The JAWS Problem: Why shark movies are (generally) getting worse
It’s fine to enjoy a schlocky film, a B picture or a ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ movie, you don’t have to only watch classics - life would be very boring indeed if we dismissed anything that wasn’t a 5 Star winner. For every ‘Star Wars’ there’s a ‘Plan 9 from Outer Space’ and for every JAWS there’s a…well, frankly, take your pick.
Ever since 1975, people have been making shark movies with one (black) eye on Martha’s Vineyard. Yes, there were ‘shark movies’ before that date - most notably perhaps, 1936’s ‘White Death’, 1956’s ‘The Sharkfighters’ and 1969’s ‘Shark!’ This last one starred super-moustachioed 70s idol, Burt Reynolds which pretty much always makes a movie worth a watch.
But putting all that aside, stuff really kicked into high gear when Spielberg let Bruce loose on an unsuspecting public.
The problem with JAWS, of course, is that it’s so damn good. Now of course, we all know this. But the thing is, whenever you watch it, you should immediately notice it’s not just a simple ‘shark movie’. It’s not a creature feature (great fun as they sometimes are), it’s an actual proper grown up film and yet it gets lumped in with every other thing that has a big mindless killer lurking beneath the waves.
When ‘Deep Blue Sea’ came out, I admit, it seemed pretty good. You had a kind of The Poseidon Adventure vibe and then genetically enhanced Mako sharks turning on their ‘masters’. We got a very familiar licence plate gag too, but the film didn’t really try to ‘do a JAWS’ too slavishly. It was nice to see that the scientists were the heroes (along with chef and his bird) and the animatronic sharks were very good indeed - but as ever, the CGI ones let the movie down.
The most memorable problem with ‘Deep Blue Sea’ was the moment that was probably written as a fantastic reveal, and a big old fashioned jump scare. But instead of a Ben Gardner’s head popping out of a boat an making everyone throw their popcorn in the air, you got something else entirely. When that shark leaps up and grabs Samuel L Jackson (and just after he’s told everyone to stop panicking - how annoying) he looks more like a shop window mannequin than a human and the water effects really aren’t up to scratch at all.
It’s a bit like the producers said ‘Hey, everyone’s seen JAWS, they know the shark’s down there, they wanna see it! Show them the damn shark!’ And then you get this rubbery thing lurching up and grabbing Sam and dragging him under. It’s all a bit embarrassing really. And a shame too, especially as the rest of the movie is quite a lot of fun.
Some other pretty good efforts are ‘47 Metres Down’ which takes place nearly entirely underwater and so you can tell those involved were determined to try something different and let’s not forget ‘The Shallows’ which even though it has an extremely simple premise of a woman caught on a rock trying not to get eaten, there’s depth (sorry) to the back story. It’s a solid, character-driven piece and if there’s another movie where you’re rooting for a seagull, then I haven’t heard of it.
But when shark movies are bad, oh boy, are they bad.
‘Sharknado’, ‘Great White’, ‘Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus’, ‘Jurassic Shark’…
Actually, y’know what? That’s not really fair - ‘Sharknado’ is quite a laugh. It knows it’s ridiculous, which is always a plus. The sharks roar, there’s the line “we’re gonna need a bigger chopper” and enough gore splatter to keep most people happy. You also get John Heard, Dolphin Lungren and even Bo Derek (following on from her appearance all those years ago in Orca) pop up and it plays a bit like a zombie survivalist movie. And of course the best gag of all is the owner of the bar is called Fin Shepherd.
So ok then, ‘Sharknado’ isn’t totally dreadful (we’re ignoring the sequels, as we’d be here all day) but what about ‘Great White’?
Basic premise is that some faceless young folk head to a place called ‘Hell’s Reef’ (would you go? I mean really?) and they find the remains of a body on the beach and then off they go on the seaplane looking for possible survivors from a yacht. The pilot’s an Aussie (Charlie BRODY, no less) who has recurring nightmares about a shark attack (which kind of reminded me of Ted Striker’s flashbacks in Airplane, making it even more unintentionally amusing) and then wouldn’t you know it, they end up crashing! Oops.
Then, not one but two Great Whites appear. It’s all very predictable and when I watched it, it was pretty easy to work out the main reason it felt so bad. You’re not given characters you really care about. Tim Kano as Minase is meant to be arrogant but he suddenly freaks out (I mean really freaks out) and gets into a fight with Benny - played by Te Koha Tuhaka - and poor Benny goes over the side of the life raft.
The sharks are mostly real life footage and a few animatronic fins which are ok but when the footage gets spliced into frame it looks pretty shoddy - especially one where it jumps out of the water. The one redeeming feature is that its the women who band together at the end and *SPOILER ALERT* it finishes with a JAWS-like final scene on the beach.
But as a fan of actual stories and movies, this just…isn’t one. It’s trying to be serious but it fails because seemingly the only thought process was ‘let’s make a movie about a shark and it eats people in a boat’ and…THAT’S IT.
