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!