Good job Speilberg had no money then !

Rating: Null/10 (15 July 1999)

If Speilberg made Jaws nowadays, when he can afford to make a movie to the cost of a small country's entire yearly budget, then the cinema would have been robbed of one of its finest moments.
The main difference is that I am sure you would have seen the shark much more and that, of course, is a bad thing. The thing that scares the most is not the sight of something horrible or frightening but merely the thought. People who prefer books to films often say that books require much more imagination. Well what else is at work in the early scenes of Jaws, where you don't see the shark at all, but your imagination. Arguably the most chilling scene is the opening one when the girl gets savagely ripped apart. The only indication of a shark is the fact that nothing else could throw around a person like that but a great white.
The weakest scenes, in my opinion, are near the end when the shark actively attacks the boat and we see far too much of what is a pretty average model. If Speilberg had the backing and money he had now he would have made an entirely different film and I would say an inferior one to this classic.
Much of the plot and story comes from the fact that the shark cannot be seen and is being hunted down. How many great scenes would have been lost if it became a gore fest or an action adventure like so many of today's pathetic offerings ?
Maybe I am not giving Speilberg enough credit. He is a great film maker and would have seen the benefit of suspense to his movie rather than outright graphic horror. It is the idea that a shark that big could be out there that put many people off swimming in the sea for a long time.

As we saw in the sequels even the same formula, handled in the wrong way, didn't work. Forget the sequels, Jaws is probably the best true thriller ever made made by one of the top directors and starring a perfect cast. And remember a shark the size of a bus could be out there somewhere, we don't belong in the sea !