Jaws is an American natural horror film series that started with a film that expanded into three sequels, a theme park ride, and other tie-in merchandise, based on a novel. The main subject of the saga is a great white shark , and its attacks on people in specific areas of the United States.

The Brody family is featured in all of the films as the primary antithesis to the shark. The original film was based on a novel written by Peter Benchley , which itself was inspired by the Jersey Shore shark attacks of Benchley adapted his novel, along with help from Carl Gottlieb and Howard Sackler, into the film Jaws , which was directed by Steven Spielberg. Although Gottlieb went on to pen two of the three sequels, neither Benchley nor Spielberg returned to the film series in any capacity.

The first film was regarded as a watershed film in motion picture history; it became the father of the summer blockbuster movies and one of the first " high-concept " films. Williams' theme won an Academy Award.

The film won other Academy Awards, and was nominated for Best Picture.

The franchise has also seen the release of various soundtrack albums, additional novelizations based on the sequels, trading cards , inspired theme park rides at Universal Studios Florida and Universal Studios Japan , multiple video games, and a musical that premiered in Although the first film was popular with critics when it was originally released, Jaws 2 received generally mixed reception, and the third and fourth films were critically panned.

This reception has spread to the merchandise, with video games seen as poor imitations of the original concept. Nevertheless, the original film has generally been regarded as one of the greatest films ever , and frequently appears in the top of various American Film Institute rankings.

However, Benchley later regretted he ever wrote the original book considering it encouraged a widespread public fear of sharks, which led to massive culls resulting in the various shark species around the world becoming endangered. As such, he spent most of his life promoting the cause of ocean conservation. The original Jaws , directed by Steven Spielberg , is based on Peter Benchley's novel of the same name. It tells the story of Police Chief Martin Brody portrayed by Roy Scheider of Amity Island a fictional summer resort town , in his quest to protect beachgoers from a great white shark by closing the beach.

This is overruled by the town council, headed by the mayor Murray Hamilton that wants the beach to remain open in order to sustain the local tourist economy. After several attacks, the police chief enlists the help of marine biologist Matt Hooper Richard Dreyfuss and a professional shark hunter named Quint Robert Shaw.

The three voyage out onto the ocean in Quint's boat - the Orca. The shark kills Quint, but Brody manages to destroy it by shooting at the highly pressurized air tank that he has wedged in its mouth.

In the end, Brody and Hooper are seen swimming away from the sinking Orca , having both of them managed to survive uninjured the shark attack on the boat. The first sequel, Jaws 2 , depicts the same town four years after the events of the original film when another great white shark arrives on the shores of the fictional seaside resort of Amity Island.

Directed by Jeannot Szwarc and starring Roy Scheider again as Police Chief Martin Brody, who, after a series of deaths and disappearances, suspects that the culprit is another shark.

However, he has trouble convincing the town's selectmen. He has to act alone to save a group of teenagers, including his two sons, who encounter the shark whilst out sailing. The plot of Jaws 3-D also known as Jaws 3 moves away from Amity Island to SeaWorld in Florida , a water themed-park with underwater tunnels and lagoons.

As the park prepares to open, it is infiltrated by a baby great white shark which attacks and kills water-skiers and park employees. Once the baby shark is captured, it becomes apparent that a much larger shark, the mother, is present. The characters of Martin's sons from the first two films are developed further in this film: Michael Brody Dennis Quaid is the chief engineer of the park and his younger brother, Sean John Putch , arrives at the resort to visit him.

The events of the earlier films are implied through Sean's dislike of the water because of "something that happened when he was a kid. The fourth and final film, Jaws: The Revenge , sees the storyline returning to Amity Island, but ignores all plot elements introduced in Jaws 3-D. No mention is made to Michael's girlfriend from the previous film, Kathryn Morgan Bess Armstrong , or his career change from an engineer at SeaWorld to a marine biologist.

In fact, one of the Universal Studios press releases for Jaws: The Revenge omits Jaws 3-D entirely by referring to Jaws: The Revenge as the " third film of the remarkable Jaws trilogy. Her youngest son, Sean Mitchell Anderson , now working as a police deputy in Amity, is dispatched to clear a log from a buoy.

As he does so, he is attacked and killed by a shark. Ellen becomes convinced that a shark is deliberately victimizing her family for the deaths of the first two sharks. Michael Lance Guest convinces her to spend some time with his family in The Bahamas. However, as his job involves a lot of time on and in the sea, Ellen fears that he will be the shark's next victim.

