3.5, United States/Canada

Jaws

1975 / Steven Spielberg > There are a lot of stories behind production mishaps in Jaws, most of them dealing with issues with faulty animatronics of the shark. How right they were, and how sad. For 70% of the film, it’s really something swell, atmospheric even when bordering on the expected cliché. More often than not, Spielberg just couldn’t get the villain to look real, so he used clever methods of making sure the audience would feel its presence other ways (like filming from its point of view, below the water, with the menacing theme music signaling impending doom). But then you see it, and it’s over. Unlike The Thing, where the literal creativeness of the special effects made up for its outdated looks, here I had trouble digesting the climactic battle because it looked just downright silly. It’s really sad when special effects ruin the potential for a great film to age well, and this is no exception.

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