Greetings,
Today, I will step away from my Jaws reviews to discuss the impact of that movie on the industry at large. And, trust, it had a huge impact. Now whether it was good or bad is something that should be dealt with on a case by case basis. Or should I say, a movie by movie basis.
That's right. It was not only the three sequels to the original Jaws that followed in its footsteps. Or tried to follow and mostly ended up barely wobbling along. It has been an epidemic since the seventies for people who want to make a movie but have zero ideas. When all else fails to them, they just say "killer shark!", and go on to embarrass themselves. As most of us know, these knockoffs are generally pretty bad. And when I say pretty bad, I mean excruciatingly painful to watch.
I don't even know where to begin with the bad ones, because they are so plentiful. I suppose some of the worst would be the Shark Attack movies. They had the first one and three subsequent sequels, the third of which I found most . . . entertaining? It was titled Shark Attack 3: Megalodon. If you know anything about the prehistoric megalodon shark, you know that it was purported to be about five times the size of a great white. And if you know anything about these kinds of movies, you know that they don't exactly have huge budgets. So it would be difficult for them to build a fake megalodon and have it be scaled accurately. What do they do as a solution? They do what all these movies do. "Paging the Stock Footage Fairy! You are needed on the set!"
Yeah, all of these movies are basically a lot of stock footage of great white sharks. There's no shame in it, per se. I think even Jaws itself had some for the underwater cage scenes. I could be wrong about that. But you can't let it dominate, and then CGI in people and boats getting swallowed whole. Although, I must admit, watching a guy literally jet ski himself into the open mouth of a shark was priceless. It's online. Look it up.
Now using stock footage is easy when your movie is centered around a great white shark or a shark that could pass for one. But if you got creative, sort of, with your script, you are out of luck. Such is the case with classics such as Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus and Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. And I'm assuming that at some point in that second one they mated, because we eventually got Sharktopus. But when it comes to the "fantasy" shark movies, the one that takes the cake is 2-Headed Shark Attack, apparently, not related to the previously mentioned Shark Attack movies. Now this shameful film, if you can even call it that, stars Charlie O'Connell (younger brother of Jerry) as a professor. Mm-kay. His wife is played by Carmen Electra. It just keeps getting better, doesn't it? I can't remember what she does for a living, but I think they attempt and fail to make her some kind of smart person, too. We also have Brooke Hogan portraying . . . a girl . . . with boobs . . . and really bad line delivery. Do they know they could've gotten someone to do that for a lot less money than she probably demanded? And, in case you couldn't figure it out from the title, there is a 2-headed shark, and it attacks. Oh, mercy, who gives these people money?
Here's the good news. Among all these sub-par movies, we did get a few that were genuinely good. One was 1999's Deep Blue Sea. This one had a fresh plot, pretty good writing, and very talented cast members, like Samuel L. Jackson and Stellan Skarsgard. And the sharks were fairly believable. Another good one is the more recent Shark Night 3D. I think this one pleasantly surprised a lot of people, myself included. Again, we got an original plot, a good script and another talented group of actors. One of my favorites in this is Donal Logue, entertaining as always, and I was really impressed by Katherine McPhee, who has since continued to prove that she has some acting chops. There's also another movie called 12 Days of Terror which I have yet to see, but I heard it was also very good. That was a docudrama made for the Discovery Channel, based on the 1916 Jersey Shore shark attacks. Interestingly enough, this apparently played a part in Peter Benchley's inspiration to write Jaws. It's like full circle.
In conclusion, Jaws gave us many good things and, through no fault of its own, some really bad things. While most of these knockoffs are not really worth our time, it is nice to see that when movie makers are willing to be creative and work hard to have a good plot, we can get something really enjoyable out of it.
Love and full moons,
Becky the Writer
