Netflix Users Can Binge All The Jaws Movies In One Place This Month
Unlike "Halloween," "The Exorcist," "Alien," or "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," "Jaws" is the rare iconic '70s horror franchise that has yet to see any sort of revival in the 21st century ... mostly because Steven Spielberg himself has gone all Quint with a baseball bat on Universal's attempts to reboot it. But more than that, Spielberg's original 1975 hit (itself based on Peter Benchley's pulpy 1974 best-selling novel) never really lent itself to being a franchise in the first place. There aren't any supernatural entities or unexplained other-worldly encounters in Spielberg's classic adventure, nor does it end with Bruce the shark flailing his fins and dancing a merry jig. It's not what one would call the most scientifically-accurate work of Sharksploitation to ever hit the big screen, but it is a grounded story with a clear-cut beginning and ending.
Nevertheless, "Jaws" was the recipient of three sequels back in the 20th century, none of which were directed by Spielberg. First, there was "Jaws 2" in 1978, which had several "Jaws" actors reprising their roles from the first film, with "Jaws" co-writer Carl Gottlieb working on the script. Then came 1983's "Jaws 3-D," a film that began as a parody written by none other than John Hughes (!) and titled "Jaws 3, People 0," prior to being restyled as a (sort of) more serious follow-up. Finally, there was the 1987 brand killer "Jaws: The Revenge," a critically lambasted sequel that was responsible for giving us arguably the best cheesy tagline of the '80s ("This time, it's personal"), as well as the greatest Michael Caine quote of all time.
If you're morbidly curious about the "Jaws" sequels but have never sat down and watched them, you're in luck! All three are streaming on Netflix in September 2023, along with Spielberg's original.
All this machine does is swim and eat and make little shark sequels, and that's all
I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that everyone reading this already knows the plot of "Jaws." As yours truly recently wrote about the film, "48 years and who knows how many inferior knockoffs later, Steven Spielberg's OG summer blockbuster remains the golden standard that other summer tentpoles aspire to. But as thrilling as it is to watch Bruce the shark terrorize the beachgoers of Amity Island, it's the human drama in between the bloodshed that keeps me coming back to Spielberg's classic."
The "Jaws" sequels would increasingly shift their focus away from "Jaws" protagonist Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) and onto the other members of his family, hitting upon the same concerns about bureaucracies and their habit of prioritizing their bottom line over the sanctity of human life as Spielberg's original film, to diminishing effect. That and a combination of increasingly bad writing and cheap filmmaking is the reason why most people would tell you the series only got worse the further along it went. At the same time, the sequels do have their redeeming qualities, like how "Jaws 2" examines Brody's trauma from the events of the first film and how the people around him neglect to take his fears seriously. "Jaws: The Revenge" gave his wife Ellen (Lorraine Gary) a similarly compelling arc ... you know, in between a storyline that, at some point during its development, involved magical witch doctors and possessed sharks.
Perhaps the "Jaws" franchise is best left exactly where it is: To be casually binged on Netflix by those who just can't get enough of hapless people accidentally becoming lunch for the hungry Great White Sharks of the ocean.