‘Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus’
Staring Debbie Gibson - yes, her of brief 80s pop music superstardom - here with Lorenzo Lamas supporting. Lamas is maybe most famous for 80s soap opera ‘Falcon Crest’ where his character was the brilliantly named Lance Cumson… Sadly, in Mega Shark there’s no such fun. He’s just dull old Allan Baxter (the 80s had a lot more fun naming characters). The movie is a retread of Godzilla with giant animals who were frozen under the sea when they were in the middle of a fight and then wake up and start fighting each other again. And people look on and scream a lot. The trailer nearly broke the internet when it first came out but the movie is so bad it starts to hurt after a while. There are ham-fisted nods to the USS Indianapolis speech when a character talks about ‘its eyes’ and the effects don’t help.
The octopus wraps its tentacles round things and the shark chomps stuff and then there’s submarines and warships and it looks like it was filmed in someone’s bath. But then, it’s a B movie and its not serious so what do we really expect?
Yes, it is bad. It is very bad indeed. But it’s not the worst thing in the world.
Maybe that honour could be levelled at ‘Jurassic Shark’.
Not content with riffing on one Spielberg movie, this desperate exercise in sucking out your soul goes for both barrels (and they’re not even yellow). Its another ‘oh no, look what we did, we unleashed a monster from millions of years ago’ type deal. The effects are, once again, nowhere near special, the acting is horrible and really I only lasted 15 minutes and then I started fast forwarding.
So ok, we could keep listing more of these God-awful things but there’s a through line in all of them.
And its a simple one.
These are not real movies.
There, I said it. They’re not even very good B pictures, they more like a bunch of scenes cobbled together and hung on a gossamer thin idea.
JAWS was a melodrama inside a thriller, a Vietnam War parable and a horror film that had true originality, a genius score and some real top acting talent.
Shark movies have turned from story telling into cheap-looking disposable direct to video dross. It’s become totally acceptable to make them to be discarded as soon as you’ve dragged yourself to the end credits. Sadly, this could be said of quite a lot of movies these days. There are good ones out there, but are they worthy of subsequent viewings? In a world where we can binge watch an entire series of programmes, do we really take our time to appreciate them? And doesn’t this affect how we view art in general? We find ourselves craving the next thing - no matter the quality. It feels like eating cheap sugary snacks. You just keep wanting more and more but you never feel full.
The Star Wars saga is another case in point and as A New Hope came out two years after JAWS, breaking the record for biggest movie of all time, it’s a fair comparison.
Steven Spielberg’s letter congratulating George Lucas on Star Wars beating Jaws at the box office
The original trilogy swept away everything in its path, then came the prequels.
Episodes 1,2 & 3 looked like a rushed job with effects and dialogue that was not up to scratch. They felt like cash-ins for a market that thought they just wanted a bit of Star Wars - any bit of Star Wars.
How wrong they were.
Shark movies are like that.
You had the granddaddy of them all in 1975 and then after that they just piled on the artificial sweeteners, the additives and E numbers and said ‘HEY LOOK AT THIS! IT’S GOT A BIG SHARK IN IT AND PEOPLE GET EATEN AND YOU’LL LOVE IT CUZ YOU LOVED JAWS AND THIS IS JUST AS GOOD!’ But it never, ever is.
For me, JAWS 2 just about scrapes a pass but by the time of JAWS 3D, shark movies had transformed into mush. They were exploitation flicks just milking the basic idea dry.
My least favourite of this shoddy lot though has to be The Meg.
But it was a big movie, it had The Stathe in it and some JAWS nods. It was ok, wasn’t it?
No. It wasn’t.
It was just more of the same. But with a massive budget.
Scientists go poking around too far down in the sea and upset Mother Nature. Suddenly there’s a really stupidly big shark swimming about.
And then…THERE’S TWO OF THEM!
OK, so I like the bit with the bite marks on the glass, that was pretty good and you can just see the shark and its quite creepy but all the bits with The Stathe swimming next to it and then spearing it. Or the dog and the kid on the inflatable? Oh dear.
All that money, all those resources and time what do we get at the end of it all?
Look, I might sound down on all modern movies (shark movies in particular) but I’m not. Like I said, I think ‘The Shallows’ and ‘47 Metres Down’ were really good and at times innovative pieces of work. But this desire to accept the motion picture equivalent of junk food as the norm, is a worrying trend. Great ‘popcorn’ movies are a joy. When you get a proper big adventure with great acting, a brilliant score, properly crafted story and tension, then you’re there for the duration. You invest in the thing. It’s not just a time-filler until you go do something else. Movies should be more than that.
They are art.
But somewhere along the way, a lot of people seem to have forgotten about that. Do we really not want substance anymore?
It just makes you realise how brilliant JAWS was (and still is) and you keep asking yourself why they now keep churning out this dribble.
Shark movies have got worse because the public have allowed them to. We accept second rate entertainment in all forms because we’ve been shown that there’s always something else for us to watch. Somewhere out there, there’s always another person making the next thing. And the next thing. And the next. It’s like cheap, fast fashion. We buy it and wear it and then wash it once and you realise its a piece of crap. So you chuck it out. Then go buy something else. And the cycle repeats itself forever.
So what’s the solution? Who knows? Maybe don’t watch such terrible cash-in movies? Or if you really want quality, just watch JAWS again.
Words by Tim Armitage
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