JAWS: THE REVENGE Winds Up A Noble Failure

We’ve talked a lot about sequels in this space before. We’ve also talked about the art of the remake. BUT, up to this point, we haven’t really had the opportunity to discuss the art of the “sequel remake”.

Simply put, it’s an attempt to wash away a sequel that either didn’t catch on or massively painted a once-thriving series into a corner. I’m not sure if there’s really an official name for it, but it’s a concept that feels at its core to be uniquely modern, a trend that’s come around in the past ten years or so. My go-to example for this is the TERMINATOR franchise (a set of movies that I am definitely planning on giving the full month-long tribute to one of these days). Ever since T2: JUDGMENT DAY took the world by storm in 1991, Hollywood has been desperately trying to come up with a decent follow-up that people might actually like even half as much. They initially tried with 2003’s TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES and the subsequent TERMINATOR: SALVATION in 2009. These sequels got subsequently ignored in 2015 with the arrival of the sort-of-remake-with-an-awful-title TERMINATOR GENISYS. THEN, there was one last attempt to start a T2 sequel with TERMINATOR: DARK FATE, a movie less than three years old that I still had to look up on Google to get the name right (unbelievably, it looks like Linda Hamilton was available!).

A modern Hollywood mess, right? In actuality, however, this sort of franchise surgery has been happening to movies since at least the 1980’s. Take a look at the HALLOWEEN franchise sometime. The original HALLOWEEN 3 was a completely stand-alone film that HALLOWEEN 4 infamously ignored. 1998’s HALLOWEEN: H20 ignored all except the first two HALLOWEEN films. The most recent David Gordon Green films have junked all but the original. There’s now, by my count, at least four distinct timelines in the HALLOWEEN series. Spooky stuff!

It’s a move that has been made in several famous franchises. A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, SUPERMAN, HIGHLANDER, THE EXORCIST….the list goes on and on. And as far as moves to make in order to keep extending a cash cow, it’s not the worst in the world! It typically (though not always) serves as a rare admission of guilt from studios, an acknowledgment that a series has gone awry. It’s okay to try to start over! Really! More movie franchises ought to think about it!

So it goes with JAWS. Because as it turns out, I wasn’t the only one who thought JAWS 3-D was the franchise demeaning itself. It turned out Universal Studios agreed, and the next sequel actively ignored everything the third movie set up (or destroyed).

Of course, if any of the above have taught us, just because directors and studios make the correct determination that a sequel was lousy, there’s no actual guarantee that the second attempt is going to be any better.

With that said, let’s break down JAWS: THE REVENGE!

JAWS: THE REVENGE

Directed by: Joseph Sargent

Starring: Lorraine Gary, Michael Caine, Lance Guest, Mario van Peebles

Written by: Michael de Guzman

Length: 90 minutes

Released: July 17, 1987

JAWS: THE REVENGE continues the story of the Brodys, this time focusing primarily on Ellen (Gary), who is recently widowed; we learn later that Martin Brody has died from a heart attack, induced from lingering stress as a result of the events of the first two JAWSes, which feels like an unsatisfying, if realistic, end to the character. Ellen is left desperate for connection from others. She still lives in Amity, nearby to her younger son, Sean (Mitchell Anderson), who now works as a police deputy. As Christmas approaches, Sean is brutally killed by a great white shark while he’s clearing out a log from an outskirt buoy (y’know, police deputy work). Ellen becomes convinced that this shark is seeking revenge. It’s an absolutely ludicrous idea that starts gaining some weight to it when she heads to the Bahamas to be with her older son, Michael, and continues to be harassed by the same great white shark.

This time around, the Brody kids are recast completely from JAWS 3-D. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be any indication of Michael’s SeaWorld past at all. This is because, as far as JAWS: THE REVENGE is concerned, JAWS 3-D never happened. JAWS: THE REVENGE, it turns out, is a direct sequel to JAWS 2. As a matter of fact, an early press release dubbed this the third installment of “the remarkable JAWS trilogy”. And, look, it’s a decent decision, considering how poorly JAWS 3-D turned out. Rather than trying to build off of poor foundation, better to just repour, you know?

