Did JAWS kill the shark movie?
You can catch The Shark Is Broken from 25th July 2023 at the Golden Theater, New York, NYC.
Hello, Islanders.
“Thriller.” The Godfather. Star Wars. Three great artistic achievements that have gone down in Pop Culture History as among the best in their category. Numero Uno. If you could talk to these three examples you would find yourself quoting Prince when you tell them “nothing compares to you.” So, does that mean that “Bad,” The Godfather Part II or The Empire Strikes Back are failures?
Far from it. In fact, many fans consider the follow-up projects to be superior to the originals. Just like JAWS 2 is a better film then…..I’m sorry, I couldn’t keep a straight face. While I love JAWS 2, it is not JAWS. Sadly, NO shark film is. JAWS has pretty much killed the shark film.
Before JAWS there weren’t really a lot of shark movies out there. A few months ago, I did a piece on some of the shark-themed films that were released before 1975 but none of them had the impact of JAWS, both at the box office and on Hollywood. Orca, Tentacles, Grizzly, The Swarm. JAWS practically created a new genre’ – man vs beast. And while a few of them may be enjoyable, they all suffer the same fate when they are compared to the best.
Let’s be honest. Have you seen a film with a shark theme and not, even subconsciously, compared it to JAWS? I haven’t. A lot of that comparison comes from the visual effects. In todays CGI world, sharks can do anything. Any place. At any time. And to me that often hurts the film. The shark jumping out of the pool and grabbing Sam Jackson in Deep Blue Sea (SPOILER ALERT) looks fake as hell. The shark menacing Blake Lively in The Shallows? Not doing it for me.
The megadolon sharks in the MEG films? Don’t get me started. The reason JAWS works is because they could only have Bruce the mechanical shark do what a real shark could do. It had to move like a real shark. It had to bite like a real shark. And, most importantly, it had to look like a real shark. Even as the sharks got bigger (JAWS 3D) and sillier (JAWS the REVENGE), the action had to fit the proposed reality of the situation. It’s easy to write “shark jumps out of the water and eats a guy.” It’s must harder to make the audience believe it’s happening.
Words by Michael A Smith. Michael is co-author of Jaws 2: The Making Of The Hollywood Sequel. You can order the book by contacting Michael at OsFanMike@aol.com.
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