LogFAQs > #930425176

7. Jaws (23.5 points)
Nominated by: paulg235 (0/5 remaining)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1fu_sA7XhE

Importance: 10
Fear: 6
Snake: 7.5

Jaws is a movie you're pretty much born knowing. Whether it's the iconic Jaws theme, "we're gonna need a bigger boat", or just the simple fact of how movie releases work nowadays, Jaws' influence is widespread and issued catastrophic changes on the entire film industry. If you told me Jaws was the most important film of the past 100 years, I would honestly believe you. It changed the entire game, creating the monumental idea of the "summer blockbuster" as we know it today. By using heavy TV advertising, instead of relying on mere word of mouth or print reviews, hype was built up for Jaws leading up to its eventual release, thus creating an explosion of revenue when coupled with Jaws wider-than-normal theater release at the time. If it had just been this though, Jaws would've been remembered, sure, but maybe as just a footnote or interesting piece of trivia. Jaws had to be something greater, and so it achieved just that, by injecting the public consciousness with enough shark-fueled paranoia to last a lifetime, and I do mean on almost every front. This was a film regarded at the time as possibly even scarier than The Exorcist, and completely recolored public perception of sharks, particularly great whites. Jaws perpetuated the stereotype of the "killer shark" that still hang over sharks to this day, and unfortunately perpetuated hundreds if not thousands of shark hunts in effort to curb the population and keep humanity safe. It made people scared to go in the ocean, and was responsible for lower beach attendance that year. Try to make a shark movie, or any natural horror film in the ocean, without having it compared to Jaws. You can't do it. Hell, try to make a movie where there's a singular monster in a singular location slowly picking people off, and don't have it compared to Jaws. Even if you're friggin' Alien, you'll still be called "Jaws in Space". You just can't escape the long and wide shadow this film casts! Most importantly though, Jaws is just a damn good film.

It's a pretty simple film, kind of like a slasher, and really is just as much an action-thriller as it is a horror film. You have three main protagonists, Quint, Brody, and Hooper. Each protagonist is distinct in personality, and work towards the common goal of eliminating shark in different ways. Quint represents our animalistic and naturalistic side, with determination to prove himself in a classic battle of man vs. nature. Hooper is more thoughtful in his approach, relying on technology and science to hunt the shark down. Lastly, Brody is more of an everyman type, just concerned with keeping people and his family safe and doesn't really care how it gets done, as long as it does. Much like Godzilla before it, Jaws is also way more than just a killer shark. He has been read into as representing a lot of the fears of American society at the time, most notably communism, the slow decay of the American dream, and even the general concept of Satan and the eradication of evil. While I don't necessarily agree with all of this, I totally think it's an interesting way to re-contextualize the film for sure.

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What I am about to do has not been approved by the Vatican.
https://imgur.com/MmrKwGZ - https://imgur.com/ntWVGyh