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Yahoo
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How to watch the 'Jaws 'movies in order, from the original to 'The Revenge'
Key Points The Jaws franchise spans four films released between 1975 and 1987. Each movie features a new deadly encounter with a great white shark. While not tightly connected, the sequels loosely follow the Brody films have had the cultural impact of Jaws, the 1975 thriller that not only terrified a generation of beachgoers but also launched the modern summer blockbuster. Directed by a budding Steven Spielberg, the original movie became a massive critical and commercial success, blending suspense, horror, memorable characters, and John Williams' ominous Oscar-winning score to create a cinematic milestone. What started as a single shark attack on the fictional shores of Amity Island soon grew into a full-blown franchise, spawning three gory sequels between 1978 and 1987. While the quality and tone of the films vary, each installment delivers its own brand of blood-soaked chaos. With all four Jaws films now streaming on Netflix during the original's 50th anniversary, there's never been a better time to revisit the series (or dive in for the first time). Here's how to watch the Jaws movies in order. Jaws (1975) Ah, the one that started it all. Directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley's novel of the same name, Jaws follows police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) as he battles a great white shark terrorizing Amity Island. Despite Brody's warnings, the mayor refuses to close the beaches to save the tourist season, and the results turn deadly. Jaws was Spielberg's second major studio film behind 1974's The Sugarland Express, and it quickly spiraled into pure chaos. The shoot ran way over budget and schedule, the mechanical sharks constantly broke down, and tensions among the cast often flared. "When the film wrapped Martha's Vineyard, I had a full-blown panic attack," Spielberg recalled in the July 2025 documentary Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story. "I couldn't breathe, I thought I was having a heart attack. ... It was everything that I had experienced on the island, trying to hold myself together, but hold the crew together. I felt really responsible for keeping them there for as long as we had to stay." But these complications didn't doom the final product. Released on June 20, 1975, it became a cultural phenomenon and redefined the modern blockbuster. "Steven Spielberg's granddaddy of all great white movies isn't just great for a shark movie, it's a great movie period. A masterpiece, in fact," Entertainment Weekly's staffer wrote in 2025. "Spielberg's malfunctioning mechanical monster forced the director to be clever, suggestive, and Hitchcockian — the scariest moments in the film are the ones where you don't see what lies beneath the water line, but anticipate what could be." Where to watch Jaws: Netflix Jaws 2 (1978) Jaws spawned three sequels, each receiving progressively less critical acclaim and weaker box office results. However, its immediate sequel, Jaws 2 (1978), is generally considered the best among them. Spielberg was not interested in returning to direct a sequel. After John D. Hancock was let go just days into filming, Jeannot Szwarc ultimately stepped up as the director of Jaws 2. Scheider, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, and Jeffrey Kramer reprised their roles as Chief Brody, Ellen Brody, Mayor Larry Vaughn, and Deputy Leonard Hendricks, respectively. The movie, which is strikingly similar to its predecessor, centers on Brody's growing suspicion that a new great white shark is threatening Amity Island, a fear confirmed as a series of attacks and disappearances soon occur on the beach. As noted by EW's critic, Jaws 2 is a "pretty steep come-down from Spielberg's brilliant original. But if watched in a vacuum, it's a decent enough bit of disposable fun." Where to watch Jaws 2: Netflix Jaws 3-D (1983) Jaws 3-D takes a sharp turn away from the original Jaws films, not just in quality, but also in casting. None of the original actors return; instead, we get Dennis Quaid, Bess Armstrong, Simon MacCorkindale, Lea Thompson, and Louis Gossett Jr. The story follows the grown-up Brody kids, Mike (Quaid) and Sean (John Putch), who now spend their days at SeaWorld in Florida. Somehow, a young great white shark sneaks into the park, but the real trouble starts when its much larger, angrier mother comes looking for it and wreaks