JAWS 2 and I: My relationship with the first great blockbuster sequel
“How could there have been only one…?”
Paul Schrader, a filmmaker I very much admire, supposedly didn’t see a film until he was seventeen years old, and thus avoided that otherwise unavoidable smothering of sentimentalism or nostalgia we tend to ladle over old movies, clouding (God forbid) our judgement of them. I did little else but watch films in my childhood (nothing there has changed mind); everything from One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing (for some reason subject of an annual school projection on pinkish 16mm at term’s end), to Race for the Yankee Zephyr, by way of Clash of the Titans, Scanners and My Bloody Valentine (I only realise 1981 must have been a formative film year looking at much of that otherwise random, eclectic and unsuitable list). I was an equal opportunities pre- and school-age consumer of slasher videos, Dino De Laurentiis spectacle, classic Universal monster movies, stop-motion, and Spielberg/Lucas fantasy.
A misspent, thoroughly inspiring, early eighties youth that I’m sure resonates with many of you.
It was thanks partly to the dawning of the home video boom and also some great matinees at the local pictures, but I’m sure now of two things: I can unashamedly get very sentimental about certain movies of a, ahem, certain age (and TV reruns, but let’s not complicate things); and that I always tended to root for the movie underdog. By that I mean, if everyone was talking about Grease, I’d be rewinding my tape of Grease 2 for another viewing. Or Halloween II.
JAWS 2 VHS jacket
Flaws be damned.
‘Huh?’ everyone would comment. I still get puzzled looks when I say I’m a Jaws 2 fan (though time has been kind to it), as if by expressing a fondness for the sequel, I’m ludicrously taking sides against the classic original! It becomes a guilty confession requiring explanation. “Oh, you know, you can’t beat the first one…”
There’s a pattern emerging there and a whole bigger topic: Sequels and the bad rap they (tend to) unfairly get. Maybe it’s second album syndrome or prejudice that the very concept of a sequel is money-grubbing and unoriginal? If you’re anywhere near my age, sequels were big when we were kids: Rocky, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Airplane, Superman, Mad Max, Death Wish…
Movie posters or video boxes were full of ‘2’, ‘II’, ‘Too’, ‘Revenge’, ‘Return’―all sorts.
Looking back, I don’t think the concept of a sequel ever really came into it; these follow-on films were all part of the same world, the same adventure. The legend, to paraphrase Percy Rodriguez, continued.
So, to Jaws and its sequel…
It ought to be clear to you if you’re reading this, that I have a fondness bordering on obsession for Jaws 2.
(“Oh, you know, you can’t beat the first one…”)
If ever there was a sure-fire box office smash, eagerly anticipated, but somehow still an underdog movie, this surely was. It was after all, in the words of one-time Sean Brody, Ricky Schroder (‘released’ from the original director John Hancock’s version of the film’s cast in 1977), “Worst. Film. Ever!”
Whoa, Ricky.
JAWS 2 45th Anniversary Interview series
I started collecting primarily Jaws 2-related memorabilia nearly thirty years ago, have continued on-and-off since; nothing major or screen-used as some serious collectors do, but some nice things. And of course, more importantly, it’s a film I keep coming back to for enjoyment. From the very opening scene of ‘Bert’ and ‘Ernie’, the doomed divers exploring the Orca’s wreck, I’m hooked, just as that movie addict child was. Hooked just like Bruce on Charlie’s wife’s holiday roast (“Come. And. Get It!” – pardon me for mixing my movies); it’s the beautiful, otherworldly harp-like chords of John Williams’ ‘Finding the Orca’ playing over an intro you know won’t end well.
Or at least, will end with another, far more famous/ominous John Williams motif.
It’s actually before this scene that I’m transported to a warm and fuzzy movie place: it’s the Universal Pictures ident and the weird, sonic underwater echoes playing over it (a nod again to Jaws). Sentimental, nostalgic perfection!
