Awesome / Jaws

The film:

"Smile, you son of a--"

• Charlie outswimming the shark when he and his friend are fishing for it. His friend shouts at him to not look back and keep swimming, before pulling him up onto the dock's remains in time. It's a terrifying scene but made all the more awesome that Charlie is just waterlogged and shaken by the end of it.
• During the Fourth of July attack, how the crowd becomes a Heroic Bystander group when they realize a shark is really in the water. They rush to get as many people out as possible from the water, with the woman who shouted the alarm pointing where she sees the fin. Brody takes charge and runs toward the pond, asking if anyone has a gun. A random boater yells at Michael and his friends to get out of the water, probably saving their lives as the shark eats him. Then Michael's friends get him out of the water when he goes into shock. Brody commandeers beach blankets and towels to wrap up his son, who doesn't have a scratch on him.
  • In one version (cut for being too disturbing) we see the shark biting into the boater. Even while he's bleeding out the man pushes Michael up to safety before he is pulled under.
• Brody is scared of water. He's been asking for the mayor to close the beaches. When Quint is hired to go and kill the shark? Brody volunteers to go along.
• The first full view of the shark as it rises from the water behind Chief Brody. Not only do we finally see the face of the beast, but the lack of the shark theme that always accompanied the shark made its appearance even more shocking.
• In a like manner, the first full-length view of the shark after Hooper goes down in shark cage is at once awesome and terrifying. We get to see just how much of a monster this shark is, as it glides by the cage almost casually, trailing those three barrels as if they were party balloons, to the most fully-realized version of John Williams' famous theme. Hooper's Oh, Crap! expression is visible through his scuba mask.
• How about just the shark in general? It's fast enough to keep up with the Orca, strong enough to submerge with 3 barrels attached to it, single handedly sank the Orca, shrugs off bullets, knife wounds, harpoons, it's clearly intelligent, and is big enough to eat a man whole.
  • At one point, Quint manages to tie the shark to the Orca. The shark proceeds to drag the ship after it fast enough to send waves crashing over the stern, ripping out the stern cleats in the process.
    Brody: Have you ever seen a Great White do-
    Hooper: No!
  • The shark hunters deserve credit where it's due for getting three spears/barrels into the shark (plus shooting it a few times) throughout that sequence. The World's Expert (on Getting Killed) or not, Quint knows his shark-hunting.
• Quint's famous monologue about what happened to the USS Indianapolis. Unsettling, horrifying, and worst of all based on Real Life. And made even better by Robert Shaw himself having made some additions to the script before filming.
  Quint: Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We was comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. Just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that when you're in the water, Chief? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know, was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin', so we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know it was kinda like old squares in a battle, like you see on a calendar, like in the Battle of Waterloo. And the idea was shark comes the nearest man, that man he'd start poundin' and hollerin' and screamin' and sometimes the shark'd go away... but sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark he looks right into ya. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, don't seem to be livin'... until he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then... ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'. The ocean turns red, and despite all the poundin' and the hollerin' they all come in and... rip you to pieces. You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don't know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin', Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Bosun's mate. I thought he was asleep. Reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water, he was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he'd been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper. Anyway, he saw us and he come in low, and three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and started to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, 1,100 men went into the water, 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.
  • Richard Dreyfuss said you’re not seeing him acting as Hooper in this scene; he really was that mesmerized by Shaw’s performance.
• "Smile, you son of a--" *BANG* *KABOOM!!*
  • Hell, Chief Brody in general. He has the balls to fight the shark. He kicks it, stabs it, and blows it to kingdom come with a well placed .30-06 bullet from Quint's M1 Garand to an air tank he tossed into the shark's mouth. A definite badass.
    • And this is a guy who is terrified of the water even before he knows it contains a 25 foot killer shark.
• When Quint is being eaten, amidst his horrific shrieks of agony, he grabs his machete and starts stabbing the shark in the head even when its jaws enclose around his chest. It doesn't do much, but at least he went down fighting.
• When city boy Hooper and Working-Class Hero Quint compare scars over drinks.
• Hooper gets one by volunteering to go into the water in a patently inadequate cage to try one last desperate attempt to kill the shark. It doesn't work, but it was an insanely brave thing to do. Even Quint seems tacitly impressed.
  • While his plan to kill the shark might have failed, Hooper valiantly fights back nonetheless and even manages to escape certain death at the shark's hands.
• In a more low-key manner, Brody cornering Vaughn after the attack on the Fourth of July and forcing him to sign a voucher to hire Quint, laying out just how badly he's screwed up and that they are done playing politics:
  Brody: "Larry, summer's over! You're the mayor of Shark City, these people think you want the beaches open!"
• Ben Gardner's scheme to lure the out of of town bounty hunters following him in hopes of getting the shark for themselves away from his potential catch is both this and a funny moment.
• The moment when Quint starts to respect Hooper.
  You go in the cage, cage goes in the water, you go in the water. Shark's in the water, our shark.

The ride:

• The skipper, who at first is a distraught mess when it comes to the shark and is a terrible aim, Takes A Level In Badass and shoots the heck out of the shark in the finale. They also remember to do their job and keep the passengers safe.
• The ride's triumphant ending, where the shark is defeated and the skipper saying to Brody over the radio "Call off those marines, we are coming home!"
• During the ride's early incarnation, a passenger named Anthony Salamone fell overboard. This wouldn't have been a problem normally, except that Salamone happened to fall into the robotic shark's path, in the deepest part of the water. While keeping in character, the skipper managed to get Salamone up before he suffered serious injuries, though the latter did suffer a scraped leg and bruises. Everyone applauded because they thought it was All Part of the Show.

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