havoc along the way. Originally released in 3-D (which didn't age well outside theaters), Jaws 3-D was retitled Jaws 3 for home video, where the lack of visual effects left audiences with a flat and often laughable viewing experience. Critics weren't kind then either, and the movie hasn't exactly earned a loyal following. In a 2010 rewatch, two former EW critics dubbed it a "big bucket of chum." One recalled, "They're underwater in a sunken ship and suddenly a big fake rubber shark is knocking repeatedly into the walls." The other critic added, "And with all the speed and grace of a four-year-old in a bathtub jamming a plastic shark into a plastic ship. Also, they have the shark swimming backwards, which it biologically can't do, and it roars. It roars! Not as dramatic a roar as in Jaws: The Revenge, mind you, but still, it's still a shark roaring underwater." Where to watch Jaws 3-D: Netflix Jaws: The Revenge (1987) Released on July 17, 1987, Jaws: The Revenge sank almost immediately, taking a critical and commercial beating. Beyond the abysmal reviews, it had a worldwide gross of $51.9 million against a $23 million budget, making it the lowest-grossing entry in the Jaws franchise. Serving as a direct sequel to Jaws 2 (and pretending Jaws 3-D never happened), the film follows a now-widowed Ellen Brody (Gary), who becomes convinced that a great white shark is targeting her family out of revenge. After her youngest son, Sean (Mitchell Anderson), is killed, Ellen flees to the Bahamas to visit her other son, Mike (Lance Guest). There, she strikes up a romance with Hoagie Newcombe (Michael Caine), just as another massive shark appears and threatens her safety. An EW writer bluntly wrote, "The fourth and final Jaws movie is not good. But Michael Caine does drop in to lend it some class. Who cares if his khaki shirt is wet and then mysteriously dry in the same scene? This is not a movie to pick apart with logic. It exists beyond reasoning in a shark-movie universe where the fewer questions that are asked, the better." Where to watch Jaws: The Revenge: Netflix The Jaws movies in order by release date: Jaws (1975) Jaws 2 (1978) Jaws 3-D (1983) Jaws: The Revenge (1987)Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly Solve the daily Crossword
Miami Herald
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
Steven Spielberg shares ‘Jaws' nightmares in ‘Jaws @ 50' doc
LOS ANGELES, July 9 (UPI) -- Director Laurent Bouzerau says his documentary Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story, premiering Thursday on National Geographic, gave director Steven Spielberg a chance to open up about his traumatic experiences making Jaws. Jaws was a famously troubled production, from mechanical shark malfunctions to weather delays filming at sea. For the documentary, Spielberg told Bouzereau about having nightmares about production even after the 1975 film became a blockbuster hit. In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, Bouzerau discussed his approach to Spielberg, whose films he has documented throughout his own career. Bouzereau said the 50th anniversary of Jaws gave Spielberg new perspective on how the film forged his career. "Having had my own journey as a person for over 50 years now, we can all relate to things that can either make you or break you," Bouzereau said. "I certainly was surprised by the generosity that he offered by sharing those stories with me." Those stories included Spielberg hiding on the Orca -- the boat Brody (Roy Scheider), Hooper (Richard Dreyfus) and Quint (Robert Shaw) sail to hunt the shark -- when it was moved to the Universal backlot for the studio tour. "I feel also the 50 year perspective, after the career he's had, is very different from the way he's talked about Jaws before," Bouzereau said. "And not with the kind of heart and soul that I think he poured into this new documentary." Jaws @ 50 relates how Spielberg took a meeting at Universal Pictures after making The Sugarland Express for the studio. He gravitated towards Peter Benchley's book Jaws, which inspired the film, in galley form before it was published. Benchley's widow, Wendy, and their children are featured in the documentary. Wendy visited the production in Martha's Vineyard with Peter and recalls Peter trying to convince Spielberg to reduce the shark's length from 25 to a more realistic 15 feet. "Steven understood that if you were going to have a dramatic movie, you needed to have a shark that was big enough to swallow somebody whole," Wendy said. "So he had the right instincts for the