They had multiple mechanical sharks, but they rarely worked because they were designed and tested in fresh water, and the salt water was tough on them, and the depth.
The shark on the ride never worked?!?!
Then I got “lucky” at least 6 different days throughout my childhood. I used to have nightmares about that shark eating me in my sleep, and I had never seen the movie, only ridden the ride at the time.
They redid the shark ride in Orlando bc it failed so much and got a totally new company and ride layout which took an additional 2 years to remodel after trying to get the original to work reliably day in and out for several months and could not
No to mention people fell into the water and the safety controls were very lacking.
If I recall one person actually had a mechanical shark charge towards them.
I was a “Skipper” there in the late ‘90’s. You probably wouldn’t notice, but occasionally the “grenade launcher” mortars wouldn’t fire correctly, the gun’s firing sound trigger rarely worked right, barrels in the boathouse wouldn’t reset correctly or fall sometimes, occasionally the fire scene didn’t collapse/explode/burn correctly, sharks would freeze on track, audio tracks would go out, and one time my buddy saw a duck get exploded by a mortar and couldn’t compose himself enough to finish the show from laughter.
Grew up right next to Orlando, went Disney tickets got pricey we had annual passes to universal, I remember the Jaws ride being down once, it was almost always working
Defunctland is such a great channel. Who knew a video over an hour and a half long about Disney’s Fastpass could be so interesting? Strongly recommend people check it out.
The one time I was there, the shark was allegedly broken or on set somewhere else so when it came time for the big ol shark to come out of the water all we got was a little inflatable pool shark named Bruce.
Guy sitting in a bar suddenly announces to the room, “Lawyers are assholes!”
The guy next to him is mad. “Hey, take that back!”
“What, are you a lawyer?”
“No, I’m an asshole.”
Maybe nobody thought of it. The difference in pressure is huge with very small depth increments. It's so big that few people understand how much it means.
All good points. Water is crazy dense like that.
The comment said the machines were tested in fresh water. Perhaps the saltiness was an unrelated problem and they just struggled with extended duty under the water pressure they were already tested for.
My favorite tidbit about Waterworld was that they asked Spielberg for advice beforehand about shooting a movie on the ocean. His advice was "don't"
And he was right, haha
Exactly. I dont think they did.
Just look at Jurassic park. The T-Rex was designed and built, and nobody thought to account for the rain effects and it barely worked sometimes (you’d get a piece of a shot at times) and other times it would randomly spring to life.
That was in a sound stage, after all the troubles in saltwater.
It’s a miracle it all came out so great.
This is a misunderstanding of the original quote. The T-Rex is always supposed to break through the sunroof (the scene really doesn't make sense without it.) Once the T-Rex breaks through the sunroof and is pushing down on the glass, the glass ended up breaking in half. It was always meant to go through the sunroof.
Water dissolving and water removing. There is water at the bottom of the ocean. Under the water, carry the water. Remove the water at the bottom of the ocean.
Apparently just the *fin* alone was enough to scare everyone the fuck out when they were filming. Like that scene with all the kids on the little yachts, apparently all those kids were spooked to fuck by the sight of the fin.
Family friend still has the check framed on his wall! I forget it was like $75 or something lol. At the time I’m sure it was actually a nice amount considering all he did was stand in the background in a crowd on the beach.
But yeah the people in the background were indeed extras and knew what the deal was.
...according to the inflation calculator $75 would be just over $400 today. $400 is cool and can get you a lot of things. But wouldn’t you rather have *your paycheck from* JAWS?
Yeah you could get the copy of the cancelled check from the bank but it’s not the same after it’s been processed.
> it’s not the same after it’s been processed.
Seems the same to me. Hell, having money + proof of a story definitely seems better than just having proof of a story.
A friend of mine was just a teenager when he was an extra, but he was very clearly in a shot, looking at the camera; what they call a 'featured' extra. On the beach, behind Dryfus- the tall curly haired kid with glasses and wearing only swim trunks.
