It’s July, and that means its Jaws season. Yes, it’s the best time of year to load up our home theaters with all the films that made us worry so much about dipping our toes into the oceans of the world.
If you’ve got Peacock (and you really should), all four entries in the film franchise (based on the novel of the same name by Peter Benchley) are now streaming. And yes, while we concede the quality dips the deeper you get into the quadrilogy, if you align your expectations, there’s plenty to enjoy about each film.
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What Are the Best Moments from Every Jaws Film?
Jaws (1975) – “You’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boat”
Fans of Jaws will fight all day about what their favorite scene in this classic, and no one is gonna be wrong. From top to tails, there are dozens of incredible scenes that define the movie for myriad viewers; put together, they make a perfect movie. Still, we’re going with, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat” for all the things it does to underscore what Jaws is.
Let’s start with Chief Martin Brody’s (Roy Scheider) aggravated chumming, which reiterates the lowly man against the sea theme. It’s a scene framed for maximum foreboding, yet still possesses the film’s signature dry wit to softly dupe you into submission. Then the monster — the shark — erupts into the frame for the first time in all its massive glory. Scheider’s full body move away in frozen terror is so real and commensurate to the witnessed threat.
He then backs into Quint’s (Robert Shaw) space, never letting his eyes off the ocean and utters what has become the synonymous quote referencing the film: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” That line itself has since entered the lexicon as a term to mean someone is woefully unprepared for the task at hand. It’s bigger than the movie in terms of it perfect conveyance of, “Oh, you’re in trouble.”
Swelling to John Williams’ foreboding score, we see the shark come under the boat where a very distressed Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) sees its actual size for the first time, and an equally humbled Quint ups its size to 25 feet. In just this one scene, the stakes have been amped up dramatically, the foe has been fully revealed, and the heroes have all been sobered for the fight to come.
Jaws 2 – “Sharks vs. Sailboats”
The 1978 sequel from director Jeannot Szwarc, Jaws 2 is the best of the franchise sequels featuring a solid script from Carl Gottlieb and Howard Sackler, and another great performance from Scheider as Chief Brody. Revisiting the film, there’s plenty to appreciate how it portrays the town leaders gas lighting Brody about his panic regarding another possible shark attack, and his PTSD in dealing with the last one.
It’s also got some taut action/thriller sequences, like this one, where the kids of Amity Island are out boating and that new shark shows up, capsizes boats, and almost takes out Brody’s son, Mike (Mark Gruner). Crosscutting between the boats in jeopardy and the kids in the water with that massive fin cutting between them is a real knuckle biter of a scene.
Jaws 3-D – “Please Walk, Don’t Run”
While it’s perhaps not on par with its predecessors, we can at least appreciate the comedy of Jaws 3-D, the sequel directed by the very talented production designer of the original film, Joe Alves. This one puts the Brody children at the SeaWorld theme park when a great white shark has infiltrated the underwater exhibits.
In this selected scene, there’s a certain horror gaze satisfaction in watching these awful summer tourists get stuck in an underground observation tube… especially that adult male in the red overalls.
Jaws: The Revenge – “Killing the Beast”
Hailing from director Joseph Sargent, Jaws: The Revenge is a comedy and you can’t convince us otherwise. The script finds a now-widowed Ellen Brody (Lorraine Gary) convinced a great white shark is stalking her family, which is admittedly a bit on the silly side.
In this end sequence, we get flashes of Scheider’s Chief Brody taking his shot at the shark in Jaws, as we see this film’s monster making its final curtain call, leaving poor Mario Van Peebles having to keep up a dubious Jamaican accent while his character is bleeding out in the ocean.
Watch the Jaws, Jaws 2, Jaws 3, and Jaws: The Revenge, all streaming now on Peacock!