movie and I think Peter had the right instincts for a book." Jaws is credited with starting the summer blockbuster. The film itself spawned three sequels, which Bouzerau decided were not part of Spielberg's story. "After Jaws, he was on the path of doing Close Encounters [of the Third Kind]," Bouzereau said. "I wanted to really end on the high note which is cinema has been changed and Jaws is a unique experience." Not that Bouzereau considers Jaws: The Revenge, the fourth film, a low point. He just felt it would be too convoluted to explain the sequels. "I'm not criticizing those films," he said. "I don't dislike Jaws 2. I saw it when it came out and I really like that director [Jeannot Szwarc] as well. He did a movie called Somewhere in Time with Christopher Reeve that was really good." The Benchleys never saw the three sequels either. "We were not involved at all with them so I have no opinion," Wendy said. "It's wonderful. Why not? But, from what I hear from people, the original is the best." Another perspective Bouzereau wanted to bring to Jaws @ 50 was the film's influence on subsequent generations of filmmakers. James Cameron, Steven Soderbergh, J.J. Abrams, Guillermo del Toro and Jordan Peele also share how Jaws influenced their craft. "Generationally. the film had been passed on from a certain type of director," Bouzeareau said. "When you talk to someone like Jordan Peele, who's clearly two generations away from Steven, the fact that he uses Jaws as an example of his type of storytelling is remarkable." The success of Jaws also led the Benchleys into careers in ocean conservation. Because the shark in Jaws was scary, it led to excessive hunting of sharks. Wendy's work with Environmental Defense Fun and Wild Aid has shown her that both protecting sharks and the ocean environments have led to improvements. "There are acres and acres of marine protected areas around the world now," she said. "If you leave the ocean alone, the coral will come back. The fish will come back. You will have much more biomass and those fish will be bigger and when they swim out, they can be caught for food." Cameron is also involved in ocean and shark conservation in addition to filmmaking. It was Bouzereau's goal to show that the legacy of Jaws is more than nostalgia. "All those cast members of my film were chosen very specifically to address a layer that I felt was needed to prove my point that Jaws is as useful as it was 50 years ago," he said. Jaws @ 50 premieres Thursday on National Geographic and will stream on Disney+ and Hulu Friday. 2025 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
UPI
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- UPI
Steven Spielberg shares 'Jaws' nightmares in 'Jaws @ 50' doc
1 of 5 | Steven Spielberg (L) sits down with Laurent Bouzereau in "Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story," premiering Thursday on National Geographic. Photo courtesy of National Geographic LOS ANGELES, July 9 (UPI) -- Director Laurent Bouzerau says his documentary Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story, premiering Thursday on National Geographic, gave director Steven Spielberg a chance to open up about his traumatic experiences making Jaws. Jaws was a famously troubled production, from mechanical shark malfunctions to weather delays filming at sea. For the documentary, Spielberg told Bouzereau about having nightmares about production even after the 1975 film became a blockbuster hit. In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, Bouzerau discussed his approach to Spielberg, whose films he has documented throughout his own career. Bouzereau said the 50th anniversary of Jaws gave Spielberg new perspective on how the film forged his career. "Having had my own journey as a person for over 50 years now, we can all relate to things that can either make you or break you," Bouzereau said. "I certainly was surprised by the generosity that he offered by sharing those stories with me." Those stories included Spielberg hiding on the Orca -- the boat Brody (Roy Scheider), Hooper (Richard Dreyfus) and Quint (Robert Shaw) sail to hunt the shark -- when it was moved to the Universal backlot for the studio tour. "I feel also the 50 year perspective, after the career he's had, is very different from the way he's talked about Jaws before," Bouzereau said. "And not with the kind of heart and soul that I think he poured into this new documentary." Jaws @ 50 relates how Spielberg took a meeting at Universal Pictures after making The Sugarland Express for the studio. He