The acting became crucial for making audiences believe in such a big shark: "The more fake the shark looked in the water, the more my anxiety told me to heighten the naturalism of the performances. But when Greg leaned over into the water to look, The shark leaped up and ate his head. [98] Peter Biskind argues that the film does maintain post-Watergate cynicism concerning politics and politicians insofar as the sole villain beside the shark is the town's venal mayor. [234] Another, final VHS release, marking the film's 25th anniversary in 2000, came with a companion tape containing a documentary, deleted scenes, outtakes, and a trailer. The second half is both a buddy film in the interaction between the crew of the Orca, and a supernatural horror based on the shark's depiction of a nearly Satanic menace. The 26-year-old had just directed his first theatrical film, The Sugarland Express, for Zanuck and Brown. [33] Shaw was reluctant to take the role since he did not like the book, but decided to accept at the urging of both his wife, actress Mary Ure, and his secretary—"The last time they were that enthusiastic was From Russia with Love. Without warning, it appears behind the boat. [22] It has since become a tradition for Spielberg to be absent when the final scene of one of his films is being shot. While treading water, she is violently pulled under. 20 June 1975. [257] Jaws: The Revenge (1987), directed by Joseph Sargent and starring Michael Caine and Lorraine Gary returning as Ellen Brody, is considered one of the worst movies ever made.

He drops it in fright after encountering the partial corpse of local fisherman Ben Gardner.

[256] Starring Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr., it was released to heavily negative reviews in 3D format. )[126][127] Universal president Sid Sheinberg reasoned that nationwide marketing costs would be amortized at a more favorable rate per print relative to a slow, scaled release. [39], —actor Richard Dreyfuss on the film's troubled production[41], Principal photography began May 2, 1974,[42] on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, selected after consideration was given to eastern Long Island.

[132][133], Jaws opened in 409 theatres with a record $7 million weekend[134] and grossed a record $21,116,354 in its first 10 days[135] recouping its production costs.

From the first water test onward, the "non-absorbent" neoprene foam that made up the sharks' skin soaked up liquid, causing the sharks to balloon, and the sea-sled model frequently got entangled among forests of seaweed.

However, the scene from Moby-Dick could not be licensed from the film's star, Gregory Peck, its copyright holder. [84] A direct reference to these similarities may be found in Spielberg's draft of the screenplay, which introduces Quint watching the film version of Moby-Dick; his continuous laughter prompts other audience members to get up and leave the theater. Distributors would then slowly forward prints to additional locales across the country, capitalizing on any positive critical or audience response. "[115] The Ideal Toy Company, for instance, produced a game in which the player had to use a hook to fish out items from the shark's mouth before the jaws closed. [157][158] In the United Kingdom, 23 million people watched its inaugural broadcast in October 1981, the second-biggest TV audience ever for a feature film behind Live and Let Die. Hooper, meanwhile, is "associated with technology rather than experience, inherited wealth rather than self-made sufficiency"; he is marginalized from the conclusive action, if less terminally than Quint.

Everyone is okay and try to swim back. [116], The glowing audience response to a rough cut of the film at two test screenings in Dallas on March 26, 1975, and one in Long Beach, on March 28, along with the success of Benchley's novel and the early stages of Universal's marketing campaign, generated great interest among theater owners, facilitating the studio's plan to debut Jaws at hundreds of cinemas simultaneously. [173] Spielberg greatly resented the fact that he was not nominated for Best Director. Universal ran the franchise into the ground in 1987 with JAWS the Revenge, which was a commercial and critical flop. [227], The first ever LaserDisc title marketed in North America was the MCA DiscoVision release of Jaws in 1978. [88] Scholars such as Thomas Schatz have described how Jaws melds various genres while essentially being an action film and a thriller. As the art department's mechanical sharks often malfunctioned, Spielberg decided to mostly suggest the shark's presence, employing an ominous and minimalist theme created by composer John Williams to indicate its impending appearances. [210] It is still seen as responsible for perpetuating negative stereotypes about sharks and their behavior,[211] and for producing the so-called "Jaws effect", which allegedly inspired "legions of fishermen [who] piled into boats and killed thousands of the ocean predators in shark-fishing tournaments. [71] Calling for rapid, percussive string playing, the score contains echoes of La mer by Claude Debussy as well of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.

