The "Jaws" Franchise

[StevePulaski]

Jaws (1975)
Directed by: Steven Spielberg

Townspeople try to combat a man-eating shark in Jaws.

Rating: ★★★★

NOTE: Part of my ongoing "Film Studies" movie-watching event...

To me, Steven Spielberg's Jaws is such a masterpiece because it was destined to be a disaster. Everything that occurred during the production of the film should've led to its immediate demise and a status nothing shy of the typical seventies "B-movie." The film went over budget by $5 million, had three mechanical sharks on set, all of whom failed in some sort of way, and had to extend its shooting schedule by well-over a month.

These three things alone should've signified that Jaws had a fate similar to many B-movies of the time. The slasher craze was just a few years after the release of this film, so it wouldn't be hard to find films that came and went from the time. But because Jaws was blessed with a gifted director, an incomparably talented editor, and a brilliant person scoring the film, all of whom took the project seriously, is why we have the masterpiece on film we have today.

The film possesses a simple plot; a large, man-eating great white shark stalks and finds victims off the shore of the fictional island Amity Island. The characters who reside on Amity island all have different ideas about combatting the enormous shark. Police chief Martin Brody (Roy Schneider) believes that the beaches should be closed after a man falls prey to the beast, but Mayor Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) doesn't want the summer tourist revenue to slump in the wake of some stupid shark. The first hour shows contrasting viewpoints about what to do in the wake of this madness, where the second hour shows Brody, shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw), and marine biologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) take matters into their own hands after the shark has attacked numerous others.

This story is totally fit for a no-budget horror film that would've been disposed of in the minds of many upon seeing it. But what exactly has made Jaws live on and become a classic in American cinema? My immediate thoughts would be thanks to the master editing by Verna Fields and beautiful music composition by John Williams. When you take a film like Jaws that had budget and prop issues, editing together a viable production, much less a good one, is an immeasurable challenge of incomparable proportions.

Fields took the challenge and ran with it, completely defying any expectations put in place by the cast and crew and, in turn, created a legendary horror film composed of amazing sequences of suspense and danger. The only thing that could further assist the beautiful job done by Fields would be John Williams' thrilling score that only emphasizes the suspenseful aspects of the picture. Jaws wouldn't be half the film it was today if it didn't have two key aspects of its behind the scenes production who clearly took the project as seriously as Spielberg did.

Finally, there's Spielberg, who has since directed a wide range of films with grandscale effects and stories, along with actors who only emphasize the material at hand. One thing that has been consistently strong about Spielberg's work is his use of camerawork, and Jaws is no stranger to his splendid professionalism. Key components such as extensive long shots and underwater cinematography are utilized to breathtaking perfection, establishing not only environment but uncertainty and imminent danger lurking beneath the surface. The only scarier thing than seeing a shark is not being able to see it.

Jaws seems to be the film that woke American audiences up to the importance and the power that editing and aesthetics can have in large film productions. Many audiences today are still shaken by the thought of sharks and I would guess a large part of that is due to the prominence and legacy Jaws had on mainstream audiences. The film is a classic example of the significance production elements have on the end product of a film, and how frighteningly underappreciated they can be.

Starring: Roy Schneider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gray, and Murray Hamilton. Directed by: Steven Spielberg.

[StevePulaski]

Jaws 2 (1978)
Directed by: Steven Spielberg

Another great white rears its ugly head in Jaws 2.

Rating: ★★½

The biggest problem with Jaws 2 is it ain't no Jaws, and it feels like writer Carl Gottlieb and Howard Sackler wrote the film with the original's screenplay sitting right next to it. The film has some seriously suspenseful sequences, a handful of decent location shots, but doesn't have that "come from behind" vibe its predecessor had the benefit of. The feeling of watching a great film that was plagued by problem after problem is traded for a film that feels like mediocrity and money were the prime goals from the start.

