Jaws

Release Date: June 20, 1975

Watch Date: October 14, 2025

“When the seaside community of Amity finds itself under attack by a dangerous great white shark, the town’s chief of police (Roy Scheider), a young marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) and a grizzled shark hunter (Robert Shaw) embark on a desperate quest to destroy the beast before it strikes again.”

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I’ve got no cinematic criticism of this film. This is a classic, a masterpiece to many. From the theme, to the animatronic shark, to the classic lines that are often repeated, parodied, but instantly recognizable. I think anything I could say would be minimized by the hundreds, if not thousands of professional reviews and decades of comments that have already been said by people much better at writing reviews and understanding the nuances of cinema than I am.

I enjoyed it, and it was a fun experience for both myself and Bob to watch it together for the first time. We felt like we were watching a little piece of cinematic history, and after having known about it and heard about it for so long, I do think it lived up to the hype.

It also prompted a lot of conversation between us, just because we both are very passionate about marine life, and conservation, and unfortunately one side effect of Jaws was that it allowed the pop culture terror that is the shark from Jaws, affectionately known as Bruce, to invade what actual sharks – and very specifically great white sharks – are like. Sharks that do their own things, that almost never kill attack humans, and when they do it’s usually because of mistaken identity. I’m not saying Jaws is solely responsible for the massive disconnect with sharks, and their necessity to the health of our oceans, but it unfortunately hasn’t helped the situation very much.

So if you’re going to watch Jaws I would caution you to not immediately paint all sharks with the ‘movie monster’ brush. Think of the little epaulette shark! They’re adorable, and not mauling anybody. And not the unrealistic 25ft foot great white with a taste of human flesh.

Someone is gonna tell me something terrible an epaulette shark has done now, I can almost guarantee it.