Anyhow, as the movie progresses, we’re introduced to Hoagie (Caine), a small prop-plane pilot who ends up wooing Ellen and bringing her out of her grief-stricken shell. We’re also introduced to Michael’s wife Carla (Karen Young) and his little girl Thea (Judith Barsi). Together with Michael’s co-worker and close friend Jake (Mario Van Peebles), they will have to find a way to destroy the shark that has somehow figured out how to travel from the Eastern United States to the Bahamas just to kill three humans it’s never met.

JAWS: THE REVENGE was given the green light during a particularly hard financial time for Universal. CEO Sidney Sheinberg was looking for something that could make a quick profit, and decided to move ahead with another installment of JAWS (it should be mentioned that JAWS 3-D was a success at the box office). The intention was to:

1) center the movie around a human story again

2) add a mystical element to the shark

3) make it quickly

These three points essentially explain everything about what makes JAWS: THE REVENGE, um, special . To that third point, the movie was green lit in September 1986 for a July 1987 release. The principal script was written in five weeks (with no actual shooting script by the time production began). The actual shoot lasted 38 days. Any actual decision making would have to be made on the fly, with no time for analysis as to how any of this was going to work.

This time, it would be Lorraine Gary’s turn to answer the call to action and star in a JAWS sequel (which is certainly not motivated by the fact that Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss refused, or by the fact that she was married to Sheinberg). After a long career in television, she made the transition to feature films. JAWS, JAWS 2, and JAWS: THE REVENGE would end up being her biggest claims to fame. In fact, JAWS: THE REVENGE represented her return to acting after having retired following her appearance in Spielberg’s WWII comedy 1941. It would be her final acting credit, as she retired for good after this. It might seem strange, but after killing a shark, what else is there to do?

I didn’t recognize him, but Michael is played this time around by Lance Guest, who most people will know as THE LAST STARFIGHTER (although some horror fans will remember him as Jimmy from HALLOWEEN II). I actually thought he was pretty good here, and does a better job at playing an adult Michael than a coked-up Dennis Quaid did in the last movie.

It’s the 1980’s, so we’re fully in the era of “Michael Caine classing up a piece of garbage” era that persists to this day. As mentioned, his character is named Hoagie, for whatever reason. It’s not a name that feels particularly British, or even Bahamian. But Caine adds gravitas to a man who really only exists as a counterpoint to Ellen, a representation of another chance at love. Whenever he’s onscreen, you’re having at least 5% more fun. He’s also the source of my favorite quote by an actor that nobody else ever seems to think is funny:

“I have never seen [JAWS 4], but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built and it is terrific.”

Mario Van Peebles was still a few years away from NEW JACK CITY, although he had been working consistently in the 80’s, both on screen and the stage. Jake is basically the “best friend” role. But, Van Peebles brings just enough to it that it never quite feels like the stock role that it is, and Mario is rocking a wild Bahamian accent the entire time, so that’s something. Plus, his presence was enough to warrant a cameo from his father, Melvin. So, that’s also something!

Finally, there’s Judith Barsi, who most people will know as the child actor who voiced Anne-Marie from ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN and, most famously, Ducky from THE LAND BEFORE TIME. She’s also notable for having a horrendous monster for a father who would eventually…well, you can look up the awful story yourself, because I hesitate to keep linking her short life to him too closely. I’ve never been able to square away the fact that her legacy has mostly become the awful adult she had to live with. Instead, I’d like to focus on the fact that, with those above two movies, she made such a big impression on a certain generation, essentially through voiceover, in such a short time.

Here’s the thing; I didn’t hate JAWS: THE REVENGE. It at least attempts to be a real movie. Lorraine Gary is trying her damnedest! Michael Caine, running at 15% power, puts in probably the fourth-best performance in a JAWS movie. If you squint your eyes, you can even see them try to work a “shark-as-physical-representation-of-grief” metaphor. Also, the seemingly arbitrary Christmas/New Year’s setting sort of hints at a theme of reflection and renewal. Plus, it’s cool to see a tropical-themed Christmas movie, especially when it’s a deep sequel to a franchise. Unlike JAWS 3-D, JAWS 4 is trying and for that, I’m willing to give it a couple of points.

