In 1975,Steven Spielbergchanged movies forever with the release ofJaws. At the time, in an era beforeStar Warsand so many other mega films to come, this tale about a killer great white becamethe movie that ushered in the era of the summer blockbuster. Almost half a century later, it’s still a beloved masterpiece and one of Spielberg’s best films in a career like none other.Three sequels followed the originalJaws, all of which Spielberg had no part of.Jaws 2wasn’t too bad, despite feeling like a remake, andJaws 3-Dwas a clunky messthat at least gave us a different setting. Then came the last film in the franchise, 1987’sJaws: The Revenge. It’s regarded as the worst of the franchise by far, a film so bad that there’d never be another, but if you stop trying to compare it to the first film, what you have is a crazy, over-the-top slasher film where a shark becomes an almost human-like killer.It’s completely stupid, and that’s what makes it so great.
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The Shark in ‘Jaws: The Revenge’ Becomes a Michael Myers-Like Killer
These days, every successful horror movie turns into a long-running franchise it seems. In the 1970s and 80s, however, it was still a rather new fascination to keep creating the same movie with the same villain over and over again.Halloween,Friday the 13th, andA Nightmare on Elm Streetwere pumping out sequels left and rightin the 1980s. Right there with them wasJaws. On the surface, the first three horror franchises don’t have much in common with a killer fish in the ocean outside of having a body count, but in reality, theJawsfranchise had turned from a simple, slow-burn story that was as much about its characters as its monster into a gory murder fest. ByJaws: The Revenge, the filmmakers really let go and made an all-out slasher film, giving us a ridiculous killer shark that might as well have been Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, or Freddy Krueger.
The first twoJawsfilmsfollowed Amity IslandSheriff Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) and his wife Ellen (Lorraine Gray) among others. We got to watch this close couple and how the tragedies of their new home affected them, yet brought them closer. Scheider and Gray didn’t return forJaws 3-D, though the family still stayed as the focus, with a youngDennis Quaidplaying their son, Michael. He works as an engineer at the Orlando SeaWorld where, wouldn’t you know it, another killer shark attacks and starts eating the guests and employees. It started to seem like all of these sharks had it out for the family. It’s a plot point thatJaws: The Revengedecides to completely lean into.
For the final film, Scheider again did not return as Chief Brody. Instead, his character is written out forever, having suffered an offscreen fatal heart attack sometime before the film’s events. Who did return though was Lorraine Gray. Ellen Brody no longer played second fiddle to her husband. It was her story now. There’s an interesting idea there, and Gray is a phenomenal actress, but the execution was pure, blissful madness.
We start out again on Amity Island. To show that this family truly needs to never go water ever again, the opening act has another Brody son, Sean (Mitchell Anderson), killed by, yes, you guessed it, a great white shark! His mother decides that this shark is out for revenge against the Brodys for the other three sharks this family has blown up and electrocuted.
The Shark Is Upset About All the Other Sharks the Brodys Killed
It’s a bold and hilarious direction to go. In the first film, the shark is just a shark. It’s a dang fish. It seeks out people because they’re stupid enough to keep serving themselves up to it. That doesn’t mean that the shark is dumb. It’s actually a very smart shark, and it seeks out those that attempt to attack it, going after Brody and crew in the final act. If we’re to keep up the slasher comparisons, the shark in the originalJawsis Michael Myers in the originalHalloween. It’s a silent assassin with no real motivation other than to kill anything it sees just because it likes it. ByJaws: The Revenge, the franchise becomesHalloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. Here,Michael Myers now has a motivation. 1981’sHalloween 2told us that Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) wasn’t just some teenage girl picked at random. Nope, she was Michael’s long-lost sister. In the fourth film, Laurie is dead, so he goes after her young daughter because his only goal now is to kill everyone in his family.
