Jaws (film)
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| Jaws | |
|---|---|
 Film poster |
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| Directed by | Steven Spielberg |
| Produced by | David Brown Richard D. Zanuck |
| Written by | Novel: Peter Benchley Screenplay: Peter Benchley Carl Gottlieb Uncredited: Howard Sackler |
| Starring | Roy Scheider Robert Shaw Richard Dreyfuss Lorraine Gary Murray Hamilton |
| Music by | John Williams |
| Cinematography | Bill Butler |
| Editing by | Verna Fields |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
| Release date(s) | June 20, 1975 |
| Running time | 124 minutes |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $7,000,000 |
| Gross revenue | Domestic $282,417,529 Worldwide $470,653,000 |
| Followed by | Jaws 2 |
| Official website | |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Jaws is a 1975 thriller/ horror film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on Peter Benchley's best-selling novel inspired by the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916. The police chief of Amity Island, a fictional summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from a great white shark by closing the beach, only to be overruled by the town council, which wants the beach to remain open to draw a profit from tourists. After several attacks, the police chief enlists the help of a marine biologist and a professional shark hunter. Roy Scheider stars as police chief Martin Brody, Richard Dreyfuss as marine biologist Matt Hooper, Robert Shaw as shark hunter Quint, Lorraine Gary as Brody's wife Ellen and Murray Hamilton as Mayor Vaughn.
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. Due to the film's success in advance screenings, studio executives decided to distribute it in a much wider release than ever before. The Omen followed suit in the summer of 1976, and then Star Wars one year later in 1977, cementing the notion for movie studios to distribute their big-release action and adventure pictures (commonly referred to as tentpole pictures) during the summer. The film was followed by three sequels, none with the participation of Spielberg or Benchley. Jaws 2 (1978), Jaws 3-D (1983) and Jaws: The Revenge (1987). A video game entitled Jaws Unleashed was later made in 2005.
Plot
The film begins at a late night/early morning beach party on Amity Island, from which a young woman named Christine Watkins ( Susan Backlinie) leaves to go swimming. While in the water, she is suddenly jerked and drawn under the surface by an unseen force. The next morning, police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) is notified that Chrissie is missing. Brody and his deputy, Hendricks, find her body, which has been mutilated, washed up on the shore. The medical examiner informs Brody that the victim's death was due to a shark attack. Brody decides to close the beaches, but before he can he is intercepted and overruled by town Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton), who fears that reports of a shark attack will ruin the summer tourist season, especially the upcoming Fourth of July celebration, which is the town's major source of income. The medical examiner says he was wrong about a shark attack and tells Brody that it was a boating accident. Brody reluctantly permits the "boating accident" story.
Later that day, a young boy named Alex Kintner is attacked and eaten by a shark while swimming off a crowded beach. His mother places a $3,000 bounty on the animal, sparking an amateur shark hunting frenzy and attracting the attention of the professional shark hunter Quint ( Robert Shaw). Quint interrupts a town meeting (by scratching his nails on a nearby chalkboard) to offer his services; his demand for $10,000 is taken "under advisement". Brought in by Brody, marine biologist Matt Hooper ( Richard Dreyfuss) conducts an autopsy of the first victim and concludes she was killed by a shark. A large tiger shark is caught by a group of novice fishermen, leading the town to believe the problem is solved, but an unconvinced Hooper, noting that the bite radius on Watkins' injuries and the tiger shark's mouth are different, asks to examine the contents of the shark's stomach. Because Vaughn refuses to make the "operation" public (for fear that cutting the shark open would reveal the dead Kintner boy), Brody and Hooper return after dark and learn that the captured shark does not have human remains inside its entrails. Using Hooper's state-of-the-art boat, they come across the half-sunken wreckage of a local fishing vessel. Hooper dons a wetsuit and discovers another victim, the boat's owner Ben Gardener. He discovers a great white shark's tooth in the hull, but drops it after he sees the head of the owner, therefore leaving no proof of the shark. Vaughn still refuses to close the beach on the Fourth of July, therefore, the beaches are covered in tourists. While a prank triggers a false alarm and draws the authorities' attention, the real shark enters an estuary, kills another man, and nearly kills one of Brody's sons. Brody forces the stunned mayor to hire Quint. Brody and Hooper join the hunter on his boat, the Orca, and the trio set out to kill the man-eater.
