Posted on 05/31/2015 7:05:35 PM PDT by rickmichaels
It might be safe to go in the water now.
Monday marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Jaws, director Steven Spielberg’s tale of a great white shark terrorizing a picturesque seaside town. It’s a bona fide classic, deserving of all the praise it gets.
But it’s also something of a relic, a throwback to a simpler time in moviemaking when we were less cynical and more easily frightened. For all the monster movie remakes being trotted out this decade, it’s actually not surprising we haven’t seen Jaws sequel since 1987’s Jaws: The Revenge (and not just because that movie was astoundingly, impossibly awful.)
As much as we love Jaws, here are five reasons it would fail if it were to be made today.
1. Audiences have no patience
In adapting Peter Benchley’s novel for the big screen, Spielberg took his time creating characters we cared about and a world we could believe in, then slowly ratcheted up the tension and terror. We don’t get a clear look at the shark in Jaws until more than halfway through the film, and that just wouldn’t fly today. There are some exceptions – Cloverfield, Super 8 and last year’s Godzilla come to mind – but for the most part, modern audiences hate waiting to see a monster movie’s main attraction.
2. Less is no longer more
For a movie about a giant man-eating shark, Jaws spends very little time – only four minutes in total – showing the beast on screen. Again, a handful of modern monster movies have gotten away with this, but even last year’s otherwise solid Godzilla enraged some fans with how little screen time its radioactive lizard got. Doing a killer shark movie with only four minutes of killer shark in it would be box office suicide in 2015.
3. Digital effects would ruin it
Spielberg famously had endless problems with his mechanical shark prop, but the final result on screen was an actual, physical presence, giving the actors something to react to. A movie like Jaws wouldn’t be made today without reliance on computer-generated effects, and our eyes would immediately know that what we’re seeing isn’t real, diminishing its fear factor. That’s why you can bet the all-digital dinos of Jurassic World just aren’t going to have the same impact as the massive robotic T-rex in Jurassic Park.
4. No one goes swimming anymore
OK, that’s an exaggeration. But it’s true that summer beach vacations just aren’t the tradition they once were. Parents and kids alike are burdened with more commitments and less free time, and Griswold-style family trips are becoming a relative rarity. A shark terrorizing a seaside resort wouldn’t resonate the same way it did in 1975 – most of us would shrug and say, “Who has time to go to the beach?”
5. Sharks have jumped the shark
Maybe it began with a computer-generated shark making a meal of Samuel L. Jackson in 1999’s Deep Blue Sea, or maybe it was even earlier than that. But sharks have gone from being a primal menace to a punchline. Imagine trying to make a serious, scary killer shark movie in the wake of Sharknado. You’d need more than just a bigger boat.
Or a smaller shark.
I don’t know the words other than the first line to this day I still find myself whistling that tune all the time.
One of the best scenes of all time.
The movie wasn't scary because of the big toothy animal. It was scary because of the suspense, the music, the build-up, the fake-outs (scared over nothing), etc. The size of the beast was cool and inspired awe... the teeth were nice and sharp, and inspired wonder.... but neither had much to do with the actual fear.
Wanna bet?
4 is ridiculous as in claims a personal bias as a societal generality. The beach towns across this country still do so much business traffic grinds to a near halt on long weekends. Americans still love our beaches.
5 is equally ridiculous. Without Jaws there is no Sharknado. The latter exists because of the former, therefore it cannot preclude the former from existing.
/Rant
Seems we think alike...
The reason there was only 4 minutes of shark is because the shark prop never worked. Spielberg was forced to make a shark movie without a shark. He had to take a minimalist approach to filmmaking. John William's score helped tremendously.
Interestingly, Spielberg was 26 at the time and shooting only his second film. Jaws went way over budget and greatly exceeded the 55 day shooting schedule. Spielberg was convinced after such a debacle, he'd never work in Hollywood again.
And then audiences started lining up around the block.
I lived in California when this movie premiered.
That summer, a surfer in a wetsuit was swallowed by a shark off the coast of Southern California.....I think it was Santa Barbara.
The shark more or less spit him out....maybe it didn’t like the taste of the wetsuit.
The news showed the surfer in the hospital, with cuts to his legs, but otherwise he was OK.
The Los Angeles area newspapers had huge headlines reporting on the incident.....the large headlines you see when a war is declared.
One of my favorite movies.