[249] A mobile game was released in 2010 for the iPhone. [252] This table features 3-D figures of Quint and Jaws, with the opportunity to play missions from either character's perspective. While Brody lays down a chum line, Quint waits for an opportunity to hook the shark. He suggests that the experience of the film is "inconceivable" without the mass audience's jubilation when the shark is annihilated, signifying the obliteration of evil itself. His brother, Greg (Luke Benward) began crying and his friend Trevor (Slade Pearce) tried to comfort him. George (Nathan Gamble) wanted to help Jimmy and Jimmy gave him the stick that Billy used to nearly kill him. [83], Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is the most notable artistic antecedent to Jaws. [253] In October 1975, Spielberg declared to a film festival audience that "making a sequel to anything is just a cheap carny trick". We started the film without a script, without a cast and without a shark. Their construction involved a team of as many as 40 effects technicians, supervised by mechanical effects supervisor Bob Mattey, best known for creating the giant squid in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

[53] Disgruntled crew members gave the film the nickname "Flaws". "[103], Neal Gabler analyzed the film as showing three different approaches to solving an obstacle: science (represented by Hooper), spiritualism (represented by Quint), and the common man (represented by Brody).

[24] Gottlieb gives primary credit to Shaw, downplaying Milius's contribution.

While Johnson could not find an exact cause for the stress response in viewers, whether it be the suspense, the gore or the music production, a 1986 study by G. Sparks found that particularly violent films, including Jaws, tended to cause the most intense reactions in viewers. The shark suddenly leaped out of the water and devoured a little girl and everyone screamed and tried to evacuate, but several more party goers were devoured. [28] Lee Fierro plays Mrs. Kintner, the mother of the shark's second victim Alex Kintner (played by Jeffrey Voorhees). Canada. [223] The new DVD had many extras seen in previous home video releases, including the full two-hour Bouzereau documentary, and a previously unavailable interview with Spielberg conducted on the set of Jaws in 1974. [25][26], Though Spielberg complied with a request from Zanuck and Brown to cast known actors,[16] he wanted to avoid hiring any big stars. [138], The film entered overseas release in December 1975,[140] and its international business mirrored its domestic performance. [108] His study found that stress could be induced by cinema in segments of the general population, and Jaws specifically caused stress reactions in its viewers.

[7], To direct, Zanuck and Brown first considered veteran filmmaker John Sturges—whose résumé included another maritime adventure, The Old Man and the Sea—before offering the job to Dick Richards, whose directorial debut, The Culpepper Cattle Co. had come out the previous year. Greg and Trevor saw Everything that happened then they tried to find Her. "[40] In another interview, he similarly declared, "The shark not working was a godsend. [3][4] The producers each read the book over the course of a single night and agreed the next morning that it was "the most exciting thing that they had ever read" and that they wanted to produce a film version, although they were unsure how it would be accomplished. Billy (Nathan Kress) began yelling at Jenny because there was a shark in the water and they fought. [121][122] Still, the typical major studio film release at the time involved opening at a few big-city theaters, which allowed for a series of premieres. In the morning, Brody attempts to call the Coast Guard, but Quint, who has become obsessed with killing the shark without outside assistance, smashes the radio. The story of a great For example, for much of the shark hunt, its location is indicated by the floating yellow barrels. [21] Spielberg has claimed that he prepared his own draft, although it is unclear to what degree the other screenwriters drew on his material. [5] They purchased the film rights in 1973, before the book's publication, for approximately $175,000 (equivalent to $990,000 in 2018).

There had been some recent exceptions, including the rerelease of Billy Jack and the original release of its sequel The Trial of Billy Jack, the Dirty Harry sequel Magnum Force, and the latest installments in the James Bond series. The release was subsequently expanded on July 25 to a total of 675 theaters, the largest simultaneous distribution of a film in motion picture history at the time. Martha's Vineyard celebrated the film's 30th anniversary in 2005 with a "JawsFest" festival,[223] which had a second edition in 2012. [106] The symptoms first presented as sleep disturbances and anxiety, but one day later the patient was screaming "Sharks! [9] Columbo creators William Link and Richard Levinson also declined Spielberg's invitation. Moreover, Jaws whet corporate appetites for big profits quickly, which is to say, studios wanted every film to be Jaws. The medical examiner's ruling that the death was due to a shark attack leads police chief Martin Brody to close the beaches. Fields, who had completed a rough cut of the first two-thirds of the film, up until the shark hunt, finished the editing and reworked some of the material. [40] As a result of the casting, Hooper was rewritten to better suit the actor,[32] as well as to be more representative of Spielberg, who came to view Dreyfuss as his "alter ego". [79], Spielberg later said that without Williams's score the film would have been only half as successful, and according to Williams it jumpstarted his career. [189] In 2008, Jaws was ranked the fifth-greatest film in history by Empire magazine,[190] which also placed Quint at number 50 on its list of the 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.

"[169] Marcia Magill of Films in Review said that while Jaws "is eminently worth seeing for its second half", she felt that before the protagonists' pursuit of the shark the film was "often flawed by its busyness".

[164] For New Times magazine, Frank Rich wrote, "Spielberg is blessed with a talent that is absurdly absent from most American filmmakers these days: this man actually knows how to tell a story on screen. [255] Jaws 3-D (1983) does not feature any of the original actors, although it was directed by Joe Alves, who had served as art director and production designer, respectively, on the two preceding films.