I can trace my first Jaws 2 experience back to its UK network TV premiere on ITV, on Sunday January 9th 1983. I watched it (as did some 15.8 million others), and remember only sailboats and water skiing, and of the two the water skiing is the stronger image (doubtless due to Lou Feck’s brilliant, iconic poster art), as I sat and drew a picture of my beloved ‘Game of Jaws’ shark hungrily gliding along the surface of the ocean in pursuit of a stick lady Terri on skis (Diane’s boat didn’t make it onto the page).
This of course was the year of a subsequent sequel, the first of the 1980s ― Jaws 3-D, but as I’ve suggested, Jaws was a character, like Superman or The Hulk. It didn’t matter if it was my Game of Jaws big fish, or the 3-D shark on the backs of the Shredded Wheat cereal box (an exciting 3-D graphic tie-in with that year’s new release). Jaws was Jaws.
For me in 1983, it wasn’t all about Christine Freeman’s water skiing, or Jean Coulter’s exploding for that matter; there were Eddie and Marge’s impressively ‘executed’ death scenes! One peculiar Jaws 2 phenomenon is the average fan’s apparent obsession with Martha Swatek’s doomed Marge character, no doubt rooted in her selfless, maternal sacrifice to save Sean Brody (played eventually by Marc Gilpin, who probably doesn’t hate Jaws 2 as much as Ricky). Very admirable, and so very unfair. Or maybe it’s that big, unsporting gulp that Bruce II swallows her whole with, fingerless gloves and all? Just keep telling yourselves she survives in a draft of the script somewhere…
Forty-five years on from its first release, Jaws 2 is still sailing.
With all its trailer-friendly popcorn-spilling moments, it stands up as a thoroughly enjoyable thriller. And as I said, people are kinder to it these days.
Take it as a proto-slasher movie of the same year as Carpenter’s Halloween, its scarred super-villain (a killer’s mask would have been, well, impractical) stalking and hacking away at a group of boisterous teens, some screaming more than others. Like Amity itself (even if parts are Florida), it’s a reassuringly familiar experience. Enjoy the many nods (I like to think of them as echoes) to the unbeatable original, for there are many; not to mention the box office gold of returning elements of the original’s principal cast, including Roy Scheider, Murray Hamilton, Lorraine Gary and Jeffrey Kramer.
It’s a cast that carries the darker themes and ideas in Amity Island’s shadows very, very well into the light of a new story; Chief Brody’s past traumas leading to out of control alcoholism, fear of the sea, over-protectiveness of his family (to the point of really busting up Mike’s chances with off-islander Jackie―”Do you always do what your parents tell you to?”). These may well have been toned down in the finished film from either the novelization or earlier script drafts on which it’s based: Howard Sackler’s first draft prominently featuring the PTSD Brody is undoubtedly struggling with; or interim scribe Dorothy Tristan and husband Hancock’s extremely gory vision for humans shredded and eaten alive by the Great White. But the darkness and the human observations (all those cast members name-checked above really beautifully contributing to these) are such a wonderful part of the Jaws 2 we ended up with, thanks in no small part to the talents of replacement director Jeannot Szwarc, and of course returning writer Carl Gottlieb.
Jaws 2’s most well-known poster art of the water skier with the shark looming behind her by the talented Lou Feck (others exist, namely Jack Leynnwood’s fan-favourite ‘sunset’ teaser poster art), coupled with the tagline that has become perhaps the most copied and parodied in film history, “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…” afford Jaws 2 a heightened level of fame and pop art recognition that has strangely outweighed its reputation.
Every viewing, every piece of memorabilia, takes me back to that first viewing of Jaws 2. It recalls holidays on the beach, and John Williams’ score. For you it might be a DVD screening, or if you were lucky a trip to the cinema in 1978 or ’79. Or it might be another film altogether (there are other Grease 2 fans out there, right?)
Sure, you can’t beat the first one. But Jaws is Jaws…
Happy birthday, Jaws 2!
Words by Scott Dingley aka @Jaws2Archivist
If you would like to write for The Daily Jaws, please visit our ‘work with us’ page
For all the latest Jaws, shark and shark movie news, follow The Daily Jaws on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.