(Also, you should know I’m a sucker for surprise Christmas movies. It’s a cheap trick that is meant to work only on fools, but it works for me almost every time. I absolutely want to be that person that suggests, “how about JAWS: THE REVENGE"??” when the holidays come around. You better pray I never end up the owner of a local movie theatre.)

The primary issue with JAWS: THE REVENGE is that there’s no real skill to anything, possibly due to the speed in which it was thrown together. For example, it never bothers to really explain how in the world the shark could follow them from Amity to the Bahamas, or even why the shark is doing anything it’s doing, outside of the titular vague “revenge”. It’s not even clear if it’s supposed to be the original shark, or maybe the shark from JAWS 2 come back to life, or just a cousin or uncle or something. Also, how would the shark know it was Martin Brody specifically that killed him? Did the original shark’s family finally swing by the Amity beach a few days after JAWS 1 in desperate search of a body or something?

For another example, towards the end of the movie, Ellen starts having memories of past movie events (Sean dying at the beginning of JAWS 4, Martin saying “smile, you son of a bitch!” at the end of JAWS), which is fine, except she wasn’t present for any of them. For all these reasons, it’s why the grief and guilt metaphor doesn’t really hold water (har har). Since she’s been offscreen for most of the serious events of the JAWS franchise, having her be traumatized by them doesn’t feel like anything. We can imagine how it might feel by putting ourselves in her shoes, but JAWS 4 is trying to put this all in the text retroactively because it was never really dramatized in the first place.

In a trashier movie, none of this would actually be a problem. It might have even added some goofy fun to a loopy film. But, once again, I’m left to wonder if this JAWS sequel would have benefited from picking a lane and hitting the gas, rather than drifting in between two tracks. Because the trash elements in JAWS: THE REVENGE are much more fun than the trash elements in JAWS 3. And the sincere “trying to make a movie” elements work better than JAWS 2. But putting them together just kind of gives you a queasy feeling. The sincerity also causes you to ask questions (like all of the questions posed above) that you wouldn’t have if the movie just went for full schlock.

Also…..the shark still looks bad! You see it kind of a lot! And it always looks bad! I’m left flabbergasted why three whole production staffs never bothered to learn the lesson Spielberg taught himself back in 1975; it takes some cleverness, but you save tons of money and make your movie twice as better if we don’t see the shitty shark! Is this just an incessant need to be “different” or not wanting to copy the original? Think of the other overqualified character actors you could have snagged for this with the money saved to give Michael Caine a lunch partner?

JAWS: THE REVENGE would wind up being the last American production of a JAWS movie. I remain amazed (and grateful) that nobody has, to date, tried to reboot the series or give it the “legacy sequel” treatment. It’s easy to envision a trailer showing another family (with one of the kids being played by one of the STRANGER THINGS cast members) moving into the old Brody house and realizing there’s….something in the water……cue slow single-note piano version of the JAWS “bum bum” theme. Thankfully, it hasn’t happened yet. YET.

However, I’m not ready to leave JAWS just yet. Next week, we arrive at the real reason I decided to do this summer series. Because, here’s the thing, I’ve never seen CRUEL JAWS and I’ve always looked for a reason to cross it off my list.

So. Next week. CRUEL JAWS!

Jabbin’ About JAWS: A New Summer Series!

One of the strange, ironic anomalies about American film in the 1970’s is that, mixed in with some of the strongest and most daring independent voices Hollywood would ever produce, the decade includes the definitive starting data points of where the industry stands now, a sequel-and-IP-driven industry that has done a ton to choke out those very same independent voices.

The same decade that gave us ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST, THE FRENCH CONNECTION, TAXI DRIVER, DOG DAY AFTERNOON, AMERICAN GRAFFITI, CHINATOWN, BARRY LYNDON, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and, oh yeah, the first two GODFATHER films also gave us THE EXORCIST, ALIEN and the very first STAR WARS. Through those kinetic crowd-pleasers, we can track the birth of the “blockbuster” all the way to today, where we are practically drowning in Marvel and Lucasfilm streaming content (to almost inarguably diminishing returns).

