'Jaws 2' movie review
Jaws 2 (1978)
Directed by Jeannot Szwarc
Written by Carl Gottlieb and Howard Sackler, based on characters created by Peter Benchley
Starring: Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Mark Gilpin. Ann Dusenberry
Martin Brody: But I'm telling you, and I'm telling everybody at this table that that's a shark! And I know what a shark looks like, because I've seen one up close. And you'd better do something about this one, because I don't intend to go through that hell again!
With the phenomenal success of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws - with its $260 million domestic gross ($470 million worldwide), it’s not surprising that Universal Studios commissioned a sequel while the blockbuster was still in its record-setting theatrical run. Producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown, who didn’t want their competition to make Jaws 2, egan developing a follow-up story as early as the fall of 1975.
Zanuck and Brown also wanted Spielberg to direct Jaws 2, but he refused. Spielberg did not want to go through another difficult on-location shoot at sea and deal with balky mechanical sharks again. He also believed that Jaws was the definitive shark movie and that doing a sequel would be a cheap parlor trick.
Undeterred, the producers hired John D. Hancock (Bang the Drum Slowly) to direct, but he was fired in June of 1977 because his take on the story was too dark and serious, French director Jeannot Szwarc was chosen to replace Hancock, and Jaws scribes Harold Sackler and Carl Gottlieb co-wrote the final script that became Jaws 2.
Len Peterson: Brody, this is nothing! Seaweed, mud, something on the lens...
Martin Brody: Lens my ass!
Len Peterson: You're damn right it's your ass!
Set four years after the first movie, Jaws 2 takes viewers back to the fictional summer resort town of Amity Island. Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) is still mayor, apparently none the wiser after the Summer of the Shark nearly wrecked Amity’s tourist-dependent economy.
He’s still at odds with his police chief, Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), regarding the town government’s mishandling of the shark attacks that put Amity on the map four years before. Brody, a former New York City police officer, believes Vaughn and the town council placed economic concerns ahead of public safety then, and would do it again in the future.
Unfortunately, Brody’s suspicions prove correct. After two divers and a water skier are killed in the waters off Amity, the town’s top cop tells Vaughn and his cronies that another shark is staking out a hunting ground.
As George Santayana said: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” So it is with Amity’s politicians. Once again, public safety issues take a back seat to economic interests; Vaughn poo-poohs Brody’s suggestion to close the beaches so that a pending property development deal does not fall through.
My Take
Released in June of 1978, Jaws 2 was a commercially successful project for Universal. It earned $102, 922,000 in the U.S. Though it did not earn as much as Jaws, it became the top-earning sequel in movie history until 20th Century Fox released The Empire Strikes Back two years later.
Jaws 2 is also the best of the three sequel movies made between 1978 and 1987, even though it is essentially a rehashed version of Jaws combined with elements of teen slashers a la Friday the 13th and Halloween.
Although Szwarc was able to reproduce the look of Spielberg’s now-classic horror-adventure thriller thanks to the participation of Jaws production designer Joe Alves, Jaws 2 fails to rise to the franchise “mother ship’s” high level of storytelling.
Szwarc gets kudos for following Spielberg’s lead and shooting Jaws 2 on location in Martha’s Vineyard, giving his movie a visual and emotional connection to its predecessor.
Szwarc also gets reliable performances from his cast, which includes Jaws veterans Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, and Jeffrey Kramer. Their presence in Jaws 2 is the emotional anchor that makes the movie at least bearable.
However, the director is tripped up by the script’s uneasy blend of teens in danger and the writers’ lazy rehashing of Jaws’ plot. This wasn’t Szwarc’s fault. Universal had nixed Howard Sackler’s original idea to make Jaws 2 a prequel about a young Quint (Robert Shaw’s character in Jaws) and the USS Indianapolis and asked for a direct sequel.
Thus, instead of an original and potentially powerful story, Jaws 2 is simply an exercise in variations on Jaws’ established themes. Plot points such as Brody’s futile efforts to get his bosses to see reason and close the beaches are repeated, and some of Jaws’ iconic scare-scenes and lines are shamelessly ripped off.
Sean Brody: What's after Cable Junction?
Bob: The Atlantic. Then Ireland.
The makers of Jaws 2 also err badly by forgetting that Spielberg’s original movie is scary because he doesn’t show the great white shark until Jaws’ third act. While this use of a Hitchcockian device was mostly caused by technical problems on location,it works well. After all, the thought of an unseen predator stalking its prey in the ocean is more unnerving than the sight of an obviously man-made mechanical shark.
In Jaws 2, Szwarc and cinematographer Michael Butler ignore the “less is more” philosophy of visual titillation and show the shark far too often, perhaps in the belief that “more is better.”
The film makers’ over reliance on mechanical shark footage may have worked out better had Jaws 2 been produced in the late 1990s. At least then Universal could have hired a special effects company to create more lifelike digital sharks.
Jaws 2, however, was made in the late 1970s and had to use to combine on-location shots of several mechanical sharks with live-action footage of great white sharks filmed by Ron and Valerie Taylor.
Spielberg used the same techniques in Jaws, but although Jaws 2’s sharks were more advanced than 1975’s “Bruce,” they look fake. Worse, they’re seen so often and in too many close-up shots that their obvious fakeness distracts from the story the movie tries to tell.
The only perfect element in Jaws 2 is Academy Award-winning composer John Williams’ score. Williams had also scored the original movie and won his second Oscar (of four overall) for Best Score (1975), and he combined some of his Jaws material with several new musical themes.
All in all, Jaws 2 is a watchable if rather formulaic film that is best seen if the viewer does not compare it to Spielberg’s classic. As anyone who’s seen Somewhere in Time can attest to, Szwarc is not a bad director when he is given good material to work with. In Jaws 2, he does what he can with the so-so script and a trio of mechanical sharks.
The result, a big money-winner for Universal, but a soggy and subpar sequel for the rest of us.
DVD Specifications
Special Features
The Making of Jaws 2
Jaws 2: A Portait by Actor Keith Gordon
John Williams: The Music of Jaws 2
The "French" Joke
Deleted Scenes
Production Photographs
Storyboards
Shark Facts
Theatrical Trailer
Production Notes
Cast and Filmmakers
Recommendations
Video
Audio
Subtitles
Discs
Playback
Region 1
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