gravitated towards Peter Benchley's book Jaws, which inspired the film, in galley form before it was published. Benchley's widow, Wendy, and their children are featured in the documentary. Wendy visited the production in Martha's Vineyard with Peter and recalls Peter trying to convince Spielberg to reduce the shark's length from 25 to a more realistic 15 feet. "Steven understood that if you were going to have a dramatic movie, you needed to have a shark that was big enough to swallow somebody whole," Wendy said. "So he had the right instincts for the movie and I think Peter had the right instincts for a book." Jaws is credited with starting the summer blockbuster. The film itself spawned three sequels, which Bouzerau decided were not part of Spielberg's story. "After Jaws, he was on the path of doing Close Encounters [of the Third Kind]," Bouzereau said. "I wanted to really end on the high note which is cinema has been changed and Jaws is a unique experience." Not that Bouzereau considers Jaws: The Revenge, the fourth film, a low point. He just felt it would be too convoluted to explain the sequels. "I'm not criticizing those films," he said. "I don't dislike Jaws 2. I saw it when it came out and I really like that director [Jeannot Szwarc] as well. He did a movie called Somewhere in Time with Christopher Reeve that was really good." The Benchleys never saw the three sequels either. "We were not involved at all with them so I have no opinion," Wendy said. "It's wonderful. Why not? But, from what I hear from people, the original is the best." Another perspective Bouzereau wanted to bring to Jaws @ 50 was the film's influence on subsequent generations of filmmakers. James Cameron, Steven Soderbergh, J.J. Abrams, Guillermo del Toro and Jordan Peele also share how Jaws influenced their craft. "Generationally. the film had been passed on from a certain type of director," Bouzeareau said. "When you talk to someone like Jordan Peele, who's clearly two generations away from Steven, the fact that he uses Jaws as an example of his type of storytelling is remarkable." The success of Jaws also led the Benchleys into careers in ocean conservation. Because the shark in Jaws was scary, it led to excessive hunting of sharks. Wendy's work with Environmental Defense Fun and Wild Aid has shown her that both protecting sharks and the ocean environments have led to improvements. "There are acres and acres of marine protected areas around the world now," she said. "If you leave the ocean alone, the coral will come back. The fish will come back. You will have much more biomass and those fish will be bigger and when they swim out, they can be caught for food." Cameron is also involved in ocean and shark conservation in addition to filmmaking. It was Bouzereau's goal to show that the legacy of Jaws is more than nostalgia. "All those cast members of my film were chosen very specifically to address a layer that I felt was needed to prove my point that Jaws is as useful as it was 50 years ago," he said. Jaws @ 50 premieres Thursday on National Geographic and will stream on Disney+ and Hulu Friday.
Sky News AU
22-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Sky News AU
The biggest diva was the giant fish: Inside the problem-plagued making of ‘Jaws' 50 years later: A drunk actor, broken sharks and millions over budget
They needed a lot more than just a bigger boat. They needed over double their initial production budget. They needed one of their trio of leading actors to not be so drunk all the time that he'd black out at work. And they needed their three robot sharks — 'playing' the title character — to stop breaking down. The filming of 'Jaws,' director Steven Spielberg's horror classic that turns 50 on Friday, June 20, was plagued by issues on-set in Martha's Vineyard, Mass., during the spring and summer of 1974. Yes, the movie grossed $476 million globally and became one of the first blockbusters and a landmark in the horror genre. But it also very nearly didn't work. 'In many ways, launching 'Jaws' was a film production problem analogous to NASA trying to land men on the moon and bring them back,' wrote 'Jaws' co-screenwriter and actor Carl Gottlieb in the book 'The Jaws Log.' 