History Film / Jaws

** Subverted: A big deal is made out of Hooper delaying tying up the first barrel while he attaches a blinking homing beacon thing. The audience could expect it to play some role in tracking the shark, but it's seemingly forgotten even by Hooper.

* ActorAllusion: The drunken Chief Brody complains about the crime rate in New York. Roy Scheider's last role before ''Jaws'' was as a New York cop in ''Film/TheFrenchConnection''.

** Quint declared that "eleven hundred men went in the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, and the sharks took the rest". In reality, most of the ''Indianapolis'' crew died due to dehydration, exposure, and wounds they already suffered at the time of the ship's sinking. The share of sharks in the overall death toll was exaggerated over decades, adding to their unfounded notoriety (and the movie -- and Quint's speech -- certainly did not help)

** The shark can be heard growling, particularly when the barrels are tied to the stern. This is impossible, as sharks do not have vocal cords. That is, were this sound not a form of suction.

* SomberBackstoryRevelation: Quint after a night of drinking together and comparing scars with Hooper, sobers everyone up quickly, by revealing to Brody and Hooper that he was a survivor of the U.S.S. Indianapolis[[note]]the ship that delivered one of the atomic bombs to be used on Japan, and subsequently sunk by a Japanese sub after delivering its cargo[[/note]], and explaining why he hates sharks and will never again wear a life preserver.

** Also played with, [[spoiler: with Quint. Specifically, Quint's actions in destroying the radio and eventually burning out the motor and leaving them all stranded and at the mercy of the shark. The novel version of Quint has no traumatic PTSD that is shared, and remains professional throughout the hunt, having no problem returning to the dock each day. The film version of Quint takes the hunt extremely personally, leading to bad decisions that force them into a confrontation, where as the novel Quint is only in it for the money.

* A very minor one is Quint's "fee." In the movie he demands a $10,000 bounty, whereas in the novel, he just asks for double his daily charter rate, around $400.

* Also played with, [[spoiler: with Quint. Specifically, Quint's actions in destroying the radio and eventually burning out the motor and leaving them all stranded and at the mercy of the shark. The novel version of Quint has no traumatic PTSD that is shared, and remains professional throughout the hunt, having no problem returning to the dock each day. The film version of Quint takes the hunt extremely personally, leading to bad decisions that force them into a confrontation, where as the novel Quint is only in it for the money.

* SparedByTheAdaptation: [[spoiler:Matt Hooper dies in the cage in the novel; however, after one of the sharks being filmed[[note]]unlike every other scene, parts of the underwater sequence were shot off the coast of Australia with real sharks, with a scaled-down cage and little person BodyDouble being used to make the standard-size (14 feet) shark appear abnormally large[[/note]] destroyed the prop cage before that scene was to be shot, Spielberg and crew decide to use the footage and allow Hooper to live.]]

* AbortedArc: Hooper goes to a lot of trouble to attach a hi-tech beeping device with a blinking light to one of Quint's barrels. Presumably it is some kind of TrackingDevice, but this is never stated on camera. The device is breifly seen again when the shark attacks the ''Orca'' that evening, but otherwise plays no part in the rest of the plot.

* DaylightHorror: The shark attacks mostly during the day on a bright, sunny beach. It does not stop it from being absolutely frightening. This includes the dramatic climax. Hooper states the shark is a "night feeder," which is untrue in the film. Even the first attack (which appears to be at night) is actually late evening, the sun can be seen setting, but still high in the sky, blocked by a bank of clouds. Part of what makes the shark's first visible appearance so frightening is the way it just appears [[JumpScare out of the blue]], dead center of the frame, in broad daylight, in the middle of a completely normal scene. "You're gonna need a bigger boat", indeed.

** And also brilliantly subverted when we get our first good view of the shark. Throughout the whole film, the audience has been conditioned to only expect a shark attack when we hear the [[MusicalSpoiler classic, ominous music.]] So when the shark appears, completely un-[[ObscuredSpecialEffects obscured]], smack dab in the middle of the frame, in [[DaylightHorror broad spanking daylight]] with [[JumpScare no warning whatsoever]], unconditioned audience members may feel the need to [[BringMyBrownPants reach for the brown trousers.]]

