Jaws 2 (1978)
- Andrew Smith
- 22 hours ago
- 8 min read
"Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water..."
Plot
Four years after having to battle the monstrous Great White shark, a few unexplained events including the explosion of a skiing boat and the disappearance of a pair of divers prompt Chief Brody to suspect that another Great White shark has staked claim to the waters off Amity Island. But no one else in authority believes him and Brody begins to wonder whether he is just being paranoid. However, his theory ends up coming true and he must go out to sea once again to face the terror from the deep.
Review
Imagine being tapped on the shoulder by a world-renowned museum curator inside The Louvre. You are ushered into this brightly lit room, handed a paintbrush, and then asked to paint a direct sequel to the Mona Lisa. The canvas is completely blank, the entire world is watching your every move, and you are supposed to somehow follow up a literal, undeniable masterpiece. How do you even begin to do that without setting yourself up for just spectacular, highly public failure? That was the dilemma facing director Jeannot Szwarc who, after Spielberg didn’t even bother responding to the producers asking him if he’d return and original director John D. Hancock being fired because he was totally unsuited for the job, was then given the task of following up one of the greatest films of all time. Jaws 2 was up against it from the moment it was given the green light. Jaws was a lightning-in-a-bottle moment, where a coming together of sheer quality and talent coupled with never-ending problems, mistakes and enforced changes, ended up in the film's favour to create the masterpiece that we have come to know and love today. The problem with any sequel was going to be simply: how do you even get close to matching the greatness of Jaws?
What I’m really analysing here isn't just a film about a giant killer fish to follow-up a film about a killer fish, but a masterclass in managing the impossible burden of expectations. Jaws 2 gets an unfair rap as a sequel because when people talk about the Jaws follow-ups, they inevitably lump this one in with the truly atrocious logic-defying sequels that came later - the 3D one or the one where the shark holds a literal personal vendetta. Jaws 2 is still a decent sequel which is far better than it has any right to be and, though still a troubled production like its predecessor, it manages to deliver decent suspense, another solid performance (if better) by Roy Scheider and, of course, some plentiful shark action. The main problem is that it tries to replicate the original but without the best parts. Now granted a lot of those best parts were coincidental or accidental, such as the shark not working leading to the less-is-more approach with the likes of the floating yellow barrels, but there was still no way that anyone, even Spielberg himself, could have replicated that same formula if he tried it again a dozen times over. So, you must manage expectations and get audiences used to the fact that this isn’t the same film; it’s a sequel which does what it can to carry on the legacy well enough. Very similar to Psycho II, which was never going to match Hitchcock’s classic but did a fantastic job of building upon the foundations with a tonally different film. Perhaps Jaws 2’s problem was that it didn’t go far enough in changing the tone.
If there is one reason why Jaws 2 deserves much more respect, it’s the return of Roy Scheider as Chief Brody. Originally, he turned the film down but to get out of a three-film contract with Universal, he agreed to do it if the studio waved the third film he was obliged to do. There were lots of clashes between Scheider and Szwarc so a lot of the anger and hostility you see with the character on screen is just Scheider venting. He makes this film, bringing a little more to the role than he did in the original. Here, the character has been visibly affected by the events that transpired, with both physical and mental scars from his trauma four years ago, and he's not as laid back and prepared to sit back and take orders like he once was. The script is quite interesting as it explores Brody's paranoia about the shark threat: the scene on the beach where he's in the shark tower is a tense shadow of the beach scene from the first film, where he's panicking, scanning the water, his eyes darting everywhere, perceiving every splash or shadow as a deadly threat. His PTSD is just taking over because he doesn’t want a repeat of the Alex Kitner incident. Later, there's a confrontation in the town hall where he faces down the council for his actions. He is completely frayed at the edges and looks like a man who hasn't slept in four years. This time Brody knows the horror is real. But he's entirely alone in that knowledge and this is starting to make him unravel. That emotional weight, that desperate need to protect a town that resents him for his vigilance is what makes his character so compelling the second time around.
However, what is sorely lacking, and what Scheider clearly misses, is having another great character to spark off. The camaraderie that the second half of the original shared between Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw aboard the boat was one of the main reasons why it worked so well. Thr three-way between Scheider's everyman, Dreyfuss's wealthy intellectual scientist, and Shaw's working-class grizzled hunter crammed aboard a tiny sinking boat was more compelling than the shark scenes at times. These were intellectual, ideological, and socio-economic opposites forced into an uncomfortably small space facing a primal force of nature: the tension wasn't just about the shark, it was about whether these three radically different men would kill each other before the shark even got a chance. Seemingly surrounded by a cast of teenagers, Scheider is left completely without an equal to spark off and even gets short-shifted for a lot of the running time as the focus is on the youngsters and their ever-sinking flotilla of wrecked sail boats. The tragedy of Brody's isolation in the first half is compounded because when he finally goes out on the water, he has no one to share the emotional burden with. He's surrounded by kids who literally cannot comprehend his trauma. They’re not the worst teenage bunch ever to grace film but they’re so weakly written that it’s hard to distinguish between most of them and even hard to show any interest in their survival. Because of this shift to a younger, less defined cast, the focus morphs. Jaws 2 stops being a philosophical battle of wits against a force of nature, and it turns into a basic teen slasher survival scenario on the water. This is Friday the 13th only with a killer shark replacing Jason Voorhees.