At sea, Brody is given the task of laying a chum line, while Quint uses a large fishing pole to try to snag the shark; the first results are inconclusive. As Brody continues his task, the enormous shark suddenly looms up behind the boat. After a horrified Brody announces its presence ("You're gonna need a bigger boat!"), Quint and Hooper watch the great white circle the Orca and estimate that the new arrival weighs 3 tons (2.7 metric tonnes) and is 25 feet (8 m) long, an abnormally large great white shark. Quint harpoons the shark with a line attached to a flotation barrel, designed to prevent the shark from being able to submerge as well as to track it on the surface; but the shark pulls the barrel under and disappears. Night falls without another sighting; therefore the men retire to the boat's cabin where Quint and Hooper show off each other's scars from past encounters of either man or beast. After Brody decides not to show off his appendix scar, he notices another scar on Quint which is a removed tattoo of a ship he served on in the Navy. Quint tells of his experience with sharks as a survivor of the World War II sinking of the USS Indianapolis. The shark reappears, damages the boat's hull, and slips away before the men can harm it. In the morning, while the men make repairs to the engine, the barrel suddenly reappears at the stern. Quint destroys the radio to prevent Brody from calling the Coast Guard for help. The shark attacks again, and after a long chase, Quint harpoons it to another barrel. The men tie the barrels to the stern; but the shark drags the ship backwards, forcing water onto the deck and into the engine, flooding it. Quint harpoons it again, attaching three barrels in all to the shark, while the animal continues to tow them. Quint is about to cut the ropes with his machete when the cleats are pulled off the stern. Hooper asks Quint if he has ever encountered a shark that is able to submerge with three barrels on it, Quint responds that he has never encountered this situation before and for the first time appears unsure of what to do. The shark continues to attack the boat and Quint powers his boat, retreating towards shore with the shark in pursuit. Quint hopes to draw the shark into shallow waters to beach it, that will cause it to drown. In his obsession to kill the shark, Quint overloads his damaged engine, causing it to explode.
With the Orca immobilized, the trio try a desperate approach; Hooper dons his scuba gear and enters the ocean inside a shark proof cage, intending to stab the shark in the mouth with a hypodermic spear filled with strychnine nitrate. The shark instead destroys the cage, causing Hooper to lose the spear and flee to the seabed. As Quint and Brody raise the remnants of the cage, the shark throws itself onto the boat, crushing the transom and causing the boat to begin sinking. Quint slides into the shark's mouth, slashing at it in vain with his machete, before being pulled under and devoured. Brody retreats to the boat's cabin, which is now partly submerged, and throws a pressurized air tank into the shark's mouth as it rams its way into the boat. The shark leaves the sinking boat and Brody takes Quint's M1 Garand rifle and climbs the mast of the boat. He temporarily fends off the attacker with a harpoon but as the boat sinks even more The shark circles around and charges one last time at Brody, who is now only a foot or so above the water. Brody sees the tank in the shark's mouth starts firing the rifle at it. He snarls "Smile,you son of a-", and shoots the highly presurized tank, which blows the shark's head off and sends the rest of its body to the bottom of the ocean in a cloud of blood. Hooper surfaces and reunites with Brody, whereupon the two survivors use the leftover barrels to construct a makeshift raft and paddle back to Amity Island.