Of course, the first “real” blockbuster, at least the one that popularized the term for all intents and purposes is Steven Spielberg’s 1975 thriller JAWS. Based off the 1974 Peter Benchley novel, JAWS was an immediate sensation, making $472 million against a $9 million budget, made generations of people irrationally afraid of sharks (on the whole, not that interested in people!) and, most importantly, sparked a major change in movie studio priorities. Slow-burn, expensive character dramas were out. Populist popcorn flicks were in, the more special effects, the better.

This, of course, feels like the absolute wrong lesson for studios to have pulled from JAWS. This is because, nearly fifty years on, after the movie no longer has any ability to scare you, so familiar are its tropes and beats, Spielberg’s first major break still stands out due to the actual legitimate character work that it does, giving us three fully realized human beings as the stars of the film, as opposed to a shark that ominously (and accidentally) is rarely seen onscreen.

It’s a JAWS summer, y’all! Let’s dig in.

JAWS (1975)

Directed by: Steven Spielberg

Written by: Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb

Starring: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary

Released: June 20, 1975

Length: 124 minutes

JAWS is a surprisingly difficult movie to talk about in 2022, if only because it feels like everything that can be said about it, has. It’s even a couple years older than the original STAR WARS, maybe the most single over-analyzed movie in the history of American film. JAWS’ troubled production history is well-documented, with its profound technical failures planting the seed for the movie’s single most important contribution to film: the ominous, minimalist score by John Williams serving as superior substitute for actually seeing the shark.

Compounding the issue, ironically, is the fact that JAWS still holds up! Oftentimes, big broad masterpieces like this speak for themselves, making it kind of difficult to break down what makes it fun without getting into the territory of the obvious (“the scene where the shark explodes was exciting!”). But I think it’s worth it to try, mainly since…well, I have to. It’d be profoundly weird to start a month-long JAWS series by skipping the one everybody has seen. But it’s also worth it to remind people that big ol’ blockbusters can still come with a considerable amount of craft behind them. JAWS also serves as a great way to advocate for arbitrary restrictions in film-making to allow for creativity to flourish.

JAWS is a movie that operates in two halves. The first half of JAWS feels like a broader character study of the psychological makeup of a small seaside town. Martin Brody (Scheider) is working his first summer as sheriff of Amity Island when he receives word that a young woman, Chrissy Watkins, has gone missing after going swimming. After her partial remains are found on the beach and a subsequent medical examination reveals injuries consistent with a shark attack, Brody finds himself in the middle of what is right and what is convenient. The beaches obviously have to be closed, but Mayor Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) stands in the way of this, since the upcoming Fourth of July weekend is the biggest of the year for the town’s economy.

The arrival of young oceanographer Matt Hooper (Dreyfuss) adds to the tension, as he deflates the excitement of the recent capture and killing of a large tiger shark that seemed to put an end to the vicious threat. He asserts, judging from the bites on the bodies, that the town is being terrorized by a great white, and Amity now needs to figure out what it’s going to do. Do we keep the beaches open, or close them? How do we end our shark trouble once and for all? Local fisherman and Captain Ahab stand-in Quint (Shaw) offers his expertise and services to kill the shark….if Vaughn will put up $10,000 as a reward.

Of course, the parallels between Amity’s reaction to an unseen threat endangering the economy and “our current times” can’t be ignored. In fact, it’s already been discussed in some detail over the past couple of years. Suffice to say, however, government officials valuing the safety of the economy over its populace, the dismissal of experts as nerdy kill-joys, the belief that a natural threat can be negotiated with or is interested in working on a human timeframe….it all would be aggravatingly on-the-nose if JAWS hadn’t predated current reality by over forty-five years. So, yeah, the emotions and motivations being tracked amongst our principals in Amity 100% track.

Act I of JAWS contains most of the movie’s super-signature moments. There’s that famous dolly zoom on Brody’s face as Alex Kintner bites the dust. There’s the infamous “that’s some bad hat, Harry” line that should sound familiar to anyone who’s watched an episode of House to completion. There’s that fisherman corpse jump-scare. And the scene where Brody pours himself an entire Collins glass of red wine. And that shot of Brody reading up on sharks, where we see him flipping through the pages via the lenses of his glasses, almost as if we can see him absorbing the information into his brain in real time. And, of course, we hear the iconic John Williams bass notes right in the opening seconds. On and on and on, it goes.