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nrvMNf-HEg Quint's legendary monologue]] on the sinking of the USS ''Indianapolis''. Which, incidentally, is TruthInTelevision. Although in RealLife, more of the sailors on the ''Indianapolis'' died from exposure, dehydration, and wounds suffered in the sinking than from sharks.
** Robert Shaw, an accomplished writer himself, made major contributions to the script for that scene. He believed there should be some explanation for his character's antipathy towards sharks.

** Very much so. It streamlined the plot but remained fairly faithful (for example, in the movie, the ''Orca'' goes out and stays out until the end, while in the book, they make several trips out, returning at the end of each day -- each film encounter with the shark roughly corresponds to a single book encounter, with the ''Orca'' returning to port after losing track of the shark). Like ''Film/TheGodfather'' before it, it is considered to be an example of a film being superior to the book.

** The film's climax is much more dramatic than the novel's. In the novel, [[spoiler:Hooper gets killed in the shark cage, while Quint merely drowns and the shark bleeds to death.]] In the movie, [[spoiler:Hooper narrowly [[SparedByTheAdaptation escapes getting eaten in the cage]], Quint gets EatenAlive, and the shark is blown to smithereens when Brody shoots the tank in its mouth.]]

** Mayor Vaughn owes money to TheMafia in the novel, which accounts for his refusal to deal with the shark preying on tourists, but in the movie his motive for refusing to shut down the beaches is mostly due to genuine concern about the town's livelihood, and a sincere belief that the shark threat is overblown.

* AnimalsNotToScale: Quint estimates the shark to be twenty-five feet long and three tons, which would make it bigger than any of the largest reliably recorded great whites ever (which were around twenty feet and two tons) and equal to the largest unreliably reported great white sharks. He also refers to it as male, but [[AnimalGenderBender only females of the species are known to reach near these lengths]].
* AntiClimax: The ending of the original book has the shark just quietly die from the wounds caused by the battle, which highly contrasts to the film's explosive climax. It's also worth noting the contrast between [[spoiler:Quint's]] deaths: The movie truly lives up to its sheer climactic and terrifying intensity when [[spoiler:Quint is ''eaten alive'' by the shark on the boat, screaming in terror as Brody helplessly watches.]] In the novel, he gets tangled and pulled down by one of the weighted barrels and [[DroppedABridgeOnHim unceremoniously drowns]], although this death does have somewhat greater [[Literature/MobyDick literary significance]].
* ArgumentOfContradictions: After Hooper notes that the shark that was caught was too small to be the killer, he decides to take a boat out and look for proof that the shark is still at large. Brody, who hates water, protests that the wine he's drunk hasn't made him intoxicated enough to handle venturing onto a boat. He and Hooper get into a brief argument about it, consisting mostly of "yes" and "no". Hooper eventually wins.

%%* CloudCuckoolander: Petty much everyone on Amity island with a couple {{Jerkass}} politicians mixed in, the only exceptions are Brody, his family, Hooper, and a couple of side characters.

* DidntThinkThisThrough: The two guys on the dock who tried to bait the shark with a hunk of meat didn't seem to plan for what to do if the shark just took the meat and ran..........or if it was strong enough to yank away the dock itself, which is exactly what ended up happening.

* EarlyInstalmentWeirdness: On a meta level. One of Creator/StevenSpielberg's most recurring tropes is father figures who are neglectful or completely absent at the beginning of a story. In ''Jaws'', the protagonist Martin and his wife Ellen are shown to be GoodParents, and minor antagonist Mayor Vaughn's most humanising moment is when he admits to being scared for his children's safety.

** Averted with the killing of Alex Kintner, with the camera seemingly capturing every blood spray. [[spoiler:Quint's]] death is even worse.

* KickTheDog: It is strongly implied that Pippet the dog becomes one of the shark's victims -- his sudden and ominous disappearance during the beach scene (where he had once been running into the waves to fetch a stick his owner had tossed to him, now we only see the stick floating on the water while his owner frantically calls for him) occurs just before the attack on Alex Kitner (which is itself a KickTheDog moment), and is the first hint of the shark's presence.

* MeaningfulName: Quint's vessel, the ''Orca''. Orcas, a.k.a. killer whales (yes, the intelligent creatures we see performing at Sea World), are the only natural predators of great white sharks in the wild, and substantial documentary evidence can confirm that orcas occasionally go shark hunting themselves. And they do it in packs, just like the three humans on Quint's boat.