Jaws: The Revengetells us the same thing. While most weren’t a fan of Michael Myers' evolving storyline, it was still accepted because it was plausible. It makes no sense inJaws: The Revenge, because, hello, it’s a shark! How can a shark, a freakin' fish, which lives in water, know where certain humans are who live on land, and at all times? And how would that shark know to come running, er, swimming, when its intended target finally decides to get in the water? It’s logically impossible, completely jumping the shark (yes, the pun is intended), but if you accept it and just go with it rather than shaking your head at the absurdity, it makes for a fun jumping-off point.
Even more senseless than this is that it’s adifferentshark! In the originalJaws, that shark seeks vengeance against those that are trying to kill it. Same for the sequels. That makes some sense. It would also make a bit of sense if you don’t think too hard, that the same shark could keep attacking through four films, if, in true slasher form, it never died at the end of its previous films, but kept coming back. But the great white dies every time, which means this isn’t the same shark. Somehow, against all possibilities, it knew these other sharks, who killed them, where they lived, and now it’s going to do something about it. We’re not dealing with Michael Myers anymore, but a copycat. We’ve got Ghostface on our hands here. If he could prank call Ellen Brody from the ocean, he would.
The Shark Teleports Like Jason Voorhees
Ellen Brody decides to leave Amity Island behind to live with her son Michael, now played byLance Guest(who had a role inHalloween 2). It’s a good idea, except that Michael lives in the Bahamas, another island in the Atlantic Ocean. Ellen, you should’ve just moved to Montana! Still, the Bahamas are over 2,000 miles away from Amity Island, so she’s obviously safe, right? Nope. This shark is so pissed and so smart and strong that it swims 2,000 miles to go after her family again. Somehow, it senses that Ellen has left, can feel that she’s in an airplane flying away from it and therefore ruining its big masterplan, so it swims after her, going an insane distance, and in record time. The shark teleports faster than Jason Voorhees.
If we needed even more slasher goodness, it turns out that Ellen Brody and the shark have some sort of psychic connection, because of course they do. It’s the same plot asHalloween 4. Ellen can sense when this big fish is going to attack. She can even have visions of her husband fighting previous sharks, despite the fact that she wasn’t there to witness any of it.
When the shark arrives in the Bahamas, it goes straight for the Brodys, including Ellen’s young granddaughter, Thea (Judith Barsi). Not only that but it goes for Ellen’s new man friend, a pilot named Hoagie, played by none other thanMichael Caine. This shark is so upset that it even goes for Hoagie, jumping out of the water and onto Hoagie’s plane, before pulling it under. Hoagie’s not even a Brody, but the fish has such a vendetta against the family that if you’re even seen hanging out with them, you’re on its kill list. It’s like when Michael Myers just kills some random teenager who’s hanging out with someone in the Strode family when he could be using his free time and energy to meet his main objective. Luckily, Hoagie lives, andMichael Caine would get back to making better movies.
‘Jaws: The Revenge’ Gives the Shark a Proper Slasher Villain Death
A slasher flick is a letdown without a good villain death. The farther a franchise goes, the bigger it’s gotta be. Michael Myers has gone from being shot off a roof in 1978 to being chopped up into ground beef forHalloween Endsin 2022. The first shark inJawsis blown up when Brody shoots an oxygen tank in its mouth, blowing it up.Jaws 2has its monster catch on fire after being tricked by Chief Brody into biting into an electrical cable.Jaws 3-Dgave us another shark blowing upafter chewing on a grenade.Jaws: The Revengetried to top that with something so silly that it fits perfectly into the slasher genre. After Michael Brody uses electrical impulses to drive the shark crazy, it leaps out of the water, roaring like a lion (who knew sharks roared), illogically standing up vertically almost completely out of the water. It’s then stabbed through the neck like a person by the broken bowsprit of Ellen’s boat, its knife-like point putting this shark down.
It’s a fittingly bonkers ending to a bonkers movie. It’s a true shame that there weren’t more after this. Further sequels could’ve maybe explored this poor shark’s family and their reaction to the fact that this guy wasn’t coming home. We could’ve seen a shark go to New York, space, or kill people in their dreams. While it looks like we’ll never get those, we are still blessed by the existence ofJaws: The Revenge, a true 80s slasher masterpiece.