When I was a young boy living in the Philippines, I spent as much time as I could in the ocean...I would take my snorkeling gear to school with me and go right after. I swam in 20 foot water on dark, moonlit nights, hundreds of yards from the shore, never gave it a second thought.
When I saw Jaws when it came out, it terrified me. I knew it was only a movie, and it was a big mechanical contraption, but it left a mark.
That night, after we all went to see the movie, we went back to my house because we had a swimming pool, and it was unreal. I felt nervous in a damned swimming pool at night!
A couple of nights later, a bunch of us went to a lake to swim across and play a prank by sinking a guy’s boat into the mud. It couldn’t have been more than 300 yards to the other side, and it was a clear, warm, moonlit night as we swam across.
The movie was still stuck in my head, and I was as nervous as could be. Suddenly, my best friend began to thrash around because some stupid fresh water lake fish decided to nibble on his toe or something, and it was bugging me out inside!
Funny. Just a silly movie...but Jaws was a real cultural benchmark...there have been so many things from that movie that register with so many people...everyone understands “You’re gonna need a bigger boat!”
On the serious side, I had the privilege to spend several hours talking to an officer from the USS Indianapolis. I had the opportunity to meet and help many men of that generation, and being Navy myself, would manage to strike up conversations with them about their service, in and out of the war. I loved it, one of the best parts of my job.
Anyway, he said he had been in the Navy in WWII, and when I asked what ship, he said “The Indianapolis.” I think I stammered a bit, but he continued talking to me about it, and eventually became very emotional, with his face actually turning red and tears brimming in his eyes. This is not where I wanted to go with this, and I stopped him by saying we didn’t need to talk about it, but he said he hadn’t discussed it with anyone for years, and wanted to discuss it with someone.
He said that they were just saying the Lord’s Prayer over and over and over again for days, to the point that, when he got out of the service, he could not even hear The Lord’s Prayer without becoming highly emotional about it. (which is saying something, because I thought he said he became a minister after the war)
When I went back just a couple of years ago and did an Internet search for him, I found he had passed on a few years after I talked to him, but in that interval, had told his story to have it recorded for posterity. I know that he did get debriefed by the US Navy after he was rescued, but I had the distinct impression he didn’t talk to anyone else about it until he and I discussed it that day. I would like to think that if that were the case, maybe I helped him in some way.
Jaws was great. But series “jumped the shark” immediately with Jaws 2.
There's the problem with the analysis. Jaws is not a movie about a shark, it is about three men forced to band together to hunt down a shark. It spends considerable time developing the characters rather than the shark, because the movie is about them, not the shark. The audience is terrified by the shark because they care about the men in the boat.
And it is true that a movie like that can't be made today, but that is due to the attention span of the audience plus the fact that movies with a lot of dialog don't do well in other countries. Transformer movies don't need subtitles, they are just a continuous chase scene with explosions, which translates very well in different countries. That is what is dumbing down the blockbuster.
3. Digital effects would ruin it Spielberg famously had endless problems with his mechanical shark prop, but the final result on screen was an actual, physical presence, giving the actors something to react to.
Spielberg admits that if the mechanical shark had worked it would have ruined the movie, because he wanted a lot more shark in the movie and he understands in hindsight that it wasn't a movie about a shark. He had so many problems with it and the weather that he ran out of time and budget with a bunch of film shot, and he didn't know if he had enough film to make a movie. Jaws became a great film in the editing room.
Wow, to have met a survivor of the USS Indianapolis.
"I was in a large, completely dark underground parking garage. Way over on the other side of this large garage was a single, small, barred window that had a beam of light streaming in.
Suddenly, I heard it: BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM...
It started off fairly faintly, but was growing louder! I just knew there was a giant man-eating Great White Shark in that underground parking lot! I panicked, and ran as fast as I could to that little window with light coming in, but as I grabbed the bars, I realized I couldn't get out!
BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM...
In panic, I screamed at the top of my lungs "HEEEEEEELLLLLP! HELP! HELLLLLLP!
At that point, I woke up standing on my bed, my face stuffed into the little small cellar window of my bedroom facing our neighbor's house. It was about five o'clock in the morning, and their bedroom light came on!"
Whenever we get together these days, this is one of the stories about him we still tell!
That is a very good explanation...
I remember going to see Jaws 3D, and it was the first time I felt so cheated at a movie I wanted to get my money back!
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