Here’s where JAWS appears in Jurassic Park

Did you know that Steven Spielberg's original summer blockbuster JAWS (1975) appears in his dinosaur monster hit Jurassic Park from 1993?

For many film fans that was a revelation 30 years in the making when we posted about it at the weekend, leaving them fiddling with their sunglasses like Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Ellie Sadler (Laura Dern) when they see the Brachiosaurus when they first arrive at Isla Nublar - although remember folks, it's only an island if you look at it from the water - in the dinosaur blockbuster, based on the book by Michael Crichton.

@Hubert_Wong2 on Twitter said: I was today years old when I found out…

Whilst Steve Douse on Facebook said: Never knew til now…pretty cool.

That amazement was also echoed by Karan MacEachern Randall on Facebook, who commented: That’s so cool! Now I’ve gotta watch Jurassic Park!

Jurassic Park, in many ways, is the closest Spielberg has ever been to capturing the wonder, excitement, scares and adventure of JAWS, so it is fitting its cinematic toothy monster cousin makes a fleeting appearance.

That Steven Spielberg Easter egg features Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) chumming for the great white shark on the Orca ahead of the shark popping up scene - regarded by many as the first time you see the shark in JAWS - and right before the classic you're gonna need a bigger boat line.

And it all takes place on the desktop of Dennis Nedry's computer, although you'd think if Nedry (Wayne Knight) was such a JAWS fan he would have at least have heeded the warning about wearing bright yellow.

It happens when the creator of Jurassic Park, John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), is complaining to Nedry about the systems not working properly, the scene also features Samuel L. Jackson and Bob Peck.

As well as the "chum some of this shit" sequence on the computer screen, there is also another scene with Chief Brody and Quint (Robert Shaw) as the dorsal fin of the great white makes its first pass by the Orca.

Upon release, Jurassic Park did a JAWS and was the film of the summer in 1993, and just like JAWS, not only did it become the box office monster hit of the year, but it became the then highest grossing film of all time. Sound familiar?

Its bigger bite from the box office would amount to over $914 million worldwide, a record that would remain until James Cameron’s bigger boat came along in the form of Titanic (1997).

In April 2013, Jurassic Park was unleashed back on the big screen in 3D. At the time, speaking to Moviefone, Spielberg said: "The only movie that I would ever even consider retrofitting is the first Jurassic Park, which I think would look pretty spectacular in 3D. That's the only one of my films that I would consider doing in 3D."

Thankfully for us, he swallowed that comment whole and almost a decade later we got to witness JAWS in all its 3D glory in 2022.

Words by Dean Newman

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