"Sequels are death" says JAWS star
Anyone expecting Matt Hooper to return in a JAWS legacy sequel or requel is gonna need smaller expectations after Richard Dreyfuss slammed modern film for being "mostly crap" because of sequels.
Speaking on PBS's Firing Line, he said: "We are going through this strange need to not create, but create sequels.
"Sequels are death. Sequels are like, well, there was a sequel to JAWS, but there wasn't.
"No sequel. No, never came close to the brilliance of the first JAWS. And I'm very proud of that."
No one is contesting that JAWS is by far the greatest of the series, but that doesn't lessen the appetite for the film's – JAWS 2, JAWS 3D and JAWS the Revenge - that followed, or more of them.
Find out which type of JAWS fan you are, here.
Sequels have always been part of Hollywood, whether it has been to the Universal horror films of Dracula, Frankenstein or the Wolf Man or even numerous Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films or even Planet of the Apes. And yeah, JAWS, Star Wars, Police Academy, Friday the 13th and Scream.
People don't have to watch them, studios like them because they come with an inherent and established audience and knowledge and fans - more often than not- like to see further adventures in that world with those characters.
Just look at the likes of Aliens, Psycho 2, Top Gun: Maverick or the Back To The Future films as strong sequel examples.
Norman Bates had no reservations about Psycho 2
And, if I'm honest, I much prefer Another Stakeout, the Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez sequel over their original Stakeout.
Dreyfuss may not have any time for the JAWS sequels, but that didn't stop him once suggesting that the shark effects should be improved with CGI.
That idea was recently nixed by Spielberg who, as well as JAWS, also directed Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Always, as he vowed to never tinker with his films post doing just that with E.T. some 20 years after its initial release.
If Dreyfuss is out of any future JAWS sequel then perhaps that is why he was quite happy to appear dressed just like an older Matt Hooper, singing 'Show Me The Way To Go Home', at the opening of the Piranha remake, before being devoured by the 'fast fish'.
Even that finality won't stop the fan made trailers heralding the return of JAWS, or Dreyfuss, featuring a mash up of clips from his films spliced in with other shark film action.
As the JAWS franchise has shown us, sequels are only death - for their franchise - if they fail to make significant money for the studio who greenlit it. Which, post JAWS the Revenge, is why the dorsal fin from a shark in a JAWS film has never surfaced again.
With a plethora of other successful shark films such as The Shallows, 47 Meters Down and The Meg, which is itself getting a sequel in the form of Meg 2: The Trench this year, perhaps a new JAWS film isn't forever dead in the water...it is just dormant.
Words by Dean Newman
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