JAWS: Everything You Need To Know About Making A Great Movie

There can’t be many of us who haven’t watched a movie and thought “Blimey, I could do better than this”. There are many terrible films, quite a lot of ok ones, a smattering of very good ones but very few great movies. But what makes a movie ‘great’?

For me, you need to be able to watch it over and over. It can’t lose its impact, just because you know what’s coming.

The Great Escape. Funny, sad, exciting, tense and intricate. A taught structure, top grade cast and one of the finest scores ever set to film. Just like the escape itself, nothing was left to chance.

The same goes for Goodfellas or When Harry Met Sally. They never disappoint because they were carefully crafted, not thrown together to make money or prop up a franchise.

Jaws is king though. It not only makes the list - it towers over every other title.

Have a strong opening. Nothing too fancy but a real gut punch. This can be in drama, romantic comedy or a 10 minute stop motion, where the puppets are made from loo rolls and pipe cleaners. It doesn’t matter. The only thing that’s important is you grab the audience’s attention. And never let go. The audience knows the attack on Chrissie Watkins is coming (it’s on the poster after all) but they’re not prepared for that first jolt. The confusion on her face, the realisation that this will be how she dies. Then the shark hits her again, grabbing on and swimming back and forth as she screams for it to stop. All the while the John Williams’ jagged score clatters along underneath, amping up the horror. There’s a brief respite as she clings to the buoy, pleading for mercy but the shark hits her again and she’s finally dragged down to her death. The brutality of it is shocking and yet we see nothing of the shark, it’s all left to our imagination. And oh, what monsters we conjure up! We’re stunned and bruised by the encounter, watching the waves settle back down to a lazy calm, its Chrissie was never there. All that’s left is the eerie peel of the bell. Lesson Number 1: make that first scene count.

Introduce your protagonist. Brody, a man who fled the city for the coast but is terrified of the water. He’s the perfect character. Flawed, world weary but calm by nature. He isn’t an action hero, he’s a real guy that the audience immediately like and can identify with. Spielberg said that when he first read the novel he found himself rooting for the shark because all the of the human characters were so unlikable. Brody squints through his bedroom window at the glittering water as it refracts the morning light. He’s thinking, despite his phobia about the water, he made the right decision to move here. We hear that lonesome bell on the buoy chime, we know what it means. It’s a warning. We’re still on edge, we saw what happened last night. We’re ahead of the curve, aware of what’s waiting for Brody as he heads to work. We continue with Martin to the beach and see the aftermath of the first scene. This is vital because it takes us back to the thrust of the story. My second favourite movie of all time is Raiders of the Lost Ark (yes, you’re right, there’s a definite theme going on here). It’s another great example of set up, then come down, then reintroduction of the main theme. We see Indy in the jungle and via the action (almost dialog-free - just like Jaws) we find out the sort of guy he is. Then we’re back to civilisation. Again, there’s sun streaming through the windows, there’s humour and then…we get pulled back to the heart of the plot, we’re given the facts. It seems simple but it’s vital if a movie wants to keep its audience engaged. In Jaws, Spielberg’s hand never leaves the tiller, keeping the plot strictly on course. When Brody sees what’s left of Chrissie Watkins, his sunny family life is swept away. And behind the chief the clouds begin to gather…

Keep the damn thing moving! Spielberg knew he had to keep shooting - no matter what - and to do that the script had to be lean. There wasn’t a working shark so he had to build the tension through dialog and foreboding. He used everyday chit-chat (the two guys in the store when Brody’s buying supplies) and the back and forth overlapping dialog in the Police Station. These’s aren’t distractions, they’re setting the scene. It’s similar to the way Tarantino used conversations about McDonalds hamburgers in Pulp Fiction. It doesn’t detract from the story, it helps the audience understand the characters and the world they inhabit. They’re normal people. Amity seems like a jostling, happy little place. It’s got white picket fences (are they meant to resemble the teeth of the shark perhaps?), flags and bunting everywhere. It’s a version of the American town we’d revisit time and again in movies throughout the 70s and 80s. Its somewhere you’d like to visit, buy an ice cream and sit on the beach. Maybe even go for a swim…

Continue to cut the fat. In the novel, Peter Benchley had the Mayor in hock to the mob - his reason to keep the beaches open, but (to paraphrase the mayor for a second) ‘this is a summer movie, it needs summer dollars. If the audience can’t watch a fun movie here, they’ll happily go watch another something else’. Spielberg knew he could make a mega hit if he was careful and along the way he could also do for the ocean what Psycho did for showers. All we need to know about Vaughn is that he’s a slimeball, he just wants to make money. We don’t need to know why. The mob subplot might’ve worked in the book but it’s not important to the movie. The director worked with Carl Gottlieb on a brutal slash and burn mission, scything the plot down to its bare bones. Spielberg knew what his priority should be: terror. “It’s a visceral film. It’s a horror film that’s going to tear your guts out. The Exorcist made you vomit, and this film will make you clutch your hands in your armpits.” Gottlieb took to the task of ‘script eviscerator’ so enthusiastically, he cut his own role of Meadows down to just a few lines.