'It just had never been done.' When producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown hired Spielberg to direct a film based on Peter Benchley's 1974 novel 'Jaws,' he was just 27 years old and professionally untested. His theatrical film debut, 'The Sugarland Express,' hadn't hit theaters yet. But not sold on the alternatives, they went with the young hotshot. Zanuck and Brown budgeted the film at an estimated $3.5 million and wanted production to take 55 days. In the end, 'Jaws' treaded water for over 150 days and cost $9 million. The biggest diva was the shark. The producers assumed, as with decades of Hollywood pictures, a real great white shark could be simply trained up to do what they needed, Gottlieb writes. That, obviously, was not going to work — although a stuntman was harrowingly snapped at by the genuine article in the waters of Australia. So the team planned to build a 25-foot-long mechanical fish. And the only man they could enlist to do it was Bob Mattley, a designer of '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,' 'Flash Gordon' and others who had came out of retirement for the job. The mechanical beasts were budgeted at $1.2 million (adjusted). The waves only got rockier. When filming began in the pretty Massachusetts beach town, the shark they called Bruce had never been tested in ocean water. Made of tubular steel covered in a sand-and-paint mixture, each weighed one ton. The troubles were endless. There were small dents that would cost $50,000 to fix and constant touch-ups requiring the device be laboriously lugged out. Its motor was eroded by salt and the studio thought the teeth were too white, so they were repainted. At one point, Bruce even sank to the bottom of the ocean. The contraption rarely worked two days straight, and constant delays pushed production into July. There was so much free time, beer had to be banned on the boat. 'All over the picture shows signs of going down like the Titanic,' Gottlieb wrote. On booze: Robert Shaw, the actor who played Quint the shark hunter, was an Olympian drinker. During an on-camera interview, the British actor was asked how he prepares. 'Scotch, vodka, gin, whatever,' he said. But Spielberg underestimated this fact. When shooting Quint's famous monologue to Richard Dreyfuss' Hooper and Roy Scheider's Brody aboard the Orca, he let Shaw throw a few back. 'Robert came over to me and said, 'You know, Steven, all three of these characters have been drinking and I think I could do a much better job in this speech if you actually let me have a few drinks before I do the speech,'' Spielberg told Entertainment Weekly in 2011. 'And I unwisely gave him permission.' Shaw was plastered. Crew members had to carry him onto the boat, and he was so drunk that they wrapped for the day. 'At about 2 o'clock in the morning my phone rings and it's Robert,' the director added. 'He had a complete blackout and had no memory of what had gone down that day.' The scene was reshot — sober. 'It was like watching Olivier on stage,' Spielberg said. 'Jaws' was released in theaters on June 20, 1975. The movie became a global mega-hit and launched the career of one of Hollywood's most prominent and influential directors of all time. However, when 'Jaws 2' hit theaters in 1978, the name on the poster wasn't Spielberg — it was Jeannot Szwarc. The 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' genius was traumatized by the original experience. '[I didn't come back for the 'Jaws' sequels] because making the first movie was a nightmare,' Spielberg told Total Film in 2004. 'There were endless problems with the shark and it was an impossible shoot. I thought my career was over because no one had ever taken a movie 100 days over schedule.' Spielberg added: 'It was successful, but I never wanted to go near the water again.' Originally published as The biggest diva was the giant fish: Inside the problem-plagued making of 'Jaws' 50 years later - a drunk actor, broken sharks and millions over budget
New York Post
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Inside the problem-plagued making of ‘Jaws' 50 years later: A drunk actor, broken sharks and millions over-budget
They needed a lot more than just a bigger boat. They needed over double their initial production budget. They needed one of their trio of leading actors to not be so drunk all the time that he'd black out at work. Advertisement And they needed their three robot sharks — 'playing' the title character — to stop breaking down. 6 Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss starred in 1975's 'Jaws.' AP The filming of 'Jaws,' director Steven Spielberg's horror classic that turns 50 on Friday, June 20, was plagued by issues on-set in Martha's Vineyard, Mass., during the spring and summer of 1974. Advertisement Yes, the movie grossed $476 million globally and became one of the first blockbusters and a landmark in the horror genre. But it also very nearly didn't work. 