Jaws (1975): Favourite Films Series

Jaws (1975): Favourite Films Series

After you saw that single-word title, the second your brain comprehended those four letters, I know for a fact you thought about the infamous music or a great white shark rising from the dark depths of the sea, or both simultaneously. 

That’s the power Jaws has. Just the mere mention of the title triggers very specific thoughts (one of the most-famous pieces of movie music, one of the most-terrifying movie monsters) and equally specific emotions (undeniable feelings of terror, excitement, and maybe even joy).

It’s tough to find anything new to say about Jaws. I’ve seen it every summer for the past eight years, and many more times before that. Every time I watch it, a new aspect of the movie stands out, whether it’s the brilliant and often subtle acting from Roy Scheider or Richard Dreyfuss or Robert Shaw, or a specific shot, or sound/music queue, or joke (I find it interesting how it’s remembered as being terrifying, yet no one seems to remember that, while indeed terrifying, it’s also purposefully funny and filled with witty dialogue). There are endless things to love about it. 

Jaws isn’t a complicated movie with multiple interpretations or anything like that, it’s pretty straight-forward, but it isn’t just a by-the-numbers horror movie or creature feature, either. It transcends those genre trappings. For some reason, the horror genre often gets looked down on as a lower form of entertainment, but somehow, Steven Spielberg can make horror movies that appeal to mass audiences, as well as satisfy genre fans. The three main examples of this are War of the Worlds (2005), Jurassic Park (1993), and, the one that started it all, Jaws. In fact, Jaws started a lot of things. 

For one thing, it’s considered the prototype of the modern-day “blockbuster”, even though the original Star Wars is closer to what the atypical blockbuster of today looks like, but Jaws was the first. It had a simple premise, mass appeal, and everyone went out to the cinema to see it. That happens all the time nowadays, but back then, this was the first time it happened on such a huge scale.  

I think the reason Jaws appealed to so many people when it was released over forty years ago (and continues to appeal to new viewers) is it combines a few different genres—it isn’t just pure horror. Horror evolved to new extremes in the 70’s, with films like Black Christmas and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (both in 1974), but the most horrific and game-changing was 1973’s The Exorcist, still considered a benchmark for the horror genre as a whole. 

Though Jaws was marketed as a “scary movie”, and opens with the infamous scene of Chrissy Watkins taking a dip in the sea at night and being killed, it isn’t purely about horror. The first half of the movie is like a mystery-thriller, with Chief Brody and Matt Hooper trying to figure out their killer’s modus operandi. In a way, Jaws is also like a slasher movie: it’s about a killer with a body count, we frequently get the killer’s POV, and it terrorizes a specific group of people (in this case, swimmers). The future slasher sub-genre owed a great deal to Jaws. 

When the shark almost eats one of Brody’s kids, that’s the turning point of the movie (always indicated, for me, by that haunting shot of the ocean where the camera moves in between the pilings toward the horizon), when they decide to team up with shark fisherman Quint and hunt down the great white. At that point, it becomes less a combo of horror and mystery and more like an adventure movie (still with horror entwined), with the three of them traversing the sea, pursuing (and being pursued by) the shark, and that adventurous feel is in no small part thanks to the music by John Williams. 

It would be an injustice not to talk about the music. In the lexicon of iconic movie scores, it’s not even a bold statement to say that the Jaws theme is the most-iconic piece of movie music ever created. It is so simple and so effective, it has taken on a life of its own. It reminds me of the similarly simple-yet-effective shrieking strings in Psycho. Just like in that movie, the music works to enhance the scary moments, and signals the arrival of the killer. But beyond the two-notes known universally as “the music from Jaws”, the actual other pieces of music are every bit as great. I love the part when they finally get a barrel into the shark and it becomes gleeful—almost whimsical—as they follow the barrel along the surface, before it disappears into the depths and the music returns to a slower, uncertain, worrying sound.

Speaking of Psycho, it has often been cited by critics and Spielberg himself, how Jaws is like an Alfred Hitchcock film, and that’s another reason it transcends just being a monster movie. Instead of relying on the shark being the centerpiece of the movie and showing its gruesome kills in full bloody glory, Spielberg focused on the characters, and was more creative about what the audience could or couldn’t see. 

Not everyone realizes that Jaws was supposed to turn out completely differently than it did. Spielberg wanted to show the shark as much as he could, but when the mechanical shark wouldn’t work, he had to improvise, so as a result, the shark wasn’t shown as much. In the hands of another director, I’m sure the movie wouldn’t have turned out nearly as interesting or tension-filled. Even though the shark isn’t on-screen all that much, you feel its presence—lurking, waiting to strike—and then when it does strike, it’s even more effective.  

I have but one criticism of Jaws, and it’s not anything that could’ve been avoided or fixed. Jaws made an entire generation afraid to go in the water, which is an amazing feat, but unfortunately, it also made sharks out to be the ultimate villains (a species that, back then, was still highly mysterious and not well understood). Sharks are real, they really are out in the ocean, right now, and they are the dominant predators when we go into their environment. Maybe that’s why Jaws is often called the scariest movie ever, even over The Exorcist. Theoretically, you really could be killed by a shark.

Jaws did not depict a true-life great white shark, but rather a movie monster version of one. Most audiences didn’t comprehend the difference. They saw it as a true animal, and as a result, sharks became even more misunderstood, and their populations suffered. Suddenly everyone wanted to see sharks killed. But I suppose on the flipside of this, the misunderstanding Jaws created about sharks also spawned one of the best ongoing TV events ever: Shark Week.

I don’t think Shark Week would've existed without Jaws. Shark Week has been running every summer on Discovery Channel since 1988, and has served to expand our knowledge of these incredible animals, as well as depict them in their natural habitat and show what they are really like. Sure, some years have been more lackluster than others and focused on sensationalized shark specials instead of proper science, but for the most part, the series has done a world of good for these animals, and righted some of the wrongs Jaws brought about all the way back in 1975.

But regardless of the shark’s depiction, Jaws is still a great movie. In fact, I’d say it is damn-near perfect. There isn’t a thing I would change about it. I don’t care if you think the shark looks fake by today’s standards. Just like the title of the comprehensive documentary on the making of Jaws (which I highly recommend to any fans), I think the shark is still working—and working alongside it, more importantly, is the one-of-a-kind cast and masterclass filmmaker. Jaws is still making people afraid to go in the water, and that alone says something about the impact is has had—and will continue to have, for generations to come.