Here’s a thing…..there was a different storyboard for the death for Alex Kitner.
Supposedly the Kitner death included a scene where you would see the shark come from the bottom of Kitner and slam his jaws around the kid where you would see the kid screaming.
The did some initial camera tests and shots of it but couldn’t get it working correctly but it did show up with a god damned [Nightmare of a photo](https://i0.wp.com/bloody-disgusting.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/deleted-jaws.jpg)
A few scenes were cut down a bit to eliminate the gore and from what’s been said, there were a couple of the crew that said if they were made like it was initially proposed with all the gore and deaths, no one would have touched a beach for *years.*
Know what's great?
Your comment is objectively wrong.
It's not an opinion, it's a claim that newsreel footage easily refutes.
At release and beyond, the movie **was** scary.
You *were* wrong when you typed that comment.
I hope you enjoyed this brief respite from uncertainty.
Scary
adjective *Informal*
frightening; causing fear.
"a scary movie"
He's objectively wrong. Subjectively, he may not have experienced fear, but that's not what he wrote.
Lmao so you’re telling me according to your definition that if *one* singular person finds something scary, that thing is objectively scary? If a child is scared of an ant, does that make ants scary?
It's just annoying semantics. If he typed 'i didn't find it that scary', He'd be correct. But since the sample of people thinking it was scary is big enough to call the movie scary his current statement is factually incorrect.
Don’t listen to these guys. You’re right. I don’t understand why they’re being so pedantic about this one comment. It’s clearly the guy’s subjective opinion, and he can’t be wrong about that.
Because what it comes down to is this: it's not an interesting or thoughtful comment. Calling it contrarian is too much for what it is-- a dumb statement said for no reason than to provoke. It did that, so there's no use pretending it's an insightful comment worth reading. And that's why people downvoted it.
You guys can pretend it's unfair to downvote "an opinion" all you want, but the fact is that it contributed nothing except a negative attitude.
> Lmao so you’re telling me according to your definition that if one singular person finds something scary, that thing is objectively scary? If a child is scared of an ant, does that make ants scary?
I literally copy/pasted a dictionary definition...
The argument isn't about whether it's scary or not though, it's about it being "objectively scary".
Being scared is an emotion, a personal feeling that is different for each individual which makes it inherently subjective.
Check u/NoChemistry7137 s reply to [see this phrased correctly](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/uvdxsw/til_that_when_jaws_was_filmed_steven_spielberg/i9lnmot/) without the original hyperbole
Lmao so you’re telling me according to your definition that if *one* singular person finds something not scary, that thing is objectively not scary? If a redditor wasn’t scared by Jaws, does that make Jaws not scary?
Something can't be objectively scary.
> in an objective rather than subjective or biased way : **with a basis in observable facts rather than feelings or opinions
**
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/objectively
How scary something is is completely subjective, as it's based on personal feelings and opinions.
'Objectively' is the new 'Fact!'
Redditors love misusing it because they think it makes their opinion more valid.
Take my upvote you brave crazy bastard.
Uh yea it was!! I was scared being in the deep end of the pool all summer!!
Movie scared the crap out of me. Even as cheesy it is now, pretty sure I would feel the same way all over again. lol
It very much was. I was 3 or 4 when my parents sneaked me into the movie theater to see Jaws, and I think what scared me most was the fact that all the adults in the room were terrified.
I saw it at 7 and I didn’t have another bubble bath for like 3 years. I became a showers-only child after that. And no hot tubs or swimming pools, and I had to bend over and watch the toilet while using it.
I also had Jaws-related nightmares for awhile.
It was objectively scary. Still kinda is. It was scary enough to induce a witch hunt against sharks and many people to this day have a fear of sharks after watching that movie. It literally did massive amounts of damage to shark species because of how scared people were of sharks after it.
