Jaws (1975)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
When the seaside community of Amity finds itself under attack by a dangerous great white shark, the town's chief of police, a young marine biologist, and a grizzled shark hunter embark on a desperate quest to kill the beast before it strikes again.
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What critics compared Jaws to
More importantly, he rips off (or “pays homage to”) the iconic chase sequences from Jaws , with inflatable air dancers standing in for those floating yellow barrels that made Spielberg’s shark all the more terrifying when unseen.
Once the assumed nature of the object in the sky terrorizing them is revealed, Peele’s film plays like an homage to Jaws (1975), sprinkled with 80’s references, like Poltergeist (1982) and a creepy use of Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses At Night.”
I was speaking at my screening to fellow film critic Preson Barta, and we both noticed there are quite a few parallels to JAWS, even some of the characters feeling like spiritual equivalents to the ones featured in the Steven Spielberg classic.
It’s Jordan Peele’s homage to westerns and early-era Spielberg, Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind in particular being the most overt references.
While the calls to compare parts of Nope to Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind are valid and understandable; Nope ends up being more akin to the underappreciated Trollhunter, than anything else.
While you’ll recognize Peele’s tribute to several films, “Jaws” being the most prominent, “Nope” is unequivocally original, the concept so outlandish yet so simple, that it will forever change how you look at UFOs.
Peele, an unapologetic horror fanatic, nods to those films and dozens more in Us, including Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Jaws and Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
The town is as warm as Amity, in “Jaws” (1975), and you have to go back to “The Birds” (1963) to see such enthusiastic gulls.
It also comes from spotting the many cinematic references — a kid in a mask named Jason, a “Jaws” T-shirt on a crowded beach — from a filmmaker with an effortless command of the horror lexicon.
The movie, which lacks the tight concept and the satiric gut-punch of Get Out, opens expertly, coming at us all sunny, unsettling and sideways, with double-edged pop-culture references including Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” Jaws, Luniz's song “I Got Five On it” and the 1980s homelessness and hunger fund drive Hands Across America.
A beach scene that closes the first act of Us is an explicit homage to similarly set scenes in Jaws – a character is wearing a tee-shirt advertising that film, just so you know Peele is in on the gag – and, as with the original, it finishes not with a reveal of the monster, just an escalation of our apprehension.
He is not a one-hit wonder in the same way that Jaws proved Spielberg to be an elevated genre storyteller.
The marketing behind The Meg pitches its shark as Jaws times 50, with trailers showcasing CGI eye candy of a massive man-eater swimming just below hundreds of unaware swimmers.
Something of a mix between the obvious Jaws influence and the more abstract Armageddon elements, The Meg delivers as many scares as a PG-13 film can handle these days.
As for Jaume Collet-Serra’s recent shark thriller The Shallows (2016) or the ne plus ultra of the genre, Jaws (1975), considered an overbudget debacle during its shoot, they are but small fry next to The Meg, both in budget and in featured fish—Steven Spielberg’s Great White, at an estimated 25 feet, would be chum for the mighty Meg.
Stripped of the script's distractions and allowed to go at full throttle for at least the last 60 minutes, The Meg – even with all its Jaws, Orca and Jurassic Park steals intact – could still have been a gloriously unhinged good time.
It’s hard to say how much of this comes from the popularity of “Shark Week” or the deliberately absurd “Sharknado” series — of course it all traces back to “Jaws” — but this year’s offering wants to blend the more serious horror vibe of the last two summer films with the campiness of the Sci-Fi Channel schlock-fest.
One of the smarter things The Meg does is rip off Jaws with the exactness of a forger, cribbing a great shot here and there, but also mirroring the entire climax of the 1975 classic in miniature.
Not “Jaws” (a much better film); not even the R-rated “Deep Blue Sea” (a much funnier film).
This week that arrives in the form of "The Shallows," a thriller that's part "Jaws" and part "The Raft" sequence from "Creepshow 2." Like that latter short that featured characters stuck on a platform in the middle of a lake where they could see the shore but didn't dare try to swim there due to something in the water between them and there, this one features Blake Lively as a surfer who ends up surviving an initial shark attack, only to end up on a rocky outcrop and then nearby buoy where she can see the safety of shore but just can't get there without being eaten.
2016 is the 50th anniversary of the heart-pounding “Jaws,” that gave us the famous line, “You need a bigger boat.”
In the tradition of Jaws, Collet-Serra begins with a shark attack before retreating to teases and false alarms for a while.
There's a long history of shark thrillers, and you can't get a much better blueprint (or movie) than Steven Spielberg's 1975 classic "Jaws."
It helps, of course, that the film has done something almost unthinkable in the four long decades of increasingly kitschy shark-attack movies since Spielberg’s Jaws — namely, that it has taken itself, and its premise, seriously.
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From familial discord, the death of a parent, and the like “Super 8” channels these themes from classic Spielberg fare like “Close Encounters,” and “Jaws” with a sprinkle of “Stand By Me” and “The Goonies” for good measure.
There are also elements of his "darker" efforts - Jaws , Jurassic Park , War of the Worlds - and nods to some of the titles Spielberg leant his name to in a production capacity - Poltergeist, Gremlins, The Goonies.
“Jaws,” that other touchstone of Spielberg-directed summertime thrills, no doubt taught Abrams the importance of nothing giving us a good look at the Something until the time is right.
The movie is a touchingly self-conscious homage to early Spielberg, to Jaws and Close Encounters and E.T., and if it's not at the level of those films, neither does it embarrass itself with the comparison.
Without giving too much away, let's just say there's a lot of "ET." here (albeit in a fairly modified form), along with obvious material related to "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," and even some bits of inspiration from "Jaws" as well as the boy group dynamic from "The Goonies" (that Spielberg didn't direct, but did produce and obviously similarly inspired way back when).
