45 years since Jaws (1975)

Dun dun. Dun dun. Dundundundundun--

Yep, 45 years ago, Steven Spielberg launched himself fully onto the scene with the film that changed Hollywood forever. And who'd have thunk that it was an adaptation of a mediocre book, with a production plagued with issues, a shark that barely worked in a shark movie, bickering between the stars, and a director who had largely been working on random TV instalments? Well, somehow, it worked. Yup, all the more reason not to go to the beaches--it's Jaws.

It's one of those films where the all the parts fit together despite each other--with some exceptions. The book, which Spielberg picked up by chance, is generally considered...not as good as its adaptation, with the common refrain being that most readers cheered for the shark. Still--consider that Spielberg had already whetted his directorial talent for man hunted by monster premises with his feature debut Duel, in 1971. Despite being made for TV, that film is certainly a fine showcase for his early talent, with constantly escalating tension enhanced to deliciously nerve-tensing degrees by high-speed shots along the road, telling the story of a driver hounded by a relentless mysterious truck driver. With that in mind, we can see the beginning of what made Jaws what it was.

You've probably at least heard of some of the stories of the film's production. Spielberg took the production to the ocean, which for films at the time was nearly unprecedented (most flicks would prefer just to basically film in a studio-placed swimming pool). This yielded all the problems you can imagine, including, infamously, a shark animatronic that wouldn't work. Spielberg was forced to shoot around that, focusing more on tension and threat of its unseen presence, but he still had to contend with stars Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw having their egos clash (kinda like their characters ironically). It got to the point where Steve legitimately feared the crew would throw him into the sea for the briny hell the shoot had become.

But of course, when you go through hell for a film, you gotta want to make it all the more worthwhile, or you might as well pack up and go home. And it shows--all the little things that make it iconic, be it the John Williams theme (that Spielberg, upon first hearing a piano version, thought was a joke), or the little interactions between the characters that range from a can-crushing contest to them imitating each other on deck, shine all the more through. We've got the story of Amity Island, being plagued by a toothy shark that evidently thinks New Englanders are finely spiced. It's down to our hero Chief Brody (Rob Scheider), alongside young researcher Hooper (Dreyfuss) and cantankerous WW2 vet become fish hunter Quint (Shaw), to serve this monster up with white wine.

It's surprisingly bloody for what you might expect from a summer movie of the time, like a child even vanishing into a burst of blood, or Quint's death. More modern blockbusters, like more recent shark extravaganza 'The Meg, come off as positively tame in comparison. Even the shark itself looks better than jokes suggest--perhaps precisely because of the onslaught of eighty billion crappy knockoffs, but we'll get to that.

And, of course, there's the classic slimy mayor who refuses to close the beaches even despite the looming threat. Of course, it's utterly inconceivable politicians would ever be so short-sighted when it comes to the public safety vis the economy in real life, right?

Still, it's a finely paced, finely directed, finely performed, and overall classic ride, down to the cheer-inducing moment where Brody tells that son of a bitch to smile. I must admit, I didn't watch this one until relatively later, in a theatrical double bill with Jurassic Park. And from that, I can tell you that this one entertains now just as much as it did in 1975--its record-breaking box office takings kicked off modern Hollywood as we know it, for better and for worse. Audiences in the seventies were going through a rough malaise, and they needed something awesome to get them through it--so, something like this had fill that need sooner or later.

The film's more direct legacy...is mixed. First, we got the stupid shitty sequels, each becoming progressively dumber from the redundant second one, to the third one in 3D, to the fourth, where they just gave up and had some crap about the shark being a voodoo curse. And...well, the elephant in the room is the unfortunate effect this one might've had on shark hunting. Of course, most of the attitudes to sharks expounded within were typical of the time, and the science didn't move on til later--but the author of the book did feel guilty enough that he started a conservation effort.

And, of course, since then, we've had through the decades onslaughts of even more stupid shitty shark movies! Millions of them! Did you like Sharknado? Worry not, for there's like twenty now! You want Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus? SyFy or Roger Corman or whoever are happy to provide more nonsense like that, be it Shark Scorpion vs Shark Shark, or Attack of the Sharkfucker, or Shark Shark Sharkity Shark! It's telling that 45 years since, the only two other shark movies I can consciously recommend are The Shallows, and Deep Blue Sea. And even the latter is basically a B-movie made awesome by performances from the likes of Sam Jackson and LL Cool J.

There were of course an equal deluge of other killer animal films, like Anaconda, or Alligator, and all sorts of schlock. Spielberg of course showed how it's done once more with Jurassic Park--another toothy creature feature that by coincidence, likewise had a massive impact on the film industry. He has a habit of that, doesn't he?

But yeah. Jaws is still great, even if with all the crap that followed in its wake, it might as well have had 19 ever dumber sequels. It's worth a watch just to see the exact origin point of Hollywood blockbusters as we know them, which continued with Star Wars, and shaped pop culture incalculably. Spielberg's of course had his flops, but as a young director, he persevered through the watery nightmare it took to make this film, and for that alone, the end product deserves its respect.