* SparedByTheAdaptation: [[spoiler:Matt Hooper dies in the cage in the novel; however, after one of the sharks being filmed[[note]]unlike every other scene, parts of the underwater sequence were shot off the coast of Australia with real sharks, with a scaled-down cage and little person BodyDouble being used to make the standard-size (14 feet) shark appear abnormally large[[/note]] destroyed the prop cage before that scene was to be shot, Spielberg & crew decide to use the footage and allow Hooper to live.]]

* FiveSecondForeshadowing: We see Puppet's owner calling for him, and the stick that he was tossing to him floating on the water, unretrieved. Immediately afterwards, the theme music kicks in and we get MurdererPOV as the shark swoops in on Alex Kitner.

* ''Film/{{Jaws 2}}'' (1978)

* AdaptationalVillainy: Played with. In the novel, local newspaper editor Harry Meadows is friends with Brody and offers him support. [[spoiler: The night before he goes after the shark with Quint and Hooper, The novel version of Meadows actually pens a column condemning the actions of the town leaders while offering support of Brody, stating that Brody has been trying to act in the best interests of the town from the start, and had been overruled, and singles out the fact that he's going out on Quint's boat and risking his life to try and kill the shark, even though it's not his responsibility.]] But the film version of Meadows, as played by Carl Gottlieb, isn't friends with Brody and is fully-aligned with Mayor Vaughn's insistence that the threat of a shark be downplayed, and that it be said the attack was from a barracuda instead of a shark.

--->"...What we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, an eating machine. It's really a miracle of evolution."

* AmbiguousSyntax: Quint, during his ''Indianapolis'' speech, tells Hooper and Brody that he was the most frightened when a PBY started to pick up the survivors, stating that he was waiting for his turn. It's left deliberately ambiguous if he was referring to rescue or death by shark attack with that last statement.

--->'''Quint''': Stop playin' with yourself, Hooper.

--->'''Quint''': Anti-shark cage? You go inside the cage? ''(Hooper nods)'' Cage goes in water, you go in the water. Shark's in the water. Our shark? Farewell and adieu...

--->'''Brody''': That shark will rip that cage to pieces!\\
'''Hooper''': You got any better suggestions!?

-->'''Brody''': You're gonna need a bigger boat.

** A classic example when we get our first good look at the shark. Brody is muttering to himself while irritably tossing chum overboard, not expecting anything to happen...then '''BAM''', there's the shark. Especially effective because every previous shark attack has been heralded by the iconic [[MusicalSpoiler theme music]], this one pops up with no warning whatsoever.
--->'''Brody:''' ''(under his breath)'' "Slow ahead." I can go slow ahead! Come down and chum some of this shit! ''(the shark [[JumpScare suddenly appears]] over Brody's shoulder, smack dab in the middle of the frame)''

* NonIndicativeTitle: To the point that when Spielberg saw the unfinished book, he imagined if it was about dentists. Many countries went for "Shark" or some variations instead (''Tiburón'', ''Tubarão'', ''Lo Squalo'', "The White Shark" in German, "[[BreadEggsBreadedEggs The Jaws of the Shark]]" in Greek), if not a Completely Different Title: in French it's ''Les Dents de la mer'', "The Teeth of the Sea". Amusingly enough, in Finnish it's "Tappajahai", literally: [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin "The Killer Shark."]]

* OneWordTitle: ''Jaws''
** In Brazil and Mexico the title was ''Shark''.

--->'''Vaughn:''' I don't think that you're familiar with our problems.
--->'''Hooper:''' I think that I am familiar with the fact that you are going to ignore ''this'' particular problem until it swims up and ''bites you on the ass''!

* PreMortemOneLiner: ''"Smile, you son of a bitch!"'' Also doubles as a literal PrecisionFStrike, as Brody fires the killing shot the moment he says 'bitch'.

* RealLifeWritesThePlot: The constant problems with the mechanical shark props resulted in using the barrel floats to indicate the presence of the underwater shark instead, since otherwise a lot of expensive production time would have gone to waste waiting around. As Spielberg later admitted, the "barrels=shark" gimmick actually proved more effective, since it gave the shark's appearances that much more impact, and NothingIsScarier...

---> '''Quint:''' And get the Mayor off my back, [[TakeThat I don't want any more of this zoning crap!]]