What made Steven Spielberg's Jaws such a surprising and terrific motion picture was that, despite numerous production problems including going grossly over-budget and having three mechanical-shark failures on set during shooting, it had several people that took the project seriously and made it a truly captivating picture. They were director Spielberg, editor Verna Fields, and music-composer John Williams. Those three, along with the gifted cast of characters, made the film what it is today and are to thank for its mark on classic cinema.

The only soul to reprise his role from the original film is Roy Scheider as police chief Martin Brody, who must now deal with another great white shark terrorizing Amity Island. As in the first film, the entire town is panicked, the backbones such as the village, the managers, and the police of unsure how to respond, and Brody continues to not be believed by his peers about the dangers of the shark even though it's common knowledge that he battled one before. You'd think that the people would consider that Brody has been through this and has a viable idea about how this sort of thing works.

Immediately, we have a conflict that feels stretched and rather perfunctory. Perhaps the film doesn't work as well because it has very, very few people from its predecessor on board with it. Only Scheider, Williams, and writer Carl Gottlieb return, but you can see it's a challenge for them to try and liven material that was exercised to capacity in a film just a few years ago.

Thankfully, there is suspense present, but the use of it, along with the editing, is gratefully inferior to the original film. Consider the scene where a woman is on a boat and her friend is several feet away from the boat and a shark fin appears out of the water. It now becomes an unintentional race to the boat between the shark and the man and director Jeannot Szwarc keeps the focus on this scene for maybe thirty, forty seconds. This is easily one of the strongest scenes in the film, but like every good scene in the film, I can't help but wonder how Spielberg and Fields would've conducted it and what tactics they would've employed. To add fuel to the fire, it has been reported that Scheider and Szwarc had numerous on set disputes about creativity in the project, only leading for one to assume that, doing this before, he knew that Spielberg had the talent and ingredients to make the project work.

The final element to mention in Jaws 2 is the shark. It is a known fact that the original film was plagued by difficulties with mechanical sharks, with having all three on set fail in some way or another. But Jaws 2's problem is the sharks look inherently fake and I can't find any information that says the crew had difficulty in getting the sharks to work and function fluently. What does this say about the capability of the crew on Jaws 2 compared with the crew of the original Jaws film?

Starring: Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary, and Murray Hamilton. Directed by: Jeannot Szwarc.

[StevePulaski]

Jaws 3 (1983)
Directed by: Joe Alves

The original advertisement for Jaws 3, showcasing its 3D.

Rating: ★½

It's the early 1980's. Horror cinema is beginning to see a new light, in particular, the slasher film movement, where iconic franchises such as Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween are being born. According to the documentary Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, every studio, big or small, was pressing their luck on the silver screen when it came to slasher films. They were a huge attraction for young teens who needed a good scare on a Friday night. Consequently, many random slasher films came out (IE: April Fools Day Happy Birthday to Me) and many sequels to other horror films came out.

This is where Jaws 3 comes in. I only make note about slashers because Jaws 3, in particular, reminds me more of a slasher film than anything else. For one, its pacing is reminiscent of one of the early Friday the 13th films in terms of being very slow (only this time, it doesn't amount to anything remotely frightening), and, to compare it to Friday the 13t: Part 3 - the infamous 3D chapter of the series - it's one gigantic gimmick to showcase its 3D effects. So what happens when you take away that gimmick, like when Jaws 3 was down-converted in the process of its home video release? At the time, VHS and Betamax, the two formats during the film's release, couldn't manage 3D capability, so as a result, the medium that made Jaws 3 different from many horror films was suddenly taken away and what was left was nothing but a bland, interchangeable affair, with poor special effects, little pacing, and the power to be forgotten hours after being viewed.

The story, for the first time, takes place away from Amity Island and is now at SeaWorld, where underwater tunnels are being constructed for a new exhibit. Employees, including marine biologist Kay Morgan (Bess Armstrong) and Michael Brody (Dennis Quaid), discover that a baby shark has slipped through one of the underwater tunnels and may be responsible for several disappearances in the park. Upon being captured, more still disappear, and it becomes clear the real killer was the mother great white shark and not her offspring. This sends the SeaWorld staff into a panicking frenzy, unsure of what exactly to do about their shark problem.