Production
The film was produced by Richard Zanuck and David Brown, who purchased the film rights to Benchley's novel in 1973 for approximately $250,000. His novel was loosely based on a real-life event in the summer of 1916 when a series of shark attacks killed four people along the New Jersey coast and triggered a media frenzy. Though he was not their first choice as a director, the producers signed Spielberg to direct before the release of his first theatrical film, The Sugarland Express (also a Zanuck/Brown production). When they purchased the rights to his novel, the producers guaranteed that the author would write the first draft of the screenplay. Overall, Benchley wrote three drafts before deciding to bow out of the project (although he appeared in the final film, a cameo appearance as a news reporter). Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Howard Sackler happened to be in Los Angeles when the filmmakers began looking for another writer and offered to do an uncredited rewrite, and since the producers and Spielberg were unhappy with Benchley's drafts, they quickly accepted his offer. Spielberg sent the script to Carl Gottlieb (who appears in a supporting acting role in the film as Meadows, the politically connected reporter), asking for advice. Gottlieb rewrote most scenes during principal photography, and John Milius contributed dialogue polishes. Spielberg has claimed that he prepared his own draft, although it is unclear if the other screenwriters drew on his material. The authorship of Quint's monologue about the fate of the cruiser USS Indianapolis has caused substantial controversy as to who deserves the most credit for the speech. Spielberg tactfully describes it as a collaboration among John Milius, Howard Sackler and actor Robert Shaw. Gottlieb gives primary credit to Shaw, downplaying Milius' contribution.
Three mechanical sharks were made for the production: a full model for underwater shots, one that turned from left to right, with the left side completely exposed to the internal machinery, and a similar right to left model, with the right side exposed. Their construction was supervised by production designer Joe Alves and special effects artist Bob Mattey. After the sharks were completed, they were shipped to the shooting location, but unfortunately had not been tested in water and when placed in the ocean the full model sank to the ocean floor. A team of divers retrieved it.
Location shooting occurred on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, chosen because the ocean had a sandy bottom while 12 miles (19 km) out at sea. This helped the mechanical sharks to operate smoothly and still provide a realistic location. Still, the film had a famously troubled shoot and went considerably over budget. Shooting at sea led to many delays: unwanted sailboats drifted into frame, cameras were soaked, and even the Orca began to sink with the actors onboard. The mechanical shark frequently malfunctioned, due to the hydraulic innards being corroded by salt water. The three mechanical sharks were collectively nicknamed "Bruce" by the production team after Spielberg's lawyer, and Spielberg called one of the sharks "the Great White turd". Disgruntled crew members gave the film the nickname "Flaws".
To some degree, the delays in the production proved serendipitous. 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. This forced restraint is widely thought to have increased the suspense of these scenes, giving it a Hitchcockian tone.
The scene where Hooper discovers a body in the hull of the wrecked boat was added after an initial screening of the film. After reactions to that screening, Spielberg said he was greedy for "one more scream" and, with $3,000 of his own money, financed the scene after he was denied funding from Universal Studios. The studios thought that there was nothing wrong with the film. The added scene is sometimes considered a continuity error: When Brody tries to convince the mayor to close the beaches, he fails to mention the death to bolster his argument. It should be noted that Hooper does make note of the shark tooth found upon discovering this corpse. He tells the mayor that he pulled a large tooth out of Ben Gardner's boat, however when asked to present the tooth as proof he regretfully informs the mayor that he was startled and dropped the evidence.
Footage of real sharks was shot by Ron and Valerie Taylor in the waters off Australia, with a dwarf actor in a miniature shark cage to create the illusion that the shark was enormous. Originally, the script had the shark killing Hooper in the shark cage, but while filming, one of the sharks became trapped in the girdle of the cage, and proceeded to tear the cage apart. Luckily, the cage was empty at the time, so the script was changed to allow Matt Hooper to live and the cage to be empty. Despite the rare footage of a great white shark exhibiting violent behaviour, only a handful of these shots were used in the finished film.
The role of Quint was originally offered to actors Lee Marvin and Sterling Hayden, both of whom passed. Producers Zanuck and Brown had just finished working with Robert Shaw on The Sting, and suggested him to Spielberg as a possible Quint. Roy Scheider became interested in the project after overhearing a screenwriter and Spielberg at a party talking about having the shark jump up onto a boat. Richard Dreyfuss initially passed on the role of Matt Hooper, but after seeing a screening of a film he had just done called The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, he thought his performance in that film was awful. He immediately called Spielberg back and accepted the Matt Hooper role (fearing that no one would want to hire him once Kravitz was released.) The first person actually cast for the film was Lorraine Gary, the wife of then-studio chief Sid Sheinberg.