'In many ways, launching 'Jaws' was a film production problem analogous to NASA trying to land men on the moon and bring them back,' wrote 'Jaws' co-screenwriter and actor Carl Gottlieb in the book 'The Jaws Log.' 'It just had never been done.' When producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown hired Spielberg to direct a film based on Peter Benchley's 1974 novel 'Jaws,' he was just 27 years old and professionally untested. His theatrical film debut, 'The Sugarland Express,' hadn't hit theaters yet. But not sold on the alternatives, they went with the young hotshot. Zanuck and Brown budgeted the film at an estimated $3.5 million and wanted production to take 55 days. In the end, 'Jaws' treaded water for over 150 days and cost $9 million. Advertisement 6 The three mechanical sharks were all called Bruce, and broke down constantly. Getty Images The biggest diva was the shark. The producers assumed, like with decades of Hollywood pictures, a real great white shark could be simply trained up to do what they needed, Gottlieb writes. That, obviously, was not going to work — although a stuntman was harrowingly snapped at by the genuine article in the waters of Australia. So the team planned to build a 25-foot-long mechanical fish. And the only man they could enlist to do it was Bob Mattley, a designer of '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,' 'Flash Gordon' and others who had came out of retirement for the job. The mechanical beasts were budgeted at $1.2 million (adjusted). Advertisement The waves only got rockier. When filming began in the pretty Massachusetts beach town, the shark they called Bruce had never been tested in ocean water. Made of tubular steel covered in a sand-and-paint mixture, each weighed one ton. 6 Steven Spielberg was just 27 when he directed 'Jaws.' Getty Images The troubles were endless. There were small dents that would cost $50,000 to fix and constant touchups requiring the device be laboriously lugged out. Its motor was eroded by salt and the studio thought the teeth were too white, so they were repainted. At one point, Bruce even sank to the bottom of the ocean. The contraption rarely worked two days straight, and constant delays pushed production into July. There was so much free time, beer had to be banned on the boat. 'All over the picture shows signs of going down like the Titanic,' Gottlieb wrote. On booze: Robert Shaw, the actor who played Quint the shark hunter, was an Olympian drinker. During an on-camera interview, the British actor was asked how he prepares. 'Scotch, vodka, gin, whatever,' he said. Advertisement 6 When asked how he prepares to act, Robert Shaw said, 'Scotch, vodka, gin, whatever.' But Spielberg underestimated this fact. When shooting Quint's famous monologue to Richard Dreyfuss' Hooper and Roy Scheider's Brody aboard the Orca, he let Shaw throw a few back. 'Robert came over to me and said, 'You know, Steven, all three of these characters have been drinking and I think I could do a much better job in this speech if you actually let me have a few drinks before I do the speech,'' Spielberg told Entertainment Weekly in 2011. 'And I unwisely gave him permission.' Shaw was plastered. Crew members had to carry him onto the boat, and he was so drunk that they wrapped for the day. Advertisement 'At about 2 O'clock in the morning my phone rings and it's Robert,' the director added. 'He had a complete blackout and had no memory of what had gone down that day.' The scene was re-shot — sober. 'It was like watching Olivier on stage,' Spielberg said. 6 Spielberg said making 'Jaws' was 'a nightmare.' WireImage Advertisement 6 The horror classic grossed $476 million. Courtesy Everett Collection 'Jaws' was released in theaters on June 20, 1975. The movie became a global mega-hit and launched the career of one of Hollywood's most prominent and influential directors of all time. However, when 'Jaws 2' hit theaters in 1978, the name on the poster wasn't Spielberg — it was Jeannot Szwarc. The 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' genius was traumatized by the original experience. '[I didn't come back for the 'Jaws' sequels] because making the first movie was a nightmare,' Spielberg told Total Film in 2004. Advertisement 'There were endless problems with the shark and it was an impossible shoot. I thought my career was over because no one had ever taken a movie 100 days over schedule.' Spielberg added: 'It was successful, but I never wanted to go near the water again.'
