You’re going to need a bigger theater

I walked up to the local theater a minute after six o’clock to find a line of patrons sprawling out onto the sidewalk. The theater is a single screen holdover from the days when movie theaters were called movie palaces. With the line stretching away from the front door, a sell-out show was more than a possibility. This wouldn’t be unusual if this were opening night for a movie like Endgame. But that’s not what I was going to see. On an otherwise sleepy Monday evening in 2019, I was looking at the line to see Jaws.

From the dimming of the house lights to the roll of the end credits, I sat in a theater full of enthralled viewers. The suspense and horror elements of the movie still producing the intended jumps and cringes. Loud applause went up at the line “You’re going to need a bigger boat” and again with the finale’s saving explosion. I’d say spoilers, but I think that time passed. A unanimous will for the crew of the Orca to return victorious filled the theater. If I didn’t know better, I would have said I was sitting with people who had never watched Jaws. The girl sitting in the row in front of me with her stuffed animal on her lap probably hadn’t seen Jaws before, but I didn’t see many other first-time viewer candidates.

It didn’t hit me until I was walking away from the theater to go home how weird that was. Weird isn’t exactly the word. Unusual perhaps? I couldn’t help but ask myself, is Speilberg’s summer blockbuster defining movie legitimately one of these spellbinding wonders? Or is the reaction I saw a result of being on the East Coast in the same state fictional Amity is insinuated to be an extension of? I can’t answer those questions with certainty as I lack access to a movie house without the New England bias.

My knee jerk answer is no; it’s not just a New England pet movie. It wouldn’t have smashed box office records in 1975 and have sat, until recently, in the top ten highest-grossing films of all time if that were true.

Forty-four years is a long time for anything, and the passage of time is not always kind to movies. But for Jaws, it’s as if time chose to let the thriller go without ravaging it. Really, except things like clothing styles and a pointed Falstaff plug, the movie holds up. I know Marty, the shark does look fake. But only toward the end of the film while it’s beaching itself on the Orca and making a snack out of Quint. Even still, the cartoonish nature of the movie’s villain doesn’t tarnish the emotional response of the audience.

Why are certain movies imbued with the ability to ensnare us so completely?

Jaws had an advantage over the other movies released that summer. Our great white villain swam onto the big screen with an audience in tow. the film was born from the 1974 bestseller from Peter Benchley, The author was even involved with the project, penning the screenplay. Who hasn’t been burned by a movie adaptation of a novel? Some fail to live up to expectation for any number of reasons. Others soar well above them, even bringing new fans to the source material. Regardless of how the judgment falls, when it comes right down to it, write it sand, they will come. Its summer release date was a result of numerous setbacks and postponements. Today, summer is prime time real estate for movies. We have Jaws to thank for that. Before 1975, summer was garbage time for studios. Movies put out during the summer were released with fingers crossed and little faith. For this movie, though, any other time of the year would have made little sense. Who’d be thinking of a film they saw in December when they were splashing around in the heyday of summer vacation? I can’t speak from personal experience, but I’d like to think Jaws inspired a lot of hesitation about swimming that summer. So, is that what I was sensing in the theater that night? The palpable desire for the menacing fish’s death was residual resentment for time lost at the seaside? Now that I would concede being a New England/East Coast special.

Circling back to the delays, a lot of the production problems were with the villain himself. Spielberg was forced to change direction and abandon the practical effects he had wanted to use. The original plan was to have more scenes with the animatronic shark body. Instead, music and camera angles insinuated the shark into the movie. Using those techniques ensured the terror existed in each person’s head rather than being force-fed to you on screen. If your imagination is anything like mine, it will take implied horror and say, “Hold my beer.” The ominous Da-da, Da-da hits your ears, and you clutch at the armrests, your stomach lurches waiting for the danger to surface. The recall of how the movie made you feel the first time is instantaneous. Practical effects don’t always produce the same emotional response as the lower budget alternative. Often, these date the end product and over time reduce the impact of the film’s story. Marty McFly’s reaction and insecure jab ten years after Jaw’s release, while fictional, are proof of the shark’s ability to inspire terror and the response to reject the false appearance of the visualization of the same shark.

Now, we can’t forget the human characters. In the quest to end Amity’s Reign of Terror, we follow Brody, Hooper, and Quint on their storylines. None of the three men qualify for the status of a hero. Hooper, well, what can you say about Hooper? His character was the human equivalent of an adored puppy following after their owner. The tension between him and Quint kept a lighthearted string flowing throughout the second half of the movie. But, besides that, Hooper is the most traditionally educated person on the Orca with the newest innovations in shark hunting technology who opts to wait out the shark in a coral reef and pop up after the conflict resolution. A hero he is not.

Quint, it could be argued, comes the closest to fitting the bill. He relents, toward the very end of the film, that the old ways of shark hunting won’t be enough to take down the shark. Against all of his earlier guffaw, Qunit allows Hooper and his new-fangled gadgets to give it a go. True to his word, he never puts on a life jacket again accepting the eventuality he will meet his end in the jaws of a shark. But, he’s the guy that beat their radio to a pulp and ran the Orca into the ground leaving the whole group at the mercy of their prey. Thanks, Quint. Thanks.

Now to the police chief himself. Yes, Brody is ultimately successful in blowing up the great white, but the act is one of basic survival rather than any altruistic sacrifice. As the only man who spent the majority of the film staying the hell away from the water, he wasn’t about to die in a place he so feared. Brody’s only motivation was to make the problem to disappear and to resume the quiet idealist like he had escaped to Amity to find.

Nostalgia plays a big part in the following Jaws continues to enjoy, but there are more forces at work. As a society, we love the story of an underdog. In Jaws, we have two such stories running concurrently. The delays and setbacks during production left the film in a precarious spot. With a less than ideal release slot, Jaws could have easily slipped into the abyss of failed movies. Against the odds, people attended in droves. With in the movie’s story, we have three characters who are experts in their respective fields yet have no authority. Again, Quint is the closest of the three to escape that definition; however, his agency exists only within the confines of the Orca. Outside of that sphere, he is the drunk, borderline creepy, crackpot wandering around the island. They are all victims of the masses. And yet, they manage to defeat the shark terrorizing the very people reluctant to give the principal characters agency. Jaws is a nail-biting adventure and escape from reality, but its setting is relatable and almost entirely universal. Pair that with the memorable score that pulls us back to the moment we first encountered the man-eating monster, and you get a film that continues to grow on you as time goes by.

Is this the equation for every movie that continues to call to us over and over again? No, I think not. Other films can’t squeeze into this set of criteria. I imagine common threads are running among the movies like Jaws that audiences still come back to over and over. Pre-existing audiences and  relatable characters being two of the most common pieces. But, ultimately, there is a different set of whys for each film. As Quint would say, “Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies. Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain.”