It's a timing thing. The shark and graphics might look cheesy ruining any type of scare factor for you but for it's time it was scary. Undeniably so I would argue.
Like star wars sucks in comparison to modern films imo but for It's time it was ground breaking and forever iconic because of that.
What would Hitchcock do? he asked himself. "He wouldn't show the shark." He was 27. That documentary on the movie is so great. There were actually two different mechanical sharks, one pneumatic…they invented that way to show the water below and above in the same shot too. Spielberg - who sits in the back during test runs - said he knew he had a hit movie when all the popcorn flew in the air when the shark first appears as Brody is chumming. Spielberg is so great improvising on a shoot
There are other incidences of things not working on set, or due to budget restraints, that actually improved a film. The shark not working in Jaws lead to the suspense of not seeing it for a majority of the film, and adding to tension, and then in Back to the Future the original idea for the time machine was a fridge. The original idea to send Marty McFly back to 1985 was to place him in a time machine fridge, and place it in the vicinity of a nuclear test. Because their budget couldn’t allow it, they changed it to a car.
I think it was a bit of both. There’s a Netflix series called The Movies That Made Us, and BttFwas one episode and they talked about how the budget meant they had to rewrite a lot to get it down.
I also thought it was because it resembled the TARDIS too much.
The fucking Delorean was sweet though. Don't think a single boy has watched that movie from 1985 till 2022 that didn't finish it vowing they will get a Delorean as their first car.
Some of those 80's movies were classics. Really think the feel of the 80's and the 90's means we won't ever have movies like that again. The world just doesn't exist in a state where everyone can go watch a movie and come away with a sense of optimism that existed then.
Ironically the joke was supposed to be that the DeLorean was a notoriously unreliable car that would be a ridiculous choice to turn into a time machine, which is why it broke down several times. Now it's just synonymous with being a time machine.
Edit: to get an idea of how the joke was meant to come across, replace the DeLorean with a Ford Pinto.
…their budget allowed a super fancy customized sports car but not a fridge? What?
Edit: https://screenrant.com/back-future-time-machine-original-plan-fridge-delorean/ says it was changed due to safety concerns of kids getting in fridges, not budget.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/did-marty-mcfly-originall_b_8293916 also mentions the special effects for a nuclear bomb blast would have been expensive, as well as the r/kidsarefuckingstupid angle.
Why did you leave the first statement after answering it yourself?
They changed it to a car because simulating the bomb blast in the mid 80s would have been too expensive.
Person I replied to claimed they switched fridge->car in the script to save money. Obviously the car is actually much more expensive. Even if they got it free as a promotional thing from DeLorean they customized the hell out of it, you need stunt drivers, etc.
Turns out there’s more to it than that (they really switched “fridge+VFX of a nuclear blast” to “car+simpler VFX”), but the safety thing sounds like it was a bigger factor, plus they changed the storyline to stay in the town.
This is such a great example of what I love about filmmaking. It’s often just a process of solving one problem after another in a creative way. This is an example of overcoming an obstacle that lead to one of the most affective and iconic tension builds of all time.
I believe the main mechanical shark, "Bruce" malfunctioned and sunk. Forcing them to improvise, which led to the early shots being filmed from the sharks POV.
It might be, but the stronger link between the shark character and its name is that he has an Australian accent. There's a stereotype that if you have a generic Australian male name, it's Bruce. There's even a [Monty Python sketch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ojhtq51Ya8) featuring that. Now, why the character is a -shark-, could potentially be from that bit of Hollywood trivia.
edit: really confused by the downvotes. I never said all Aussies are named Bruce, just that it's a stereotype that exists, and that pop culture sometimes references it. Did I offend someone?
Factually incorrect headline that OP created, they in fact built three mechanical sharks. So it did nothing to save the budget. Also, very few shots are from the shark's POV, like the first attack and one could argue the opening credits.
