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The Big Picture
- The opening scene of Jaws sets the tone for the rest of the movie, using our fear of the unknown to create suspense and scare us without showing the shark directly.
- Jaws 2 tries to replicate the success of the original film but falls short, delivering a dull repeat with rushed shark attack scenes that lack the magic of the original.
- Jaws 3-D embraces its technological gimmick but ends up being a disaster, with atrocious special effects that ruin any chance of enjoying the film about a shark attacking SeaWorld.
Over a 12-year span, from 1975 to 1987, four Jaws films were released. They ran the gamut from an all-time masterpiece to a hilarious slasher flick. Going in, if you were watching them for the first time, with no advanced knowledge of their individual reputation, you wouldn’t know what you were in for. For all you know, Jaws 3-D could be a classic in the horror genre. (It’s not.) You don’t need to watch any film in the franchise for very long, however, to figure out just what’s in store. From the opening kill, you know how the rest of the movie will go. With all four Jaws movies not available to stream on Netflix, you may be brave enough to go back into the water… four times over.
The Opening Scene of ‘Jaws’ Lets the Fear of the Unknown Become the Monster
Even if you’ve never seen one second of the original Steven Spielberg-directed Jaws from 1975, you at least have the basic knowledge of its impact. It’s a film so successful and enduring that it’s become part of our collective pop culture lexicon. You can expect that this isn’t going to be a Sharknado-level piece of cinema. That is obvious from the very first scene. Spielberg gave us something simple yet effectively scary when we meet a young woman named Chrissie (Susan Backlinie) partying at night on the beach with her friends. When she leaves the party to go skinny-dipping in the dark waters alone, the guy she ran off with still safely on the beach, we know Chrissie is a goner. Her death will not be a surprise, but how it happens may be for some.
The mechanical shark for Jaws famously barely worked, causing Spielberg to have to improvise. It ended up being the best thing that could happen. Instead of getting a gory shark attack filled with blood and dismembered body parts, with a shark jumping out of the water, we instead get atmosphere and music. When Chrissie is attacked, we get camera shots from below the waters of her legs dangling in the water, the shark’s POV closing in as John Williams‘ iconic score kicks in. When the attack happens, we watch Chrissie thrashing about for a brutally extended period of time, but there’s no shark. Instead, it’s our fear of the unknown that pulls us in while Chrissie gets pulled under. We’re so frightened of what the shark might look like and what’s happening to her under the water that we totally forget that we never even see the shark. In our mind we do, and that’s much worse. That’s what the rest of the film is like. The shark only appears for a total of four minutes of the film’s runtime. Instead, Spielberg got our attention by giving us great characters to care about first, then taking them into the water for a story that slowly unfolds, as the camera shots and score continue to scare us until the finale when we finally see the shark in all his glory for an extended period.
‘Jaws 2’ Is a Dull Repeat of the Original, Starting From the First Kill
Three years later, in 1978, came Jaws 2. Steven Spielberg would not be involved here or ever again, but the film was made anyway. In the late 70s, Jaws was the biggest box office draw of all time, so a sequel was coming no matter who was at the helm. The opening for Jaws 2 sees two scuba divers at the bottom of the ocean off Amity Island, taking pictures of the wreckage of The Orca, the boat our heroes were in at the end of the first film. That fear-inducing score starts up again, and while we get a quick glimpse of a shark as it approaches, the two divers meet their demise in a series of quick shots, with body parts flailing, but no real action or gore is shown. Something is killing them but we can’t see it.
That opening is similar to the first film, but now two people are killed by the unseen predator. It doesn’t work as well as it did in the first film though. Here, it’s rushed. The music starts and the shark immediately attacks. We’ve seen it before, but better. It’s how the rest of the film feels as well. It serves more as a non-threatening, entertaining enough, but forgettable reboot of the first film. Roy Scheider and Lorraine Gray are back. Amity Island is back. A shark is back, attacking more people again, and once more, it’s up to Scheider as Police Chief Martin Brody to save the day. The shark attack scenes are effective, but the first film did it much better. The shark death scene is clever, but the first film still did it better. The opening scene showed us we were in for more of the same, which wouldn’t work, as the magic of the original couldn’t be reduplicated.
Horrible Special Effects Take Away the Intensity From Any ‘Jaws 3-D’ Death Scene
Jaws 3-D should at least get credit for trying to do something different. Roy Scheider and Lorraine Gray are gone, but their family isn’t. Their son, Mike Brody (Dennis Quaid), is the focus now. He works as an engineer at the Orlando SeaWorld, and wouldn’t you know it, a killer great white shark appears! Released in 1983, Jaws 3-D hopped onboard the short-lived 3-D craze of the 1980s (Friday the 13th had gone the 3-D route as well for their third film the year before). The opening kill has a man at the park going underwater to fix some gates that separate the area from the ocean. We know he’s dead meat, but we don’t get John Williams’ score ramping up the suspense this time. Instead, it’s just some basic POV shots, a flash of shark teeth, a small spurt of blood, and then, in an unintentionally hilarious moment that removes all tension, a horrible-looking three-dimensional dismembered arm floating in the water.
We know we’re in for something different, but not for the better. Jaws 3-D is going to lean into its technological gimmick, and if that opening is any indication, it’s going to be bad. Unfortunately, it only gets worse. A film about a shark attacking at SeaWorld could have been fun, but this isn’t Jurassic World. It’s impossible to get into when the special effects are so atrocious. There are so many horrible 3-D moments, but the one that takes the cake involves a full-body shot of the shark swimming toward an underwater window, except that the shark isn’t really swimming. Instead, it floats toward the screen, propelled without moving its fins at all, opening its mouth just slightly. When its nose barely impacts the glass, it shatters with an equally awful effect. Meanwhile, the shark comes to a complete stop. It’s the most remembered scene in the movie, but that’s not a compliment. Jaws 3-D‘s gimmick was a disaster from beginning to end.
‘Jaws: The Revenge’ Is a Slasher Film From Beginning to End
The final film in the quadriolgy, 1987’s Jaws: The Revenge, was so badly received that it ended the franchise forever. The 3-D effects are thankfully left behind, and while the wonderful Lorraine Gray was talked into coming back to play the now-widowed Ellen Brody, this film goes full-on shock schlock from the opening kill. The film starts out back at Amity Island. It’s Christmastime and late at night when the Brodys’ youngest son, Sean (Mitchell Anderson), now a police officer, gets in a boat to knock a log from a buoy. As he stands in his little boat, we can celebrate the return of the frightening Jaws score as a POV shot bobbing in the water closes in on poor Sean. There is the same old flash of teeth, a spurt of blood, and some screams before Sean falls on his butt in the boat. After a few seconds, he realizes, oh hey, my arm is gone. It’s completely ripped away, though there’s barely any blood or gore to show for it. As Sean screams for help, the shark somehow jumps out of the water enough to get into his boat and pull Sean under to his doom.
It’s filmed like a slasher movie, straight out of Black Christmas, with the quick cuts between Sean’s death and nearby unaware Christmas carolers. This shark is treated as a human-like serial killer who killed a member of the Brody family the moment he gets in the water. It’s not a coincidence because this shark is, wait for it, out for revenge! It turns out that the fish is a little peeved about all of its friends being killed by the Brodys over the years, so it’s out for payback. Later on, it even follows Ellen Brody a few thousand miles south to the Bahamas. Jaws: The Revenge is a silly 80s slasher flick akin to something out of Halloween or Friday the 13th. From the moment the shark jumps in Sean’s boat to avenge its brethren, we know we’re in for something goofy, where audiences will need to leave logic behind on land.
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