Although he didn’t get a Best Director nomination, there’s little flourishes like this that made it obvious the 26 year old Spielberg was someone to keep your eye on. And the movie often looks gorgeous. But it wasn’t just Spielberg that makes this first half sing. No, an equal amount of credit goes to the script, more or less cowritten by Benchley and Carl Gottlieb. Benchley did the first three drafts before tapping out and handing the script over to other screenwriters. He ultimately provided the plot’s structure and a lot of the “mechanics” of the sailing and oceanography. Playwright Howard Sackler (who was absolutely not one of those Sacklers, I already checked) did an uncredited rewrite, who focused in on characterization, including the crucial detail of Brody being afraid of water.

In an attempt to add some levity, Spielberg asked his friend Carl Gottlieb what he would change were it up to him. Three pages of notes later, he ended up becoming the primary screenwriter the rest of the way, with much additional dialogue pulled from improvisations generated from cast and crew dinners. John Milius provided some dialogue additions, and SUGARLAND EXPRESS writers Matthew Robbins and Hal Barwood did some uncredited contributions.

But all this work, and facilitation of multiple contributors, paid off. Why the first half of JAWS works so well is because the script deals with the fallout of the shark’s destruction honestly. As just one example, both Mayor Vaughn’s early insistence on keeping the beaches open and Brody’s ultimate reluctance to stand up to him, have deadly consequences. The aforementioned death of Alex Kintner serves as the turning point for Brody (although, notably, not a turning point for Vaughn, who I am convinced eventually became the President of the United States in the JAWS-iverse). In the fallout of the tense, brutal, pulse-pounding death of Kintner, and as the subsequent capture of the wrong shark is being heavily celebrated by the town, the movie still adds a touch that most movies nowadays might have skipped altogether.

Brody is approached by Kintner’s mourning mother who has nothing but a slap to the face and admonishing words for the sheriff. He knew the waters were dangerous, and that a girl had already been killed by whatever it is out there. And he let the beaches stay open anyway. How could he?

I think this is a scene that would have been excised for being too “dark” or something if JAWS were made today. After all, it makes us directly question the integrity of our lead character, something that legitimately might be considered too complicated to get into now. Because the thing of it is….Kintner’s mom is right. She’s not just an unfair obstacle for us to get upset at. Brody fucked up. Yes, yes, there’s the reflex of saying, “it’s actually Vaughn’s fault! HE’S the one who was forcing him to keep the beaches open!” Which is true. But the buck falls on the man whose job it is to keep people safe. And Brody knows it.

That’s why the moment resonates so hard. And it’s part of what motivates him from here on out.

For all that, though, the second half is really where the movie shines, and the fact that it works so well is a testament to how JAWS bakes in its exposition and character building through action. Brody, Quint and Hooper all band together to take Quint’s boat the ORCA out to kill the great white once and for all. Simply put, there’s nothing for the movie to set up about these three once they get on the boat. We’ve learned everything we need to know while we were busy being scared in the first half. Brody is the lawman who hates the water, Hooper is a steadfast and sarcastic expert, and Quint is the eccentric wild-card.

Notably, there are a few things two of the three characters have in common; for instance, Brody and Quint are the adults on the boat, while Quint and Hooper have the maritime experience (and scars to show for it) that Brody simply lacks. Most telling of all, Brody and Hooper don’t have the personal connection to a rogue shark that Quint ultimately does. But there’s nothing to unify the trio as a team as we set sail.

The real bonding moment between the three is Quint’s famous speech detailing the real-life horrors endured by the members of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, a moment that many have identified as the true heart of JAWS. This monologue, delivered during an otherwise quiet dinner between the three below deck, sets up the true terror inherent in a shark, maybe more than any other moment, sequence or visual in the movie. For those not familiar, the U.S.S. Indianapolis was a naval ship that was returning from delivering the initial parts of the atomic bomb before getting nailed by a Japanese missile. Those who survived the initial blast, however, found themselves sitting ducks for a series of brutal shark attacks. Of a crew of about 1,000, only about 300 survived.

