JAWS 19 — The Daily Jaws

When Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) first arrives in the year 2015 on October 21, one of his first encounters is with a giant shark hologram advertising Jaws 19, the latest in the Jaws franchise directed by none other than Max Spielberg - son of a certain Steven Spielberg.

Spielberg was of course Executive Producer of the Back To The Future trilogy. Max was also born the same year that Back To The Future was released, so was only four when Part II was released.

A further link between the film series was that Marty’s mum (played by Lea Thompson) also made her film debut in Jaws 3D, back in 1983.

By the time Back To The Future Part II (BTTF2) had been released in 1989, the Jaws franchise was already dead in the water thanks to the dire performance of Jaws The Revenge back in 1987, both were released by the same studio, Universal.

The tag line, this time it’s really, really personal, riffed on the ‘this time it’s personal’ one from Jaws The Revenge. Even after the shark jumps out of the side of the cinema and ‘devours’ a screaming Marty McFly, he says that the shark still looks fake.

Curiously, in the film tie-in novelisation, by Graig Shaw Gardner - no relation to Ben we presume -, the Jaws sequel is only number 14. It may have been referred to this in earlier drafts of the script.

Talking of Jaws 5, I had written my very own sequel in secondary school, which saw the return of Ellen, Hoagie and Matt Hooper. This time they had to Cornwall...and so does a Great White Shark.

But wait, there really is a Jaws 19. Whaaaaat? That’s right, and it really was released in 2015 in Russia...and the shark looks really, really fake in that one. Life imitating art, just not very convincingly.

By Dean Newman

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