Jaws the Revenge - but good!

Bruce Willis famously said onscreen what everyone was thinking when he returned as Detective John McClane for the highly implausible (but otherwise pretty good) sequel Die Harder: Die Hard 2:

“How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?”

But he could have been talking about any number of film franchises that stretch plausibility to their limits.

One such franchise is the Jaws series, for which the term ‘diminishing returns’ may well have been invented. Following Steven Spielberg’s classic adaptation of Peter Benchley’s potboiler novel, which also invented the summer blockbuster as we know it today, was never going to be an easy task, especially as Spielberg declined to return. Also, you can arguably count on one hand the sequels that are better than the original: The Godfather Part II, The Empire Strikes Back, Friday the 13th Part 2 and The Dark Knight.

Jaws 2 (once again written by Carl Gottlieb and helmed by last-minute director Jeannot Szwarc) is well-crafted, with a contractually obliged Roy Scheider thankfully giving it his all and a likeable cast of chum, I mean teens. It mostly works fine as a fun slasher movie with a shark instead of a masked maniac with a knife. But let’s face it, it is the original Die Hard 2, a highly implausible follow-up that has no reason to exist other than the potential dollars Universal saw floating in those Amity waters. Brody even gets his version of Willis’ line with this exchange with Mayor Vaughn:

Brody: I think we've got another shark problem.

Mayor Vaughan:  Are you serious?

Jaws 3D (1983) was smart enough to move the action to a Florida SeaWorld (who somehow thought that the cross-promotion with the killer shark movie would be good for business?), but elected to bring the Brody boys along for the ride, with Mike (Dennis Quaid) and Sean once again grappling with a killer Great White.

And therein lies the problem with the franchise. Yes, the Brodys are great characters, especially when you have the wonderful Roy Scheider and Lorraine Gary at the helm, but the more you use them, the more the believability of the story is severely lessened. And by the third instalment, it could have been anyone working at SeaWorld; it didn’t need to be Mike.

My copy of the Jaws: The Revenge novelisation, which is worth a read for the bizarre voodoo subplot that didn't make it into the film.

By the time it came to Jaws: The Revenge in 1987, credibility was harpooned on the edge of a boat mast with the idea that this shark followed the Brodys from Amity to the Bahamas (after gobbling Sean Brody in the admittedly brutal opener) to finish what its forbears had started.

Jaws: The Revenge is the Superman IV of the Jaws series, in that it was a rushed last-ditch attempt to continue a floundering (drowning?) franchise and isn't highly regarded among fans. While it gets credit for finally putting Ellen Brody, the grieving widow and mother, front and centre, it saddled her with the ridiculous ‘revenge’ idea, that was taken to even more ridiculous lengths in the novel (based on the original screenplay) involving a shaman who may hold sway over the shark and has beef with the Brody’s. 

The tagline ‘This time it’s personal’ was lampooned in Back to the Future Part 2 with it’s Jaws 19 tagline "This time it's REALLY, REALLY personal!". It’s also the film about which Michael Caine famously said, “I have never seen it (Jaws 4) but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built and it is terrific.” The script was which was rushed out in five weeks and refined during shooting, as if you couldn’’t tell. In fact, it was so rushed that they reshot the ending a week after it had already debuted in cinemas!

But having just laid out the ridiculousness of the film that was released in 1987, I would argue that the central theme of Ellen’s grief and desire for revenge against this monster that took so much from her is a good one, strong even - it just wasn’t explored in the film.

I’ve long held the belief that there could’ve been a really good film made with that idea, so here’s my pitch for a re-worked version of Jaws: The Revenge: 

Imagine if you would, a film still called Jaws: The Revenge, where Ellen Brody is distraught and depressive after the loss of her husband Martin to a heart attack. She is on anti-depressants and sees a psychiatrist, who assures her it was a dodgy ticker and not trauma caused by his battles with killer sharks that caused his death. She is estranged from her eldest son, Michael, after she begged him to give up his ocean research. Michael not only refused but also moved to the Bahamas with his own family to continue his work. 

When her younger son Sean drowns in a non-shark-related boating accident, Ellen is convinced it was a shark that took him. Consumed with rage, she goes off her meds and, against the advice of her counsellor, travels to the Bahamas to force Michael to leave the ocean forever. After a tense confrontation with Michael and his family in a seafood restaurant (think Laurie storming out on Karen and family in Halloween 2018), she meets Hoagie (still Michael Caine - that house isn't going to pay for itself) at a bar who, over many cocktails, listens to her whole sorry story and manages to cheer her up.

The banana boat sequence is a great setpiece in an otherwise flawed film.

But Ellen’s newfound ease is shattered with the banana boat attack shortly after (despite Jaws: The Revenge’s flaws, the banana boat scene scared the bejeezus out of this writer, who was just ten years old when I saw it in theatres, so it stays in!). This sends her spiralling once more and out for revenge on a shark she believes has tormented her family for years now. It is then revealed that Michael’s research and testing of new sonar equipment drew the shark into the warmer waters it’s not known for inhabiting. This may not be scientifically accurate, but at least it eliminates the bizarre idea of the shark following the Brody family to the Bahamas all the way from Amity.

Michael realises what has happened and, echoing his Father before him, sets out to lure the shark away from the beaches. Michael and Jake (Mario Van Peebles stays in too) use chum to draw the shark out to them and try to kill it with explosive-tipped spears. As in the original, the shark chases Jake through a sunken wreck. Most of the set pieces could remain, just with better filming and more integration into the story.

When Ellen finds out what her son is up to, she convinces Hoagie to fly her out to Michael’s boat. Despite Michael’s protests, they work together to defeat the shark and reunite at the end, sharing their grief and triumph.

Again, my version is not hugely different in terms of structure and events, but by removing the abject silliness of the script and making Ellen an unreliable narrator (or character), with the idea of a vengeful shark entirely in her head, we could have had an emotionally fitting ending to the Brody saga and closure for the family.

Instead, we got an actual vengeful shark that somehow tracked the Brodys to the Bahamas. Oh, and if that wasn’t bad enough, it also roared for some reason.