Szwarc realised that the audience knew what the shark was going to look like, so it was pointless in having a slow reveal as in the first one. The shark was gracing T-shirts, lunchboxes and posters. Why bother pretending? Why have a slow reveal like the first film when the cat is already out of the bag? Here, the shark is pretty much seen in full right from the first major attack on the skiing boat, and you get to see a lot of it during the film. Kept in the shadows again, the shark may have posed more of a threat but now we really get the feeling this is a mechanical monster, such so that the shark's head bends during one collision with the side of a boat. In a nice touch, the shark is scarred by an early encounter with fire and as a result, sports this cool signature burn mark across its snout for the duration. It gives the shark a menacing look. But Szwarc was wrong. Suspense isn't about what you see. It's about what you anticipate seeing. By choosing straightforward, brightly lit action over a subtle methodical buildup, Szwarc inadvertently robs the audience of their most powerful tool, which is their own imagination. Even though we all know what the shark looks like from the original, no matter how many times you watch Jaws you just can’t shake that uneasy feeling of it being there under the surface and playing to our primal fears. The threat and unease just aren’t here though and Szwarc just fails to get any major sequences of tension going. Apart from a nervy moment where Chief Brody wades out to check some driftwood floating off the shore and another in which the shark closes in a teenager who has been knocked conscious and fallen overboard, there's little to match the original in terms of dramatic tension. Instead of going for the subtle build-ups, Szwarc is more than happily going straight in for the kill.
I am sure if you saw a shark attack in real life, it would be a bloody affair. Though the body count is upped significantly in Jaws 2, the gore quota has been toned down a lot. You won’t get to see any floating heads, severed legs or people bitten in two. That is disappointing because there are some great kills in here which screamed for a little something extra. The attack on the skiers is suspenseful, the shark looks like it swallows another victim hole and the helicopter attack was aching for a limb or fountain of blood. Part of the fear of being attacked by a shark is the unrelenting damage that it could do whilst it rips you apart with its teeth. We never get any of the sense of the ferocity or the damage that the shark can do. Everything has been toned down for the censors and to keep the film palatable to get a lower rating and make it more accessible for a bigger audience. Quite how they managed to smuggle some of the original’s moments into the film I’ll never know, but they could have done with a few here too.
John Williams returned to do the score, which is an undeniable massive win for the production. He kept that signature, creeping, two-note shark motif that everyone knows, but the rest of the soundtrack shifted dramatically. The score from the first was primal. It was built on low, thumping cellos that sounded like a heartbeat and eerie, minimalist string plucks that made you want to pull your feet up onto the couch. Because much of the tension and suspense from keeping the shark hidden was lost in the sequel, Williams had to change tact. The score became a broader selection of upbeat, vibrant and adventurous tunes. We’re suddenly getting soaring French horns and sweeping melodies. It's fantastic, beautiful music and arguably a better soundtrack than the original.
One last note on the tag line “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water ...” which is quite possibly one of the best of all time.
Final Verdict
Jaws 2 isn't a failure. It is a hugely entertaining, and legitimately underrated sequel. It doesn’t try to outdo Spielberg's film and solely exists to fill a public appetite for more killer shark action on the big screen. The only reason it has a mixed reputation was simply trying to follow a perfect lightning in a bottle masterpiece. And that is the ultimate takeaway for anyone evaluating a piece of art, a movie, a book, or even a new product. You must learn to separate a work from its impossibly famous predecessors. If you constantly compare the smile of a new painting to the Mona Lisa, you're always going to be disappointed. If you constantly compare Jaws 2 to Jaws, it falls short. But if you judge it entirely on its own merits, as a standalone film it’s entertaining, exciting and thrilling. The main thing holding it back in the cultural zeitgeist is just the long shadow of its older siblings' greatness. It's a victim of its own lineage but I’d like to think that it’s getting more respect as the years go by.
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Jaws 2 Director(s): Jeannot Szwarc Writer(s): Peter Benchley (based upon characters created by), Carl Gottlieb, Howard Sackler Actor(s): Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Joseph Mascolo, Jeffrey Kramer, Collin Wilcox, Anna Dusenberry, Mark Gruner Duration: 116 mins |  |
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