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Quint's Replies
You should view Jaws as 2 movies. The first half is your summer blockbuster. But its also a built up to slowly make you familiar with the three leading characters (in both meanings). And then, the second half, Jaws begins to shine. The shark, except for a few scenes, completely moves into the background as some abstract force of nature. But the real center are the three people on this small boat, which is everything which keeps them away from certain death. And this concludes into a stage where civilization doenst that much anymore. And it also shows that cutting away civilization doesnt always means that humans become worse. Quint spent most of his life in such scenarios and therefor handles that situation very well (beside that he destroyed their only tool of rescue ;) ). Hooper on the other side wasnt able to handle that scenario as good, but also started to realize almost at the end of the movie that they had to fight together to survive. Brody, finally, was simply at a state of shock. So this is something completely different then a shark eating tourists from the beach drive-in ;) .
And Chinatown got even two likeable characters (to bad one of them died). And Psycho indeed is something completely different then Jaws. Jaws (nor Godfather ;) ) doesnt even come near the complexity and awesomeness of Psycho. And Scarface is the child of a complete different era then Godfather. But de Palma knew whats important with movies. You have to built up an emotional bond with someone (even a mob boss). Otherwise the movie is simply a tech demo :) . And Hitchcock knew that better then anyone. He was even able to built up support for an mass murderer. And that bond was so tight, that the movie viewers even was as shocked as Norman when the car stopped sinking into the swamp for a brief moment. We supported a mass murderer at one of his crimes. Thats how important it is to built up such a bond. Otherwise .... Norman kills another person .... boring :) .
mxpower, you arent going to compare an average mob movie like Godfather with THE movie classic Citizen Kane? A movie with more layers of story then most mob movies added together :) .
Renovatio, stating Jaws as a kids amusement ride is like stating that Psycho is simply a thriller. Plain wrong. Jaws is at its core a movie about 3 men against nature. And how they interact with each other when they are physically and psychological far away from civilization.
Theres absolutley nothing similiar a ordinary gangster movie like Godfather could offer to movie goers. Using anti heroes wasnt anything new at all. It was common during the 1960s or even the 1930s (most of Cagneys Mafia movies). The violent scenes werent much of a surprise and were already shown at war movies of that era. So no, Godfather isnt anything special at all. Its just an average and violent mob movie like many others. Even with the problem that there are no likeable characters and therefor noone feels with any of this characters. So the shootings are like some football match. It doesnt matter whom dies or not. Compare that with real good mob movies like Scarface with Al Pacino. Scarface is as much unlikeable as possible. But you feel with him and you are amazed how long he survives at the films final scene. Theres no such a feeling at Godfather. So sorry to tell, and I really wanted to avoid that review for Godfather fans (cause I know that this average movie is a "religion" for many people out there ;) ), but Godfather is simply average. Brando is the one which saves that movie from being less then average.
Jaws on the other side has the quality only Hitchcock movies offer otherwise: For the simple ones Hitchcok movies and Jaws are nothing else then thrillers. For the movie goers like Truffaut (everyone should read his interview series with Hitchcock) there are far more layers beneath this surface. Thats why Jaws is way more the "godfather" of 1970s style movies then "The Godfather" itself. And yes, blockbuster movies started with the success of Jaws. But Hitchcock movies also were amazingly succesful and still most of them had way more to offer then any mob movie.
There is no such thing as whitewashing, cause the term itself is pure racism. Its part of every culture to copy tales from other cutlutures. Thats called cultural exchange. If you dont like that cultures exchange tales (that works BTW in any way ... japanese copy european tales so often, its not possible to get an overview of that anymore. And thats perfectly fine, cause it shows that not only japanese have interesting stories to tell) then try to get some contact information of the KKK. They surely appreciate your view of isolated cultures.
BTW People Of Color is the next racist trash. White is also a color. So its still white people, black people, etc. If its necesarry at all to differ people by their skin color (something only racists too on a regular base).
Thats what I meant. You could easily see Jaws just as a horror film. Like you could see, for example, Psycho as just another thriller. But there are even postcapitalism layers there (according to Ziscek). The same is IMHO true for Jaws. The first hlf ist the usual "lighthearted" horror film (lighthearted in the sense of no deep meaning - surely except the uncommon family history of the Brodys which results in an weird family relationship). But the second half is simply "Men against themselves and the nature" in a sense not often seen even in an 1970s movie. The Godfather on the other side had just what it clearly showed. No further layer (beside the obvious political one you mentioned) and no mystery. Im not sure if Spielberg has done thos layers by accident (like most postmodern layers at Blade Runner which Ridley Scott doenst unterstand til this day :) ) or this was one of his few movies which was not just excellent, but instead a masterpiece. But perhaps I see there too much cause of the excellent play of not only Shaw, but also Scheider.
Thats completely wrong. The shark was by far the most authentic one in most shark movies Ive seen. Underwater sequences looked amazingly real (not just the ones with real sharks indeed) compared with anything computer rendered (seems like its too expensive to do authentic underwater rendering. So the sharks always loked like really cheap computer sculptures from the Commodore Amiga era). There was only one mistake Spielberg made .... to show the shark on surface. It still looked amazing, but it was clear at this scene that we are watching a machine instead of a real shark. I presume that was forced by the studios like it was at "It came from outer space" (then the aliens was never seen, but the studio forced the director to show the alien at least once at the movies and this was the most laughable scene of an otherwise scifi classic). They should have chosen to do the scene like it was at the book. That way the shark would have been always part of our own imagination. And that, as we know from Hitchcock, is the place were the real horror is located :) .
Conclusio: No, todays "sharks" wont look even nearly as good as this pratical effect. At least as long as they are just part of underwater scenes. On the surface each and every shark model looks similiar laughable. Practical or computer rendered.