Abrams wisely evokes Jaws and refuses to reveal his creature too early, leaving the fierce brutality and strength of his monster to speak for itself.
…since there’s a long sequence that’s basically the barrel sequence from Jaws…
The scene on the boat where she has to get close to the Mosasaurus is a highlight, and I think it was an intentional nod to Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975)…
…the Mosasaurus assault on the Delgados plays like an extended, exhilarating Jaws homage (one of a few explicit nods to Spielberg films beyond Jurassic Park).
At times Rebirth, directed by Gareth Edwards (Godzilla, Rogue One), seems to be speedrunning through the Spielberg filmography, touching on the Jurassics but also Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Ark.
This sequence with the massive reptile terrorizing both boats is phenomenal, a la JAWS.
…menacingly swimming like they’re auditioning for Jaws?
Likewise, any picture dealing with sharks will inevitably face the litmus test of living up to the original "Jaws."
The originality of "Deep Blue Sea", which manages to rip-off not only "Jaws" but "Jaws 2", seems to end with choosing Mako sharks to exploit rather than Great Whites.
It's no "Jaws," it's not really that scary, but it is fun.
July 31, 1999 -- "Jaws" was a classic, a movie that made a generation stay out of the water.
Renny Harlin's Deep Blue Sea, an underwater thriller which borrows heavily on the Jaws theme, is not the type of film to make any actor salivate over the script, but Jackson does as well as he can with a far-fetched plot penned by freshmen Duncan Kennedy and Wayne and Donna Powers.
What do you get when you mix equal parts Jurassic Park, Alien, Jaws and Predator together, throw in a dash of bad dialogue, and have a fairly decent action director (Renny Harlin) bring it all to life? Deep Blue Sea, of course.
But despite the scientific high-mindedness and the triceratops-calf rides in the petting zoo, Jurassic World is primarily a theme park whose theme is carnivorousness, where the big-ticket attractions involve copiously toothy behemoths chomping down on tethered goats and gutted sharks (the latter bait possibly a dig at Jaws , executive producer Steven Spielberg ’s other vacation munch-fest) And just as your average theme park needs to upgrade its premium roller coaster from season to season, Jurassic World has decided that its next big draw is Indominus rex, a mammoth new species engineered from genetic this ’n’ that.
Coming 22 years after “Jurassic Park,” and 14 years after “Jurassic Park III” all but ruined the franchise, the reboot showcases plenty of reverence for the original while evoking memories of everything from “Godzilla” — the fun, old, rubber-suited movies, not that humorless mess from last summer — to “Jaws.”
Under the obvious supervision of Steven Spielberg, working with writer/producers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver and co-writer Derek Connolly, director Colin Trevorrow (“Safety Not Guaranteed”) stacks the emotional stakes while propelling the imaginative action-adventure – with nods not only to the 1993 original but also to “Indiana Jones,” “Jaws,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “The Birds.”
His film abounds with references to key scenes from the 1993 beginner of the series, and unexpected, outrageous salutes to “Jaws” as well.
With the recent mega-success of Jurassic World and the reminder that people REALLY like monster movies, it seems all too convenient that one of the best monster movies of all time is celebrating its 40th anniversary this week.
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From the aerial shot showing the title character swimming beneath a ship (to showcase his enormous size, something also done in "Jaws") to the government cover-up ("Close Encounters") and far too many moments lifted from "Jurassic Park" (even including the head-down deafening roar of the T-Rex that G-zilla seems to be imitating here), there are too many moments that will likely remind savvy viewers (or even those simply with good memories) of those far better pics.
It’s a risky approach, reminiscent of the one Steven Spielberg took in “Jaws,” which allows for not just tension but context.
Where the 1954 Ishiro Honda classic Godzilla (or Gojira as originally titled) - with its primitive yet innovative effects and miniature sets - gave inspiration to the likes of Steven Spielberg, it’s Spielberg classics Jurassic Park and Jaws that has fuelled the creative fire in Gareth Edwards as he tackled the mighty monster Godzilla and made it his own.
Helmed by a quixotic director who is undeniably and irrefutably the real deal, "Godzilla" has what it takes to stand the test of time in the same way much of Steven Spielberg's most popular entertainments (e.g., 1975's "Jaws," 1982's "E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial," 1993's "Jurassic Park") have.In 1999, scientists Dr. Ichiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Dr. Vivienne Graham (Sally Hawkins) are called to a mine collapse in the Philippines where mysterious radiation pockets have been detected.
The movie borrows from Steven Spielberg's " Jaws ," " Close Encounters of the Third Kind " and " War of the Worlds ," as well as from earlier popcorn classics that shaped Spielberg.
…producing a tasteful homage to a classic inspiration, such as Jaws or Halloween…
…from a Jaws-like beach escape…
Widow’s Bay has plenty of other influences, of course. It’s been compared to Jaws, Twin Peaks and horror films like John Carpenter’s The Fog and Halloween.
If you ever wondered what might happen if the mayor from Jaws actually believed in the dangers of the shark but was also in a John Carpenter flick…
Loftis finds himself in the Murray Hamilton role in Jaws, assuring everyone that the resort is open for business, while realising that the uncomfortable truth is that something bad is happening in the small town of Widow’s Bay.
I had already watched a couple episodes of “Widow’s Bay” when I explained to my partner how the character of Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) was ignoring all signs that the island he leads is cursed so he can coax mainland tourists over to reinvigorate the local economy as the “next Martha’s Vineyard.” Without missing a beat, she said, “Never compare me to the Jaws mayor!”