Jaws 2 (1978) Review

Jaws 2 (1978) Review

Jaws is one of the best movies ever made, no question, but what about the sequels? I rarely think of Jaws as a franchise, because the sequels are leagues below the original in nearly every regard. To me, the sequels are an unofficial three-part narrative—the Jaws sequel trilogy, if you will—because all of them try to forge an ongoing storyline for a film that was too perfect to try following up in the first place. Jaws was a film that ended with such finality it left seemingly few options to further the story in a way that wasn’t lame. Each sequel tried to be bigger and better than the original, but it only proved more impossible to accomplish with every subsequent attempt. 

Jaws 2 is not actually that bad. In comparison to the original, it’s much less thrilling and much more of a typical B-movie, but I think it gets misremembered as being worse than it is because of how bad the third and fourth are. Chief Brody suspects another great white is terrorizing Amity Island, but no one believes him. The paranoia Chief Brody experiences is compelling, and Roy Schieder gives another great performance. A major highlight of the movie that happens pretty early on is when the shark eats a water skier, then attacks the boat she was skiing behind, resulting in the boat exploding in a great fire ball, which leaves the shark with a burnt face, looking comically monstrous. 

Many of the actors from the first Jaws returned, including some small parts like Bad Hat Harry. Another welcome return was John Williams doing the score. He won an Academy Award for his work on the original film, but delivered another great score that not only brings back the famous “Dun Dun…” but plenty of new tracks that are just as good as you would expect. And of course, because the shark was such a star in the first movie, we see even more of it here, though its screen time is still relatively limited. Another moment I love is when Brody discovers a dead killer whale on the beach: a victim of the new shark. In the first movie, the shark took down the Orca boat, and this time, it takes down an actual Orca. 

While I like the stuff with Brody, the rest of the plot follows his kids, now more grown up, and a bunch of other annoying teens, the worst of which is this chubby curly-haired kid. The second half of the movie mostly focuses on the kids getting stranded in their sailboats and needing rescue from the shark, and it feels like the conventional horror film Spielberg managed to avoid making with the first one. The finale tries to switch things up by having the shark die from biting into an underwater power line. It’s not nearly as satisfying as the original’s ending, but at least they tried, and that’s the most I can say about the whole movie, really. They were never going to top the original, but it was an honest effort.  

With the exception of the water skiing attack and the finale, there aren’t that many memorable scenes with the shark, and whereas Spielberg knew how often to invoke the shark’s presence, there are longer stretches without any shark sightings, which makes the movie drag, and when you do see it, it’s less impactful. Ultimately, though, Jaws 2 is one of those sequels that tries to copy the original, and as a result, is a lot like the first Jaws, only not as good.