The one common criticism I have for all of the Jaws sequels is their slowness in progression. In the first film, the shark didn't appear until roughly the hour mark, giving us time to acquaint ourselves with the staff of the beach, the area of Amity Island, and be smitten with Spielberg's clear direction and Verna Fields' priceless editing. In the sequels, the time between the opening credits and the first time we saw the shark is nothing but bloated filler; the film giving us an illusion that it has characters to care about, places to go, suspense to have us experience, and tension in its scenes. They have nothing. Even when they look like they do, they still flounder under the emptiness of their own screenplays. The times the shark wasn't on screen, I wanted to see one. The times they came on screen, I simply wanted the film to end.

Jaws 3's most fascinating feature, however, is not its inclusion of 3D, or its release history. It's that the man credited for the story is a man by the name of "Guerdon Trueblood."

Starring: Dennis Quaid and Bess Armstrong. Directed by: Joe Alves.

[StevePulaski]

Jaws: The Revenge (1987)
Directed by: Joseph Sargent

Rating: ★

The tagline for Jaws: The Revenge states, "this time it's personal." Really? I thought it was already personal after the second Jaws film was made and another shark attacked poor Amity Island again. If Jaws: The Revenge should be seen as anything personal it should be viewed as a personal attack - better yet, an assault - on a tremendous horror film that capitalized off of suspense and editing.

I should've reviewed Jaws: The Revenge three weeks ago, but I've been putting it off because I've needed to review other films since then. And also, what can be said about Jaws: The Revenge that hasn't already been reiterated and restated time and time again? The film is a dreary slog that consists of waiting for suspense and atmosphere to build, waiting for the shark to appear, being disgusted when the shark finally does appear, and then finally being greeted with the end credits, concluding the mess we just witnessed. If you still want to classify the film as a horror film, even though I'd argue the series thrust its way into the action genre after the second film, then this is one of the worst, most redundant horror films I have yet to see.

The film stars Ellen Brody (Lorraine Gary), whose husband Martin from previous films has died of a heart attack, which is believed to be brought on from the stress of dealing with sharks in Amity Island. Ellen now lives with her son Sean (Mitchell Anderson), who is sheriff deputy, and his fiancée Tiffany (Mary Smith). Despite normality seemingly coming back for the gang, Ellen is convinced she is being followed by a great white shark when she vacations to the Bahamas to visit her eldest son Michael (Lance Guest). Now it's a matter of killing another shark before the shark can kill them.

It's no wonder Steven Spielberg had no interest in pursuing a sequel to his original Jaws film and had no involvement with any of the three sequels. I imagine he recognized that a "man vs. shark" is only really fresh the first time around and that doing the same thing film after film would begin to become monotonous and painfully familiar. Even if Jaws: The Revenge wasn't plagued with such lame acting, terrible effects work, and collectively sterile camerawork, it would be hard to convince us that a fourth movie about a group of people going after another shark would be something worth paying to see.

I recall when I watched Jaws 3 and got so tired with the characters and the plot that I just wanted to see a shark attack. Then I saw how painfully cheap and ridiculous the shark looked and kind of wanted more exposition. Then when I received more exposition I kind of just wanted the entire thing to end. The film was a muchness. Jaws: The Revenge suffers from the same form of monotony. One is constantly waiting for something to happen, then upon being rewarded, they wish they had never seen such a thing. For the purists who complain that the shark was clearly artificial in the original Jaws, I'd love to see how they responded to the shark in Jaws: The Revenge. I doubt there's enough howling in the world that could do justice to its artificiality and stunning banality.

Thus concludes the Jaws franchise for now, thankfully. This is one of the few franchises I know of (next to the contemporary Paranormal Activity series) that failed to have another "good" film after its first film, which, in both series' cases, was phenomenal. One should take the hint how in conversations about the original Jaws, rarely do the sequel names come up, and by God is that for the better.

Starring: Lorraine Gray, Mitchell Anderson, Mary Smith, and Lance Guest. Directed by: Joseph Sargent.