Jaws The Revenge shark gets a CGI special effects makeover

When Jaws was released in 1975, the shark was only seen on screen for a total of four minutes, but in the Steven Spielberg-less sequels that followed we got to see more and more of the great white shark.

Shark sequels hoping to make lots of summer dollars for Universal were released in 1978 (Jaws 2), 1983 (Jaws 3D) and 1987 (Jaws The Revenge), and with more time on screen and advances in special effects you’d think that each shark was an improvement on the last, right? Wrong!

If anything, the great white shark animatronic seemed to get progressively worse, and for many reaching its nadir in the (so far) final instalment of the Jaws franchise, Jaws The Revenge. It was so bad that it even got nominated for a Razzie in the category of worst actor, eventually losing out to Bill Cosby in Leonard Part 6.

It did win a prize for worst visual effects, which is pretty bad when you are up against Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and The Garbage Pail Kids Movie.

Not that Michael Caine would know how the shark looked, famously he has never seen the finished result, even if it did buy rather a nice house.

Perhaps the end result wasn’t totally the fault of the shark, or of its creators, as the Joseph Sargent directed film had an incredibly short lead in time from pre-production, production and then being screened in cinemas. In all it was a total of not much longer than nine months.

Also, the crystal blue waters of the Bahamas show everything, and we mean everything including the rig it is hooked up to. Perhaps less is actually more, but what if that pesky shark after the Brody could be given a new lease of life?

Back in 2018, a sequence from Jaws The Revenge got a just that, in the form of a subtle CGI makeover thanks to the talents of Steve Clarke and his team at CKVfx.

They worked their magic on one of the best scenes of the third Jaws sequel, where Michael Brody (Lance Guest) is chased by the marauding great white through the wrecked hull of the ship, and you can see the original SFX and the revised one side by side, below.

We think you’ll agree that it takes one of the most exciting sequences of the film and raises it up to 11, showing that there really was a great (white) shark film lurking beneath the surface.

We aren’t sure any amount of computer wizardry could save that ending though.