You did not walk into toy shops prior to release and see endless amounts of Jaws merchandise. By modern (or post-1977) standards, it was barely merchandised at all, and most of that was hurriedly arranged after the film’s massive success. By early 1970s standards, Jaws was a merchandising juggernaut.
Jaws is less the point when the director-driven New Cinema of the 1970s gave way to studio spectacle than it is the first chip, with George Lucas’ film leading to the inevitable crack. It was the first of the summer blockbusters in fact, though perhaps more by luck than design it would be Star Wars a couple of years later that set the template for what we have now, and I would still remove Jaws from that history of increasingly cynical SFX spectaculars that are ruthlessly marketed as this year’s big summer hit. For a period of my youth, I believed Jaws to be the pinnacle of filmmaking achievement – and I still think that it is a perfectly crafted piece of cinema, one that you can watch over and over again and still take satisfaction from, even if the shocks and surprises no longer shock or surprise quite as much.Īs everyone knows, Jaws opened in the summer of 1975 and was an immediate sensation.
News that Jaws is to get an entirely unnecessary and money-grabbing 3D and IMAX ‘upgrade’ this September – crowbarring a format onto a film that was never made with nor needs the empty spectacle that this visual overload provides for otherwise shoddy and vacuous films – reminds me of my own personal history with Steven Spielberg’s breakthrough film. An ongoing love affair with the first summer blockbuster.
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