Reaction
Box office performance
Jaws was the first film to apply the concept of "wide release" in its distribution pattern. As such, it is an important film in the history of film distribution and marketing.
Up until Jaws was released, films had opened slowly, usually in a few theaters in major cities, then "building" across the country—distributors sending more prints to more cities, as the film was perceived to be a success. However, Jaws was the first film to use Sidney Sheinberg's scheme of "wide release"—the until then unheard-of practice of opening the same picture nationwide, in hundreds of screens simultaneously, coupled with a nation-wide marketing campaign. Scheinberg's rationale was that nationwide marketing costs would be amortized at a more favorable rate per print than if a slow, scaled release were carried out. Scheinberg's gamble paid off, Jaws becoming the first film in motion picture history to cross the $100 million mark. The success of Jaws created the new paradigm of distributing and marketing major motion pictures simultaneously, a business practice which continues today.
When Jaws was released on June 20, 1975, it opened at 409 theaters. The release was subsequently expanded on July 25 to a total of 675 theaters—until then the largest simultaneous distribution of the same film in motion picture distribution history. On its first weekend, Jaws grossed more than $7 million, and was the top grosser for the following five weeks. During its run in theaters, the film beat the $89 million domestic rentals of the reigning box-office champion, The Exorcist, becoming the first film to reach more than $100 million in theatrical rentals, the money paid to the studio distributors out of the total box office gross. Eventually, Jaws grossed more than $470 million worldwide (around $1.85 billion in 2006 dollars) and was the highest grossing box-office hit until Star Wars debuted two years later.
Jaws and Star Wars are considered in retrospect to have marked the beginning of the new business paradigm in American filmmaking, and the beginning of the end of the New Hollywood period.
Awards and critical reception
Jaws won Academy Awards for Film Editing, Music (Original Score) and Sound. It was also nominated for Best Picture, although Spielberg was not nominated for Best Director. Jaws was #48 on American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Movies, a list of the greatest American films of all time, and #2 on a similar list for thrillers, 100 Years... 100 Thrills. It was #1 in the Bravo network's five-hour miniseries The 100 Scariest Movie Moments (2004) and #1 on the Wayne State University film students' list of the Top 20 Films of the 20th Century (2007).. The shark was anointed #18 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains. In 2001 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. In 2005, the American Film Institute voted Roy Scheider's line "You're gonna need a bigger boat" as number 35 on its list of the top 100 movie quotes. John Williams's score was ranked at #6 on AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores.
The film received mostly positive reviews. In his original review, Roger Ebert called it "a sensationally effective action picture, a scary thriller that works all the better because it's populated with characters that have been developed into human beings". Variety's A.D. Murphy praised Spielberg's directorial skills, and called Robert Shaw's performance "absolutely magnificent". Pauline Kael called it "the most cheerfully perverse scare movie ever made... [with] more zest than an early Woody Allen picture, a lot more electricity, [and] it's funny in a Woody Allen sort of way".
The film was not without its detractors. Vincent Canby, of The New York Times, said "It's a measure of how the film operates that not once do we feel particular sympathy for any of the shark's victims...In the best films, characters are revealed in terms of the action. In movies like Jaws, characters are simply functions of the action. They're at its service. Characters are like stage hands who move props around and deliver information when it's necessary," but also noted that "It's the sort of nonsense that can be a good deal of fun". Los Angeles Times critic Charles Champlin disagreed with the film's PG rating, saying that "Jaws is too gruesome for children, and likely to turn the stomach of the impressionable at any age." He goes on to say: "It is a coarse-grained and exploitive work which depends on excess for its impact. Ashore it is a bore, awkwardly staged and lumpily written". The most widespread criticism of the film is the artificiality of the mechanical shark, although it is only seen in the final moments of the film, and is often brushed over by reviewers.