** Richard Dreyfuss recalls that he first heard about ''Jaws'' at a party, overhearing someone (possibly Spielberg) talking about how to achieve that exact shot. He also recalls thinking something along the lines of "Good luck with that!". Spielberg has said that the last few minutes of the movie were a case of "If they've come this far with me, they'll go the last mile."
* ScareChord: A classic example. The score spikes with a horrific shriek when Hooper's flashlight picks up Ben Gardner's [[EyeScream one-eyed]] floating head.

** The oft-misquoted "You're gonna need a bigger boat," when the shark is first visible.

** When the shark makes its appearance near the ''Orca'', Hooper frantically yells at Brody to get closer to the bucking and exposed prow of the ship--so that he can be used for scale in the photos of the shark that Hooper is taking. (Not surprisingly, Brody refuses once Hooper explains this.)

--> '''Quint:''' And get the Mayor off my back, I don't want any more of this zoning crap!

-->'''Brody:''' "Slow ahead." I can go slow ahead. Come on down here and chum some of this shit. ''(cue shark)''

->'''Brody:''' I used to hate the water.
->'''Hooper:''' Heh. I can't imagine why.

* SkinnyDipping: Chrissy picked the very worst time for it.

* ImprobableAimingSkills: Initially averted when Brody tries to shoot the shark with his service revolver in a genuinely realistic depiction of just how hard it is to hit a moving target with a handgun, and one he can't see or hit properly due to being mostly underwater at that, but later played straight when he hits the gas canister in the shark's mouth from a not-inconsiderable distance. Arguably, an easier shot due to him using a rifle this time, but [[WordOfGod the director]] admits he [[RuleOfCool wasn't exactly aiming for realism]] with this one. Although, to be fair, in the latter case it ''did'' take him 6 shots to hit the scuba tank. Plus, the shark was coming straight at him, and getting closer all the time.

* SkewedPriorities: After the Fourth of July attack, Brody sees the mayor muttering about saving August for the tourists. He calls out Vaughn for caring more about the tourist revenue than about getting rid of the shark. This backfires on Vaughn and he eventually agrees without protest to hire Quint.

** To be fair, Vaughn wasn't exactly in a rational state of mind. His babbling about August sounds more like a man in shock, trying to get his mind around what's going on.

* AdaptationNameChange: Chief Brody's son is named Martin Brody Jr. in the book, but is called Michael in the film, possibly due to the OneSteveLimit.

** The climax is way more dramatic in the movie than the book. In the book, [[spoiler:Hooper gets killed in the shark cage, while Quint merely drowns and the shark bleeds to death.]] In the movie, [[spoiler:Hooper narrowly [[SparedByTheAdaptation escapes getting eaten in the cage]], Quint gets EatenAlive, and the shark is blown to smithereens when Brody shoots the tank in its mouth.]]

* AdaptationalVillainy: Played with. Newspaper editor Harry Meadows, in the novel, is friends with Brody, and offers him support. [[spoiler: The night before he goes after the shark with Quint and Hooper, The novel version of Meadows actually pens a column condemning the actions of the town leaders while offering support of Brody, stating that Brody has been trying to act in the best interests of the town from the start, and had been overruled, and singles out the fact that he's going out on Quint's boat and risking his life to try and kill the shark, even though it's not his responsibility.]] The film version of Meadows, as played by Carl Gottlieb, isn't friends with Brody and is fully-aligned with Mayor Vaughn's insistence that the threat of a shark be downplayed, and that it be said the attack was from a barracuda instead of a shark.

* AdaptationExplanationExtrication: In the novel, the Mayor Vaughn's main reason for keeping the beaches open was his ties to TheMafia, who owned real estate in Amity Island. This subplot was deemed unnecessary to the film and it was dropped, leaving concern for the town's livelihood as his motivation.

* AdaptationExplanationExtrication: In the novel, the mayor's main reason for keeping the beaches open was his ties to the mob, who owned real estate in Amity Island. This subplot was deemed unnecessary to the film and it was dropped, leaving {{greed}} as his motivation.

The film was adapted from [[Literature/{{Jaws}} the 1974 novel of the same name]] by Creator/PeterBenchley, which it has [[AdaptationDisplacement dwarfed astronomically in terms of public recognition]]. The novel was inspired partly by real shark attacks and partly by ''Literature/MobyDick'', with Quint's dogged pursuit of the shark sharing [[MobySchtick many similarities]] with Captain Ahab's hunt of the great white whale.