Jaws turns 35, still looks fake
It was on June 20, 1975 that audiences first bore witness to perhaps the greatest opening sequence in cinematic history: that of Christine Watkins taking her drunk boyfriend down to the shores of Amity Island for a little moonlight skinny dipping. We all know how that turned out, and audiences became so horrified and fascinated that some, even today, have trouble going into the water.
Jaws was a watershed film, a monumental success born of monumental failure. The well-documented reports of problems with writing, staffing, production, and pretty much everything else that can go wrong on a movie read as a how-to list of how to not get a movie made. And we all know how that turned out, too. The movie was so successful that the term “Blockbuster” was coined for it, owing to the fact that people would literally line up around the block to get into a showing. [ED NOTE: Actually the term was around much earlier, but Jaws is considered the first film of the ‘modern’ definition]. That kind of devotion is in short supply these days, unless you’re a particularly avid fan of Apple products.
Jaws is a great example of horror done right; it sets the tone right away, never gives too much away, and ends with a great showdown between good and evil. Lots of other shark movies have come and one, and not one of them has even come remotely close to cashing in on the borrowed interest Jaws offers. Rather than shock you with torture-porn images of people having the skin of their hand torn off by a cluster of razor blades or trying to get to the key some diabolical villain has hidden in your own eye socket somehow, Jaws deftly terrifies you with what you can’t see.
Think about the scene where Quint tells his speech about being on the USS Indianapolis. Talk about setting the mood.
And this begs the question: What if Jaws was made today?
Devin Faraci of CHUD.com had the same question.
What if Jaws were made today? Not a remake or a reboot, but what if Spielberg’s movie had never happened (but the world of cinema it inspired somehow still did), and somebody took a shot at Peter Benchley’s novel in 2010?
His account of what could have been is equally hilarious and depressing. IMHO, this one os a standout:
– It’s in 3D IMAX. But it wasn’t shot in either format. Duh.
Check it out for yourself here, and then pop in the DVD (that’s right, no Blu-Ray yet) of Spielberg’s seminal work, grab some popcorn, and suspend your disbelief just high enough to remember what it was like the first time you were so scared of a movie that you were afraid to go into the water.
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