10 reasons why they will never remake Jaws
Upon it’s release in 1975, Steven Spileberg’s shark thriller Jaws became an instant classic. Lauded by (most) critics and loved by audiences, the tale of a killer shark unleashing chaos on a beach community off Long Island became the highest grossing of all time (at the time).
Skip forward 27 years and the trend of movie remakes and franchise reboots is overwhelming, and the subject of a Jaws remake is regularly on the digitial lips of many a movie fourms. Here’s 10 reasons why a Jaws remake is impossible.
Speed is of the essence. Modern audiences have got used to lots of fast edits and almost wall-to-wall action set-pieces. Jaws was a slow burner, it crept up on the audience and it’s big villain didn’t even appear on screen until 1 hour 21 minutes into the movie. Even then all you saw was the side of his head in the estuary and then he’s gone again.
2. Character is key. A great deal of care was taken to make the characters relatable, three dimensional and clearly defined. This mostly came out of delays during production when there was nothing else to do but iron out wrinkles in the script. Even so, today the characters in big blockbusters can lean towards being cartoonish and special effects sometimes take precedent over story.
3. You’re not going to get John Williams again, so you’re up against it from the get go. Unless you’re an enthusiastic denier of basic logic, you won’t get a better composer of movie music than Williams. And his score for Jaws is as good as anyone will ever get. There are other composers around today who are good but not ‘Williams Good’, not that kind of undefinable magic quality that stops you in your tracks when you hear his work.
4. The 1970s are a major character in the movie. From Larry Vaughan’s ‘anchor motif sports jacket’ to the MASSIVE cars, the near constant cigarette smoking (sometimes in hospitals), lack of cell phone technology and groovy clothes, this era is as much a part of Jaws as the shark. At the time nobody batted an eyelid but looking at the outfits and some of the haircuts it feels like another world - kind of a fun one. And if the movie was updated they’d never accept that the hunt for the shark wouldn’t involve some enormous Roland Emmerich style military exercise. Quint and the Orca wouldn’t even get a look-in.
5. Who the hell are you going to cast to do the USS Indianapolis speech? Or play Brody or Hooper or direct the thing? Whilst we can imagine what would have happened if Jaws had not been made in 1975 but was made now, if you’re talking about recasting actors and doing a modern remake, you’ve opened yourself up to Sisyphus-like levels of pointless effort. The sheer weight of expectation and terror that everything would just come crashing down would be too much for any sane actor or director to try and take on.
6. Location, Location, Location. The studio would demand the majority of the remake be shot on green screen and in a tank. There’d be a few long shots on the ocean but that’d be it and the inauthenticity would be laid bare. With Jaws it was like you were on that beach when Alex Kintner got eaten or on the Orca when the shark attacked. Even with stages like The Volume where much of The Mandalorian was shot, Jaws needed real locations to breathe and live. The studio would also want to make the shoot as easy as possible (we can’t give our stars too much of a hard time) so that’s another reason they’d want a ‘controlled shoot’.
7. It was the first. No other movie had hit big like Jaws did. People didn’t know what to expect and when audiences saw it, it was like they were watching Psycho for the first time, or the chariot race from Ben Hur. It was an event movie, it thumped you in the solar plexus, churned your stomach and shocked you. It made you terrified not only of going in the ocean but also swimming pools, baths and some people even spoke about how they were worried there was a shark under the bed! Nowadays we’re bombarded with more and more outlandish action/thriller type movies month after month nearly all year round. A Jaws remake would be laughed out of the cinemas then sink without a trace.
8. Star Power didn’t rule. Spielberg chose character and stage actors as his leads and non actors for some supporting roles. The autonomy he had might well not happen now. Studios demand big hitters with proven money-making capabilities from other colossal movies (preferably franchises). Turning a profit is obviously important - Jaws certainly did that - but a big star might not necessarily make your movie a (jaw dropping) success, especially if you sacrifice the story for them - even by a fraction.
9. Bigger is not always better. No, not the shark. We’re talking about running time here. Blockbusters nowadays seem to subscribe to the idea that the longer the picture, the more people will want to see it. But quite often all you get are too many protracted fight scenes, overly long shoot outs, more and more spectacular explosions and lots of convoluted exposition that tells us not a whole lot but someone in marketing or production thought was necessary to avoid criticism that the movie was just lots of cgi battles with people in spandex.
10. The horror, the horror…Bruce behaved like a pampered prima donna on the set of Jaws. His eyes routinely crossed, his jaw wouldn’t close properly and at one point he even sank. He was like a precursor to Brando in Apocalypse Now, not knowing his lines or hitting his marks - he was a nightmare to work with and even refused to be filmed in full lighting or below the waist (Brando, not Bruce).
But when everything came together for both stars, they became ‘nightmares’ for real. Bruce and Brando would be the chilling visions audiences would take home when they left the cinemas. In the end, after all the problems and mistakes, sometimes waiting around a little bit longer for greatness to arrive really is worth it.
Words by Tim Armitage
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