesomeness – but did you see some of the tweets describing yet another Asylum absurdity? Even I bought into the Sharknado theory when the first poster popped up, but let’s face it, the film itself wasn’t very appealing. Now the question remains, how will a sequel compare to the original? Or more importantly – now that the novelty effect is gone, will anyone even care?
Yes, obviously people will care based on the flood of hopeful sequel names, and there’s that crazy cult following somewhere out there that will make Sharknado 2: The Second One a show-stopping event yet again, but I don’t see this fad lasting very long after that. I might be the only one thinking this though, as Sharknado currently has a 90% out of 10 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Hell, maybe we’ll be seeing Sharknado 23: The Twenty-Third One someday, and the world will turn The Asylum into a legitimate production company. That’s the future we’re creating right now, hope you’re ready for it!
Yes, a world where Pacific Rim is a knock-off of Atlantic Rim. Can you dig it?