Swim, Charlie! Who survives the Jaws movies

The Jaws franchise is all about survival. Just so long as you can make it to the end credits with all your arms and legs attached (or head, never mind Ben Gardner), you’re doing ok. Thank your lucky stars or drink to your legs - for one reason or another, the shark in your movie passed on the chance of eating you.

So who are these plucky, lucky souls?

Glad you asked.

Jaws

Chief Brody - nearly gets grabbed out of the Orca when Bruce smashes through the window but manages to throw a tank of compressed air in the shark’s mouth.

Hooper - escapes the ‘anti-shark’ cage. I think we all know that Hooper was set to be eaten, as in the novel, but thanks to some incredible footage shot by Ron and Valerie Taylor of a real great white destroying a shark cage, the script was altered and Hooper swam to safety on the seabed.

Michael Brody - knocked out of his boat in the pond when the shark comes in and eats ‘Estuary Man’ there’s a great POV shot as the big beast swims by, leaving Mike treading water in its wake.

Pipit - I had to include this one because frankly, Pipit is my favourite character in the whole movie and to accept that the shark ate her is too much to bear. As far as I’m concerned she just got out of the sea in time. There’s no solid proof to the contrary but if you really feel the need to include her on the casualty list, of course you have that right. And my own dog is named Pipit in her honour.

Charlie - One of two men on the jetty who figure the best way to catch an utterly massive shark is stick a meat hook through the wife’s holiday roast, use an old tyre as a float and throw the whole thing the sea. And as we all know, this turns out to be a really bad idea. The power it would take to rip a jetty from its moorings would obviously be beyond even a shark of 25 feet (and 3 tons) that we have in Jaws but it’s one of the greatest near-death moments in the entire movie. Who cares if a real shark couldn’t have done it? It’s that ominous, slow groaning and creaking when Bruce realises there’s maybe more in the water than a chunk of meat on a chain. The audience gets that sick feeling in the pit of their collective stomach as we see the jetty make a wide, lazy turn and gradually accelerate towards a terrified Charlie as he flops and splutters his way to the beach. There’s the laboured breathing as he swims for his life, the imploring of his friend to ‘take my word for it, don’t look back,’ the frantic squeaking of the deck shoes on the slippery jetty, the shot of the hands desperately clawing for each other as the once innocent and innocuous jetty comes ever closer. Finally though, Charlie is able to pick his feet out of the water and the two men collapse. They watch in exhausted horror as the remains of the jetty digs into the soft shingle of the beach.

The undercurrent of the scene is not just about the terror of the unseen monster beneath the sea about to eat another victim, its also about how the shark is given a real malevolence. Like its toying with the men, just chasing Charlie down, daring him to give up as he swims for shore. It’s the cat playing with the bird, making a game of the hunt. So really, did Charlie escape or did the shark do it all as part of a sick game? Some late night amusement, just a way to really put the frighteners on the humans? I quite like the idea of a shark using the night and the fear of the unknown to mess with the men’s minds. It’s cruel maybe but it adds another layer to the scene.

Jaws 2

Tom Andrews - is so scared at seeing the shark when he’s scuba diving he gives himself an embolism by swimming too fast for the surface.

Tina - poor Tina. Sees her boyfriend Eddie get knocked out the boat, grabbed and slammed into the hull until he’s finally dragged under to be eaten is quite the ordeal, but at least she ended the movie on dry land.

Sean Brody - saved in the nick of time by the wonderful Marge (who then gets snapped up and pulled to her death)

Lucy - grazed by the shark as it swims by but gets to Cable Junction. This is one of the commonest ways for people to die from encounters with sharks. The skin of a shark is incredibly rough and people have been known to have bled to death from exactly what happened here so the movie should be congratulated for including the scene.

Chief Brody - once again, Martin saves the day and is just inches from death as he dares the shark to come and have a go if it thinks its hard enough. Shark bites down on big electrical cable and is fried.

Jaws 3D

Jaws 3D is a very odd film. It’s basically a big advert for Sea World but essentially tells the audience via its plot that the whole idea of keeping big undersea creatures in captivity is a really bad move that can go very wrong very quickly. But who exactly makes it out alive?

Mike Brody’s back again and he’s first to brave the depths and get out unscathed along with his girlfriend Kay Morgan - they just about escape a young Great White with the help of a couple of dolphins who come along just in the nick of time. People are always claiming dolphins are really smart and I’m sure they have a great intelligence for lots of stuff but the fact that they seem to spend so much time saving human beings - the living creature that has wreaked so much havoc on the dolphin’s natural habitat - they can’t be that smart… Anyway, Mike and Kay get away. Phew.

Next to narrowly escape 3D enhanced death is water skier Kelly Ann Bukowski played by a pre-Back to the Future Lea Thompson.

Then there’s a group of tourists who get stuck in a tunnel thanks to the shark scaring everyone in the underwater tubes but they escape too. The scene is a bit odd, looking like something of an afterthought, as though they realised they didn’t have enough action with the shark but couldn’t film anymore so they did this bit instead. Mike and Kay dive down to save posh Englishman, Philip FitzRoyce and they nearly get eaten again but thank goodness, the dolphins are back again and sort it all out.

Jaws The Revenge

Jaws The Revenge is even more of a bonkers ride. Mainly because the shark in this one has a vendetta against the Brodys, It follows them to the Bahamas. Here they meet a man who looks like Michael Caine but is called Hoagie. He takes a shine to Ellen and flies a plane for a bit.

So who avoids those big, rubbery teeth this time round then?

First up we have….Michael Brody! Again! This guy should definitely buy a lottery ticket.

Mike goes diving and just about manages to lose the shark in the wreck of a ship. It’s not a bad sequence actually but there’s a even better version of it now where they’ve replaced all the very shoddy shark bits with new CGI footage. To say that a Jaws movie could be improved by CGI is a bit controversial, I know, but here I think it really lifts it. Sadly CGI can’t do anything for the script.

Mike’s wife Carla stays on land but Thea - their daughter - goes for a ride on a banana boat with her friend Margaret and her mother. The shark attacks the big yellow inflatable (some kind of psychic link to the past and Alex Kintner’s yellow raft maybe? Anything’s possible with this story) and kills the mother but Margaret survives and Thea is safe too.

Ellen’s out on her boat and Michael and his friend Jake are flown out by Hoagie to find her.

Hoagie is next to have a close call with the new shark as his plane is dragged under the water.

Jake and Mike build a device that should kill the shark and they try to get it into its mouth, but as Jake tries this the shark grabs him and he’s taken under.

Mike keeps zapping the shark and it lurches out of the water and roars a lot.

Ellen steers the boat towards the shark while she has flashbacks to the first movie and manages to impale it.

Depending on which version you watch the shark either dies thanks to blood loss or - for some unknown reason - explodes.

And then, amazingly, Jake swims into shot - a man who just a few minutes ago was quite obviously bitten in half and drowned.

So there we have it, some narrow escapes, some ridiculous logic defying moments and one reoccurring character who is just very very lucky.

Words by Tim Armitage

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.