When her granddaughter, Thea Judith Barsi , narrowly avoids being attacked by a shark, Ellen takes a boat in order to kill her family's alleged stalker. Hoagie Michael Caine , Michael, and his friend Jake Mario Van Peebles find Ellen and then proceed to electrocute the shark, driving it out of the water and impaling it on the prow of Ellen's boat.

Peter Benchley had been thinking for years "about a story about a shark that attacks people and what would happen if it came in and wouldn't go away. Benchley says that he had spent months thinking of titles, many of which he calls "pretentious" such as The Stillness in the Water and Leviathan Rising. Benchley regarded other ideas, such as The Jaws of Death and The Jaws of Leviathan , as "melodramatic, weird, or pretentious.

The Book of the Month Club made the novel an "A book," qualifying it for its main selection, then the Reader's Digest also selected it. The publication date was moved back to allow a carefully orchestrated release. It was released first in hardcover in February , [7] then in the book clubs, followed by a national campaign for the paperback release. Zanuck and David Brown , film producers at Universal Pictures , heard about the book at identical times at different locations.

Brown heard about it in the fiction department of Cosmopolitan , a lifestyle magazine then edited by his wife, Helen Gurley Brown. A small card gave a detailed description of the plot concluding with the comment "might make a good movie. However, he says that "we just loved the book. We thought it would make a very good movie. Zanuck and Brown had originally planned to hire John Sturges to direct the film, before considering Dick Richards.

Peter Benchley wrote three drafts of the screenplay before deciding to bow out of the project. Spielberg has claimed that he prepared his own draft. Spielberg described it as a collaboration among John Milius, Howard Sackler, and actor Robert Shaw. Three mechanical sharks were made for the production: After the sharks were completed, they were shipped to the shooting location, but had not been tested in water and when placed in the ocean the full model sank to the ocean floor, forcing a team of divers to retrieve it.

The film nonetheless had a famously troubled shoot and went considerably over budget. The mechanical shark frequently malfunctioned, due to the hydraulic innards being corroded by salt water. The script was refined during production, and the unreliable mechanical sharks forced Spielberg to shoot most of the scenes with the shark only hinted at.

For example, for much of the shark hunt, its location is represented by the floating yellow barrels. Spielberg also included multiple shots of just the dorsal fin due to its ease of filming.

This forced restraint is widely thought to have increased the suspense of these scenes, giving it a Hitchcockian tone. The studio ordered a sequel early into the success of Jaws. They realized that someone else would produce the film if they didn't, and they preferred to be in charge of the project themselves.

Like the first film, the production of Jaws 2 was troubled. The original director, John D. Hancock , proved to be unsuitable for an action film and was replaced by Jeannot Szwarc. Although some residents guarded their privacy, many islanders welcomed the money that the company was bringing.

After spending hours anchoring the sailboats, the wind would change as they were ready to shoot, blowing the sails in the wrong direction. The producers of the first two films considered originally pitched the second Jaws sequel as a spoof named Jaws 3, People 0.

Alan Landsburg and Rupert Hitzig produced the third film. Joseph Sargent produced and directed the fourth and final film in the series.

Jaws The Revenge was filmed on location in New England and in the Caribbean, and completed on the Universal lot. Like the first two films of the series, Martha's Vineyard was the location of the fictional Amity Island for the opening scenes of the film. The cast and crew encountered many problems with varying weather conditions. In February , film website Cinema Blend reported that a source from Universal Pictures has indicated that Universal is "strongly considering" remaking Jaws in 3-D , following the commercial success of Avatar.

John Williams composed and conducted the score for the first two films. The main "shark" theme, a simple alternating pattern of two notes , E and F , [36] became a classic piece of suspense music, synonymous with approaching danger. Williams described the theme as having the "effect of grinding away at you, just as a shark would do, instinctual, relentless, unstoppable. Spielberg later said that without Williams' score the film would have been only half as successful, and Williams acknowledges that the score jumpstarted his career.

The shark theme is used in all three sequels, a continuity that Williams compares to "the great tradition" for repeating musical themes in Hollywood serials such as Roy Rogers and The Lone Ranger. The latter was particularly praised for his work, which many critics considered superior to the film.

Jaws was the first film to use "wide release" as a distribution pattern. As such, it is an important film in the history of film distribution and marketing. Scheinberg's gamble paid off, with Jaws becoming a box office smash hit and the father of the summer blockbuster. When Jaws was released on June 20, , it opened at theaters. This was attractive to studios because it reduced market risk.

The third sequel would attract an even lower income, with around two thirds of Jaws 3-D' s total lifetime gross. The Revenge received a poor critical reception, and earned the lowest amount of money from the series.

