I love Bollywood movies. I love the way they’re shot, all bombast and bright colors and slow motion. But more than that I love how sincere they are, how utterly and completely earnest they can be. They’re not afraid to give us characters who are far larger than life, pure heroes and evil villains and breathtaking romance. They’re utterly fearless, and wholly shameless. They stand perpetually in the shadow of the giants of western cinema, and yet they riff and remix those giants in a ways so confident and fervent that they transcend derivation and become a new thing all their own.

And in some ways, that’s why I love Sharknado 3. By any objective measure it isn’t a “good” film. The cinematography is lackluster, the special effects laughable, and the acting sub-par.

But by golly if it doesn’t swing for the fences.

The first two Sharknado films were still mired in a need to be taken seriously on some level. The concept was bonkers, but the execution was just more of the same. It seemed as if they were courting the kind of people who wanted to watch a movie about a tornado filled with sharks, but not something TOO unbelievable, okay?

But Sharknado 3 finally gets it right. It has a woman with a chainsaw for a hand, and baby that’s born inside a shark and SHARKS IN SPACE and more celebrity cameos than you can shake a stick at.

This is a movie that creates an entirely new kind of shark that has seemingly adapted to live inside of a tornado, and also apparently IN SPACE. This is a movie with a lightsaber chainsaw.

It’s telling that this is the film in the series most thematically centered around the idea of legacy. Fin Shepard meets up with his estranged father, patching things up with the old man while flying a space shuttle into space to stop the sharks, who also happen to end up IN SPACE. At the same time he’s concerned with the birth of his own son, who is coming into a world that is quite frankly, totally bonkers.

We feel the legacy of Fin’s influence on the world as well. His daughter, a practically useless block of wood in the first film, has transformed into something of an action hero in her own right, and Nova, sadly absent from the second entry, is back in a big way having taken Fin’s semper peratis motto more to heart than he has, driving around the country in an armored RV searching for flying sharks.

Sharknado 3 is the film that asks, “What kind of world is this going to be exactly?” It doesn’t quite ask why these bizarre things keep happening, but it’s trying to come to terms with what kind of world exists after three consecutive Sharknado apocalypses, and by extension, it comes to terms with itself as the third film in this unlikely romp. “This is happening,” Sharknado 3 says, “And I guess it’s going to keep happening, so by golly let’s have some fun with it!”

Yes, the people making these movies are in on the joke. But they don’t think you’re stupid for laughing at it. They’re along for the ride with you, reveling in the unhinged experience they’re creating.

Sharknado 3 succeeds by taking off at a breakneck pace and never letting up. Absurdity after absurdity is hurled at the screen in a maelstrom of insanity that never stops long enough for you the be able to process all the things wrong with what you just saw, and so your logic is overwhelmed, beaten into submission by a force of pure audacity.

This movie is an experience that is clearly and explicitly not for everyone. It doesn’t take itself or anything else seriously. It’s a joke, a farce, a wild romp from creators who’ve realized that they can put literally anything on the screen and people will still watch it.

For some of you that sounds like a nightmare, and that’s okay. But if you find wonder in absurdity, if you want to watch a film that is completely fearless (and utterly carefree) you could do far worse than Sharknado 3.



Albert lives in Florida where the humidity has driven him halfway to madness, and his children have finished the job. He is the author of The Mulch Pile and A Prairie Home Apocalypse or: What the Dog Saw .

To hear more of our thoughts on Sharknado 3 check out Episode 191 of the Human Echoes Podcast.