It’s a harrowing, fucked-up story that’s just as chilling when you remember that it’s 100% true (also, it feels notable that the script changes the date of the sinking of the Indianapolis from July 30 to June 29, the same day and date of the fictional death of Alex Kintner). Thus, the decision to anchor Quint’s character as having lived through this real-life horror show makes his quest to kill the great white all the more understandable, perhaps the ultimate example of “raising the stakes” for a character.

What punctuates Quint’s speech even further in JAWS, however, is how the scene slowly transitions back to the three of them having drunken revels, banging on the table, singing sea shanties, and forgetting about their trouble ahead. Then, BOOM! The shark has returned and is pounding on the side of the ORCA. The danger detailed in Quint’s speech starts flooding back to the characters, and us, and the cost of failure has never felt so high.

The second half is also where all those clever work-arounds to cover for the mechanical shark not working come into play. As alluded to previously, one of the biggest, most famous pains in Spielberg’s ass during the making of JAWS was the fact that, among other things, the big mechanical sharks that had been created (in place of an actual trained shark, which was the original plan, holy shit) kept getting waterlogged and short-circuiting. I’d argue that Robert Shaw getting wasted all the time was as big of an issue as the shark, but I understand that JAWS is a hard movie to film without, you know, Jaws.

Brody, Quint, and Hooper eventually realize attaching buoyant barrels to the shark is their only chance at being able to keep tabs on its location. It’s a logical decision by the characters, and you figure, for the filmmakers, it’s a hell of a lot easier to control a bunch of empty barrels than it is a giant mechanical shark. However, this decision also sets up the barrels as the real visual signifier for us in the audience. It’s always cool when a movie works it out so a normal, benign object all of a sudden becomes terrifying.

JAWS barrels towards its exciting and famous conclusion, and it struck me that the movie is so self-contained (and, like many movies that are over thirty years old, just ends once it reaches its natural stopping point! No prolonged wrap-ups of subplots, no set-ups for potential sequels…the shark dies, movie over!) that I don’t even think I realized there were sequels to JAWS until I was a teenager. And that’s the sign of a great one. You can get off here, or you can keep driving down the Highway of Diminishing Returns. It’s up to you!

So why does JAWS not receive the same kind of world-ending ire that some of its other early blockbuster contemporaries do? Well, part of it is that it hasn’t watered itself down as much over the years. Yes, up until 2002, there were just as many JAWS movies as there were STAR WARS movies, which is bizarre to think about. However, the non-serialized format of the JAWS series has left its sequels as more obscure and less popular than its original, which allows it to stand above the rest of the series. This stands opposed to STAR WARS, where at least one of its sequels is arguably more beloved than the original (that sequel being, of course, THE RISE OF SKYWALKER).

Also, for whatever reason, JAWS has never been a property that anybody has tried to reclaim as fresh IP. We had the three sequels, one unofficial international follow-up/ripoff (okay, there are actually hundreds and hundreds, but only one that anybody really cares about), and…that’s it. No Saturday morning cartoon, no legacy sequel, no limited series on Peacock (at least not yet). Hollywood has, for whatever reason, seen fit to leave JAWS be.

Finally, I think JAWS is arguably the strongest of its imitators simply because of all the work they did to focus on human characters, so that when the shark starts snacking, we’re invested. It’s not quite the same thing, but it’s the problem that a lot of the American GODZILLA movies fail to understand, and I see audience expectations shifting in kind; I hear a lot of people say, “who cares about the humans at all? It’s a movie called Godzilla!” Well, actually, the human stories are vital for us to have an entry point into the destruction, but so often, movie studios want to cynically half-ass that part. Maybe because it’s hard? Maybe because it’s easier to pour money into the CGI than the writer’s room? Regardless, it would suit most studios to go back to the basics for awhile.

It’s a shame that, in the wake of JAWS’ undeniable success, the instinct was to replicate, and expand upon, the fireworks and thrills WITHOUT including the exquisite writing that makes everybody involved feel like a recognizable human soul, which only helps to increase the stakes. After all, what good is a shark eating somebody if I don’t care about them?

Next week: Brody and Mayor Vaughn return for 1978’s JAWS 2!