"Jaws" Talkback (Spoilers)

[Lord Dalek]

I originally posted this back in 2007 as part of an attempt to do talkbacks for every Spielberg film ever made.

It is if God created the devil and gave him.... JAWS.



"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Martin Brody

Release Date: June 25, 1975
Studio: Universal
Director: Steven Spielberg
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1 (Panavision)
Starring: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton

Plot Summary: A Great White Shark decides to make the small beach resort town of Amity his private feeding grounds. This greatly frustrates the town police chief who wants to close the beaches to chase the shark away. He is thwarted in his efforts by the town's mayor who finally relents when nothing else seems to work and the chief, a scientist, and an old fisherman with revenge on his mind take to the sea to kill the beast.


COMMENTS?

As part of a masterplan to do a talkback for every Steven Spielberg film for which one does not exist, I will be making ones on and off through out the year. Now we come to the big one. Released in 1975, Jaws ushered in the age of the box office blockbuster, becoming the first film to rake in over 100 Million dollars at the box office raking a then unheard of $260,000,000 (today that would be the equivalent of $10,267,665,518 and 32 cents).

[Avaitor]

Classic popcorn flick back when few of them were being made. Great characters, brilliant tension, and one hell of a score.

The sequels come nowhere close, but the first is still incredible.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Yeah, this is a classic. Despite how predictable something like this could be, it's thanks to the direction and writing that the concept rises above how typical these films tend to be.

[Daxdiv]

So, I take it Shark Week had no influence in this thread being remade?

[Avaitor]

I recalled that one scene in BTTF Part II, and reminded Dalek that he should bring his Spielberg talkbacks over here. And yeah, subconsciously I was probably thinking about Shark Week, too.

[Kiddington]

The sequels were incredibly awful (I can sit through Jaws 2 if I'm bored enough, but that ain't saying much), and the lack of Spielberg couldn't be any more painfully apparent. Jaws 4 could be used as a means of physical torture, in the right sense.

To this day, though, the original is still as fun and suspenseful as it ever was. One of the only movies to ever hold the rare distinction of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (all these years later; random movie trivia FTW), and it couldn't deserve it any more. A truly fantastic film.

[Angus]

The hunt was similar to Dracula; they had the tools and the plan, but of course nothing goes to plan.

[Lord Dalek]

On Blu-ray August 14.

WHOOOO-FRICKEN-HOOOOOO.

[Avaitor]

they better fucking put Shark World back on.

[Lord Dalek]

they better fucking put Shark World back on.

They aren't, but they are including "The Shark Is Still Working".

[Angus]

Uh oh, fear Spielberged Jaws 3-D (unless they did that already).

[Lord Dalek]

Uh oh, fear Spielberged Jaws 3-D (unless they did that already).

Yeah that was Jaws 3.

[Angus]

oh yeah, forgot about that, back in the red-blue 3-d glasses days, I think.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

This is easily my favorite "monster" movie ever made. I mean, that's essentially what it is, but its done so damn well and you get so wrapped up in the atmosphere of the film that you forget that at its core its basically just a simple formulaic movie story of men hunting a man-eating/killer monster, in this case a giant shark, which effectively grounds the film in reality and makes it even more engrossing than if it were some more surreal type of creature they were after.

Interestingly, I've never read the novel but I've heard that people who have actually usually tend to say that the movie is better. A friend of mine who is quite fond of Peter Benchley novels told me that, himself, which is giving quite a lot of credit to the power of the film.

[Angus]

So lucky that we have DVDs with captions for this movie so they don't have to guess at what that guy's mumbling about.