Inspirations and influences
Jaws bears similarities to several literary and artistic works, most notably Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. The character of Quint strongly resembles Captain Ahab, the obsessed captain of the Pequod who devotes his life to hunting a sperm whale. Quint's monologue reveals his similar vendetta against sharks, and even his boat, the Orca, is named after the only natural enemy of sharks. In the novel and original screenplay, Quint dies after being dragged under the ocean by a harpoon tied to his leg, similar to Ahab's death in Melville's novel. A direct reference to these similarities may be found in the original screenplay, which introduced Quint by showing him watching the film version of Moby-Dick. His laughter throughout makes people get up and leave the theatre (Wesley Strick's screenplay for Cape Fear features a similar scene). However, the scene from Moby-Dick could not be licensed from Gregory Peck, the owner of the rights. Some have also noticed the influences of two 1950s horror films, The Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Monster That Challenged the World.
Jaws was a key film in establishing the benefits of a wide national release backed by heavy media advertising, rather than a progressive release that let a film slowly enter new markets and build support over a period of time. Rather than let the film gain notice by word-of-mouth, Hollywood launched a successful television marketing campaign for the film, which added another $700,000 to the cost. The wide national release pattern would become standard practice for high-profile movies in the late 1970s and afterward.
The film conjured up so many scares that beach attendance was down in the summer of 1975 due to its profound impact. Though a horror classic (its opening sequence was voted the scariest scene ever by a Bravo Halloween TV special), the film is widely recognized as being responsible for fearsome and inaccurate stereotypes about sharks and their behaviour. Benchley has said that he would never have written the original novel had he known what sharks are really like in the wild. He later wrote Shark Trouble, a non-fiction book about shark behaviour and Shark Life, another non-fiction book describing his dives with sharks. Conservation groups have bemoaned the fact that the film has made it considerably harder to convince the public that sharks should be protected. Jaws set the template for many future horror films, so much so that the script for Ridley Scott's 1979 science fiction film Alien was pitched to studio executives with one tag line: "Jaws in space.". A line from Jaws also inspired the name of Bryan Singer's production company Bad Hat Harry productions, as it is his favorite film. The film has been adapted into two video games, a theme park ride at Universal Studios Florida, and two musicals: "JAWS The Musical!", which premiered in the summer of 2004 at the Minnesota Fringe Festival; and " Giant Killer Shark: The Musical," which premiered in the summer of 2006 at the Toronto Fringe Festival.
Music
John Williams contributed the Academy-Award winning film score, which was ranked #6 on AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores. The main "shark" theme, a simple alternating pattern of two notes, E and F, became a classic piece of suspense music, synonymous with approaching danger (see leading tone). The soundtrack piece was performed by tuba player Tommy Johnson. When asked by Johnson why the melody was written in such a high register and not played by the more appropriate French horn, Williams responded that he wanted it to sound "a little more threatening". When the piece was first played for Spielberg, he was said to have laughed at John Williams, thinking that it was a joke. 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. He had previously scored Spielberg's feature film debut The Sugarland Express, and went on to collaborate with him on almost all of his films.
The score contains echoes of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, particularly the opening of "The Adoration of the Earth". Another influence may have been Ed Plumb's score for Walt Disney's Bambi, which uses a low, repeating musical motif to suggest imminent danger from the off-screen threat of Man. The music has drawn comparisons to Bernard Herrman's score for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, in which the music enhances the presence of an unseen terror, in this case the shark.
There are various interpretations on the meaning and effectiveness of the theme. Some have thought the two-note expression is intended to mimic the shark's heartbeat, beginning slow and controlled as the killer hunts, and rising to a frenzied, shrieking climax as it approaches its prey. One critic believes the true strength of the score is its ability to create a "harsh silence," abruptly cutting away from the music right before it climaxes. Furthermore, the audience is conditioned to associate the shark with its theme, since the score is never used as a red herring. It only plays when the real shark appears. This is later exploited when the shark suddenly appears with no musical introduction. Regardless of the meaning behind it, the theme is widely acknowledged as one of the most recognized scores of all time.
Soundtrack
The original soundtrack for Jaws was released by MCA in 1975, and as a CD in 1992, including roughly a half hour of music that John Williams redid for the album. In 2000, the score underwent two rushed soundtrack releases: one in a re-recording of the entire Jaws score performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and conducted by Joel McNeely; and another to coincide with the release of the 25th anniversary DVD by Decca/Universal, featuring the entire 51 min. of the original score. Fans prefer the Decca release over the Varèse Sarabande re-recording. The latter version has been criticized for changing the original tempo and instrumentation, although it is complimented for its improved sound quality.