Don’t stop until the final reel. So you’ve introduced your characters, you’re in tune with the sort of movie it’s going to be, but what now? Simple, put your head down and just go for it. Jaws was a supremely balanced piece of filmmaking (it wasn’t all swimming and screaming) but once things were in place it became pretty basic. Don’t look back and no messing around with stuff that gets in the way of the story.

Jaws is a lot like a classic rock song. As soon as it starts, you know what you’re gonna get. Along the way there’s still some bits that surprise you and make it stand out from the crowd but basically, it’s Back in Black by AC/DC. You get a killer intro, then a really strong first verse. Then a build up with a Pre-chorus and then BANG! A big chorus - something the audience can get behind and understand straightaway.

Lots of big modern genre movies should look at what we can call ‘The Jaws Model’ for ideas on pacing and that doesn’t mean sacrificing character arc or story to get a great, fast-paced movie. If you watch ‘The Meg’ you’ll see a film that obviously had designs on ‘doing a Jaws’ but wasn’t really sure how. It’s not just about having a big shark.

The lead character was…well, that doesn’t matter - he was just Jason Statham. He gets asked to rescue a team of scientists from their submarine. There’s some stuff about underwater clouds (I think?) and then the shark arrives. But do we care about Stath like we care about Brody? Jason’s great but here he’s another 5% body fat, action hero dude who can do pretty much anything. His character’s about real as the CGI

Don’t Jump the Shark. These days, with CGI used to such an extent, just about anything is possible. And that can be great. You can shoot stuff safer and spend a lot less money but does it sacrifice imagination and ingenuity? I’d argue it does. Watch ‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ and compare it to the original ‘Jurassic Park’. On the new movie, the pace lurches from frantic to ponderous and there’s very little jeopardy or depth to any of the characters. You know there’s barely anything that’s real, dinosaur-wise. There’s no doubt, the CG dinos look superb, where is the story? Some people might argue that its a popcorn movie about dinosaurs but you just don’t care about the humans. And that takes us back exactly to what Spielberg said about Benchley’s novel. When technology allows you to say “Don’t worry about it, we’ll just fix it on the computer” or “OK, so in front of you is gonna a huge monster and it’s moving left so you go right and now its lunging at you so you need to jump backwards” to substitute a practical effect, you lose emotion, reaction and nearly all tension. And yes, Jurassic Park was also a movie about dinosaurs chasing people but think of ‘the moments’ in it. The glass of water, the T-Rex reveal, the wing mirror gag, Dennis Nedry meeting his end in the Jeep, the tension of the electric fences being turned on again, the kitchen scene… Now write a list of stand out scenes that have entered popular culture from any modern CGI spectacular.

And now, the end is near. It’s the final act and the Orca’s heading out to sea. There’s one more thing Spielberg had to deal with though - the shark was still barely working. But not seeing it continues to fuel the tension. The monster lurking in the deep played on a loop in the heads of the audience. The barrels kept it ‘alive’ on screen for a while but eventually the time had come. It was time for Bruce to finally show up. It’s the scene that launched a million memes. Just Brody, a bucket of blood and a mechanical shark. And then you get the line… And from that point, all bets are off. The audience was hooked. They’d spent the last hour and half being fed into the mincer, imagined the beast with every attack and now here they were, face to face with it.

Most movies would be happy with that level of greatness but after this there’s still the USS Indianapolis speech, shooting stars, the cage scene, Bruce crushing the Orca and eating Quint and finally - after shoving a tank of compressed air into his mouth - the final shot from Brody and it’s all over.

This isn’t a complete list but just a few of the ways Jaws still - after 47 years - quickens the pulse and works its magic. It’s a summer blockbuster, a Hitchcockian thriller, a creature-feature and also - now, after all these years - a pictorial study in what it really takes to make a great movie.

The greatest movie of all time.

Words by Tim Armitage

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