By JOHN BILLINGER
Tiger Media Network
“This time it’s personal.”
Or so proclaims the tagline to the fourth and last installment of the “Jaws” film series. This series of films just might be the textbook example of a downward spiral.
The first film, released in 1975, became the highest-grossing film made up to that point. It put Steven Spielberg on the map and made everyone afraid of swimming. Then there was the 1978 sequel, which is OK. It’s not great, but it certainly isn’t bad. There are good ingredients in the pot such as Roy Scheider’s performance and John Williams’ score, but it sort of falls into slasher territory towards the end — a territory the series took a whole hike to with 1983’s “Jaws 3″ (better known as “Jaws 3-D”), which is a full load of crap. Enough said about that one, but it’s nothing compared to 1987’s “Jaws: The Revenge.”
During the 1980s, Universal was facing financial difficulties, so CEO Sidney Sheinberg thought, “Well, the other ‘Jaws’ sequels made money, so why not do another? Plus it can promote our theme park attraction.” And so, production was rushed in order to get a release in the summer of 1987. It had a budget of $23 million, the highest of any of the four films, and yet was the lowest grossing, netting $51.9 million. Plus, it was the worst-reviewed entry and killed any future installments. After viewing it, I can see why.
The plot is as follows:
It’s the holiday season on Amity Island. Chief Martin Brody(the main character of the first two films) has been dead for years. In his place as the main character is his widowed wife Ellen (played once again by Lorraine Gray). As for their two sons, Mike lives in the Bahamas as a marine biologist and Sean is a police deputy in Amity. One night, Sean is killed by a great white shark, and Ellen believes the shark attacked him out of revenge for Martin killing all the other sharks. To help Ellen deal with that, Mike decides to have her stay with him and his family during the remainder of the holidays (because when your mom is paranoid that you’re going to get killed by a shark, the best course of action is to take her to an area surrounded by water). While there, she strikes up a romance with a pilot played by Michael Caine. Unfortunately for everyone, it turns out the same shark that killed Sean followed them 1,465 miles from Maine to the Bahamas. So, it’s up to Ellen to take care of the shark once and for all, because this time …it’s just bad.
I have almost nothing nice to say about this movie.
The first bad thing to mention about this film is the way it deals with two characters from prior entries. Martin Brody and his son, Sean. Since Roy Scheider didn’t want to do the third one, he obviously wouldn’t do the fourth one, so they decided to just kill off his character between films. This is common in these franchise films, but how they did it is an insult to his character. It’s stated he died from a heart attack, but according to his wife, it was “the fear of the shark that killed him.”
Fear? A guy who stood up to city officials, saved lives, risked his life, fought and blew up two sharks died from a heart attack brought on by fear? What? That ruins his character arc from the first film, where he goes from a meek man to the savior of the town.
Then there’s the treatment of his son. Sean was pretty much part of Brody’s emotional support in the first film, even the second one. He was this nice cute little kid. So what do they do with him? They have the shark kill him in the first few minutes of this stinker, of course. And he doesn’t just die. The shark bites off his arm, and he screams for help but no one can hear him because everyone is Christmas caroling (seriously), and then the shark kills him. It goes on for way too long. I know they wanted this to be a “revenge” story, but killing this particular character is one of the cruelest and most moronic things I’ve ever seen a movie series do.
As for the story, it’s utter nonsense. Everyone knows it, and everyone has made jokes about it — a shark traveling 1,465 miles just to get revenge. How does it know where these characters are going if it’s in the water the whole time? My only theory is it disguises itself with a trenchcoat and hat, and spies on the main characters. Given what happens, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Then there’s the whole revenge thing. Why is it doing this? Were the previous sharks’ friends and family of this one? Funny, as it contradicts a line from “Jaws 2” where they say sharks don’t do revenge. I read once that an earlier draft actually had a defined reason as to why this is happening. Apparently, there was supposed to be an evil voodoo witch out to get the Brody family. Yep, that was supposed to be a thing. Look, that is ridiculous, but at least it’s an actual reason as opposed to “it’s out to get us.”
There is almost no suspense in this film. The shark’s big reveal is just a shot of the shark swimming. Wow. By the way, the effects of this film are awful. The effects in the first film still hold up well today, but that’s because they wisely didn’t show much of the shark which helped the suspense. The second film tried to follow that, but its effects only hold up about 80% of the time. As for the third and fourth, they just decided to go all in, and it makes for some of the worst sequences I’ve seen from an ’80s blockbuster. Whenever I see the shark in this film or the third film, I just see a dead, lifeless prop. As a result, you never really feel like the characters are in danger. Things happen to them, but there’s a 90% chance they’ll live.
That’s because this movie has the lowest death count of the whole series. Only two people bite the dust. Sean and some random woman. And for some reason, they decided to treat us to two back-to-back fake outs, with Michael Caine and Mike’s friend Jake. In both of their cases, the shark kills them without a shadow of a doubt, but then they show up again almost perfectly fine. What’s the point of doing a death scene if you’re just doing it to cheat the audience? Caine even seemingly climbs out of the water onto a boat perfectly dry. How about that? According to Caine, the crew took so long to set up the shot, his clothes dried out naturally. What a great production team this film had.
What else is there to say about this thing? Oh yeah, the shark roars.
Overall, “Jaws: The Revenge” is terrible. There is no reason to view this film unless you want to see all the films in the series. If you want to watch the series, take my advice and stick to the first two but skip the third and fourth. They are not worth it.
John Billinger is an FHSU student in the Informatics Department and an avid movie buff.