Differences from the novel
The most significant change from the novel is the removal of an affair between Ellen and Matt Hooper. In the novel, Brody is a native of Amity; his wife, Ellen, was previously a member of the wealthy New York summer holiday set before she married him. Ellen's despair with her life in Amity leads to a short sexual encounter between her and Hooper. In the film, Brody moved to Amity Island from New York with his family to take up the position of the chief of police, and the relationship between Ellen and Hooper is removed.
There are several other differences:
- Brody and his wife have three sons: Billy, Martin Jr. and Sean. In the movie, there are only two Brody children, Mike and Sean.
- In the novel, Hooper and Mrs. Brody discover they have vague childhood history together, and end up having an affair. This causes more tension aboard the boat between Hooper and Brody.
- Hooper tries to kill the shark with a bangstick, but during the dive he is bitten and killed, then shot accidentally in the neck by Brody when the shark surfaces with Hooper still in its mouth. He survives in the film. In the original script Hooper would have also died in the film, but this was changed during production.
- The mayor keeps the beaches open partly because of his Mafia ties.
- The shark devours a boy and a senior citizen in one afternoon, but in the movie only the boy, Alex Kintner, is the victim.
- All events in the final reel of the film aboard the boat occur in one unbroken trip at sea, while in the novel the men safely return to Amity's harbour several times.
- Quint's monologue about the USS Indianapolis is absent from the novel and the original screenplay.
- In the novel, The shark does not die by an exploding tank but by simply dying of its many wounds and sinking to the ocean floor.
- Quint's foot becomes tangled in the barrel ropes and he is pulled underwater by the shark, drowning. In the film, he is eaten by the shark.
- In the novel, Quint is very tall, has a long crooked nose and is completely bald, in the film he's not very tall, he has hair and he has a normal nose.
Releases and sequels
The first laserdisc title marketed in North America was the MCA DiscoVision release of Jaws in 1978. A second LaserDisc was later released, under MCA/Universal Home Video's "Signature Collection" imprint. This release was an elaborate boxset, which included the film, along with deleted scenes and outtakes, a two-hour documentary on the making of the film, a copy of the novel "Jaws", and a CD of John Williams' soundtrack.
Jaws was first released on DVD as an anniversary collector's edition in 2000 for the film's 25th anniversary. It featured a 50-minute documentary on the making of the film, with interviews from Steven Spielberg, Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Peter Benchley and other cast and crew members. Other extras included deleted scenes, outtakes, production photos, and storyboards. In June 2005, on the 30th anniversary of the film's release, a festival named JawsFest was held in Martha's Vineyard. Jaws was then re-released on DVD, this time including the full two-hour documentary produced by Laurent Bouzereau for the LaserDisc. As well as containing the same bonus features the previous DVD contained, it included a previously unavailable interview with Spielberg conducted on the set of Jaws in 1975.
In the 2000s, an independent group of fans produced a feature length documentary. The Shark is Still Working features interviews with a range of cast and crew from the film, and some from the sequels. It is narrated by Roy Scheider and dedicated to Peter Benchley.
Jaws spawned three sequels, which failed to match the success of the original. Spielberg was unavailable to do a sequel, as he was working on Close Encounters of the Third Kind with Richard Dreyfuss. Jaws 2 was directed by Jeannot Szwarc; Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary and Murray Hamilton reprised their roles from the original film. The next film, Jaws 3-D, directed by Joe Alves, was released in the 3-D format, although the effect did not transfer to television or home video, where it was renamed Jaws 3. Dennis Quaid as Michael Brody and Louis Gossett Jr starred in the movie. Jaws: The Revenge, directed by Joseph Sargent, featured the return of Lorraine Gary, and is considered one of the worst movies ever made. While all three sequels made a profit at the box office (Jaws 2 and Jaws 3-D are among the top 20 highest-grossing films of their respective years), critics and audiences were generally dissatisfied with the films.