Hunting Bruce, Or, On The Trail Of The 'Jaws' Shark : NPR

It is considered one of the worst movies ever made. Jaws is regarded as a watershed film in motion picture history, the father of the summer blockbuster movie and one of the first " high concept " films. The Omen followed suit in the summer of and then Star Wars one year later in , cementing the notion for movie studios to distribute their big-release action and adventure pictures commonly referred to as tentpole pictures during the summer.

Jaws is widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time.

Jaws () - Trivia - IMDb

Jaws was number 48 on American Film Institute 's Years It was ranked second on a similar list for thrillers, Years The sequels are not held in such high regard. Many reviewers criticized Jaws 2 director Jeannot Szwarc for showing more of the shark than the first film had, reducing the Hitchcockian notion "that the greatest suspense derives from the unseen and the unknown, and that the imagination is capable of conceiving far worse than the materialization of a mere mechanical monster.

Reception for Jaws 3-D was generally poor. Variety calls it " tepid " and suggests that Alves "fails to linger long enough on the Great White. The Revenge attracted the poorest critical reception of the series and was nominated for Worst Picture in the Golden Raspberry Awards. It was rated by Entertainment Weekly as one of "The 25 Worst Sequels Ever Made.

In an era in which documentaries were attempting responsible, accurate reporting about the natural world, ecocriticism says that Hollywood continued to produce films that exploited the fear of animals. The Revenge that "the marine biologist Mike Brody's environmentalist concerns are effectively ridiculed as his colleague is eaten by the enraged fish; he joins the hunt for it and the shark in turn hunts him down. Many films based on man-eating animals usually aquatic were released throughout the s and the s such as: Grizzly , Orca , Nightwing , Alligator , Creature , Cruel Jaws , Day of the Animals , Eaten Alive , Up from the Depths , the Mexican Tintorera , the French-Italian Killer Fish , and the Japanese Jaws in Japan.

The betters of these are often considered to be Piranha , [81] as a rip-off, and Great White also known as The Last Shark , as an unofficial sequel.

Universal "devised and co-ordinated a highly innovative plan" for the first film's distribution and exhibition. The Ideal Toy Company produced a game where the player had to use a hook to fish out items from the shark's mouth before the jaws closed.

Jaws 2 inspired much more merchandising and sponsors than the first film. Products included sets of trading cards from Topps and Baker's bread, paper cups from Coca-Cola , beach towels, a souvenir program, shark tooth necklaces, coloring and activity books, and a model kit of Brody's truck.

There have been a number of video game releases based upon the franchise. The first, titled Jaws , was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System NES in The Computer Game , released in by Screen 7 for the Commodore Amiga and other computers; [85] another unrelated Jaws for the Commodore 64 and other computers was released by Box Office Software the same year.

Jaws Unleashed , developed by Appaloosa Interactive , was released in for the PlayStation 2 , Xbox and PC platforms. This game was made by Fuse Powered Inc. Ultimate Predator was released on the Wii and Nintendo 3DS in From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Jaws Directed by Steven Spielberg first film Jeannot Szwarc second film Joe Alves third film Joseph Sargent fourth film Based on Jaws by Peter Benchley Distributed by Universal Pictures Release date.

He was fascinated by the sea, but his bestselling novel tapped into a primeval fear of the deep". The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review. Archived from the original on Production Notes, Universal News" Press release. New York Times Service. The New York Times.

Steven Spielberg - Biography - IMDb

Archived from the original on January 25, New York Daily News. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Retrieved January 2, The Revenge ". Roger Ebert Movie Reviews.

Guida al cinema di Enzo G. Castellari, Milano, Nocturno, Film portal Horror portal s portal. Jaws Jaws 2 Jaws 3-D Jaws: Shark Jaws Jaws Jaws Unleashed.

Soundtrack The Shark Is Still Working White Shark Creature Ride The Game of Jaws Jersey Shore shark attacks of Universal Studios Theme Parks Adventure Frank Mundus. Retrieved from " https: Pages with URL errors. Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in. Views Read Edit View history. Navigation Main page Contents Featured content Current events Random article Donate to Wikipedia Wikipedia store. Interaction Help About Wikipedia Community portal Recent changes Contact page.

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Steven Spielberg first film Jeannot Szwarc second film Joe Alves third film Joseph Sargent fourth film. Jaws by Peter Benchley. Roy Scheider Archive footage. Mitchell Anderson Jay Mello Flashback. Peter Benchley Carl Gottlieb. Richard Matheson Carl Gottlieb Story by: