Why Steven Spielberg will never replace JAWS shark with CGI

First off, let's start this off by saying that the shark in JAWS - when seen during its four minutes screen time - still looks amazing and remains an impressive mechanical animatronic.

Bruce the shark still delivers, whether it is the pure nightmare fuel of the Estuary victim attack, Brody's first encounter with the great white whilst he is busy chumming - especially that shot as it gnashes towards camera - the giant shark gliding past Brody, Hooper and Quint on the Orca or the giant fish launching itself onto the Ora as it takes Quint to his watery grave legs first.

Matt Hooper himself had previously spoken about how he felt the JAWS shark could do with updating and being replaced by CGI, saying: “They should put the money in to CGI [to replace] that beast and make it come alive.

“Is that blasphemy? No, no, I don’t think so. The technology now could make the shark look as good as the rest of the movie.

“I think they should do it, it would be huge and it would open up the film to younger people.”

We'd also seen impressive footage from JAWS the Revenge (1987) where the mechanical shark got a CGI upgrade by Steve Clarke and his team at CKVfx.

Spielberg heralded the CGI boom, with his still rarely bettered and still really impressive mix of practical effects and CGI in Jurassic Park, and he was good friends with George Lucas, who had already given his original Star Wars trilogy a cosmetic makeover. So, it made a lot of sense that it could happen.

And, to quote Harry Meadows from JAWS, it’s happened before. Back in 2002 Spielberg took the decision to alter a scene in E.T. - the Extra Terrestrial when the bikes take off on their flight.

In the original they flew over the FBI and their cars, with the agents brandishing guns, these were replaced with them holding walkie talkies instead.

But now, the Oscar winning director has admitted that change was wrong and won't be making any such alterations to any of his past catalogue, which in our book means JAWS will remain untouched. 

At the Time100 Summit in New York, Spielberg addressed his past meddling and said: "That was a mistake. I never should have done that. E.T. is a product of its era. No film should be revised based on the lenses we now are, either voluntarily, or being forced to peer through.

"I should have never messed with the archives of my own work…All our movies are a kind of a signpost of where we were when we made them, what the world was like and what the world was receiving when we got those stories out there. So, I really regret having that out there."

Of course, he has had re-releases of Jurassic Park and JAWS in 3D, with the latter also in IMAX, but the shark has and will remain unchanged, so we can be safe in the knowledge that Bruce will remain almighty and will continue swimming off the waters of Amity Island and into the hearts of future JAWS fans forever.

Words by Dean Newman

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