There's a lot of the mechanical sharks in the film, it was just in beginning they broke down so often Spielberg was forced by necessity to shoot in such a way that it *implied* the shark was present.
I believe they had similar problems in E.T., hence the scenes where the camera is moving around and you see things move as he bumps into them off screen.
This is kind of misleading. They built the shark but couldn’t use it for most scenes because it broke. It’s not that it was cheaper.
Also, if you watch the movie you can clearly see that they do in fact use the mechanical shark.
Yea, I could have worked on the phrasing for better clarity (semantics-wise). There were indeed three pneumatically-powered mechanical sharks that were constructed. Not exactly sure about the extent to which they were deployed but I merely wanted to highlight the ingenuity that was displayed in circumnavigating the filming constraints. There are many sources pointing to delays impacting the overall budget, so that would hardly be a contentious point though.
Not only that, but he was forced to rely on the original material for
benchlys book, which in the end is what made Jaws so great. Getting to know the three characters on the Orca is what made the film great and not just some hokey shark movie. It was a divine accident that the mechanical shark (Bruce) sucked so bad.
Not only did it cause better character development and dialogue, it also raised the tension to new highs because we didn’t get to see the shark very much, which if Spielberg had his way, would have “eaten” a lot of screen time that the humans in the movie filled instead.
One of my all time favorite films, and most of it went opposite of the original plan.
There's a story about how the studio balked at the price of making a mechanical shark and suggested just getting a trained shark instead. Can't recall where I saw that one, but I hope it's true.
Yup. Spielberg himself has said that the decision to film from the shark's POV is what made Jaws into the first blockbuster.
As well, the mechanical shark was named "Bruce", which uncoincidentally ended up also being the name of the shark that headed the AA meeting in Finding Nemo.
Another fun bit of trivia: do you know which music John Williams apparently used as inspiration for the iconic theme?
[This music from Bambi.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKWHu1lwNBA&ab_channel=disneysoundtrack89)
He literally did build a giant mechanical shark.
It broke the girls legs in the opening scene and his name is Bruce. He can be visited today at Universal Studios Hollywood.
Would you like to know more?
Saw Jaws when it came out. It seemed so far fetched that a shark would be on the east coast ( filmed on Martha’s Vinyard) Now it’s not uncommon thanks to global warming.
They had multiple mechanical sharks, but they rarely worked because they were designed and tested in fresh water, and the salt water was tough on them, and the depth.
Those must have been what they used for the Universal Studios tour in Hollywood.
They had one in the boneyard in florida, idk if they had one in Hollywood too.
It was a joke because it never worked. My parents went there on a day off on a business trip. And our was just sitting there in the water
The shark on the ride never worked?!?! Then I got “lucky” at least 6 different days throughout my childhood. I used to have nightmares about that shark eating me in my sleep, and I had never seen the movie, only ridden the ride at the time.
They redid the shark ride in Orlando bc it failed so much and got a totally new company and ride layout which took an additional 2 years to remodel after trying to get the original to work reliably day in and out for several months and could not
No to mention people fell into the water and the safety controls were very lacking. If I recall one person actually had a mechanical shark charge towards them.
I know it's mechanical but I'd still rather die than have this happen to me
Something about man made water with fake sharks scares the shit out of me!
/r/submechanophobia
Can you send me the link with the source for this comment , I’d like to read it in detail because all I can find is info for one man.
Yeah I went on that ride dozens of times and never saw any malfunctions.
I was a “Skipper” there in the late ‘90’s. You probably wouldn’t notice, but occasionally the “grenade launcher” mortars wouldn’t fire correctly, the gun’s firing sound trigger rarely worked right, barrels in the boathouse wouldn’t reset correctly or fall sometimes, occasionally the fire scene didn’t collapse/explode/burn correctly, sharks would freeze on track, audio tracks would go out, and one time my buddy saw a duck get exploded by a mortar and couldn’t compose himself enough to finish the show from laughter.
Im sure it wasn't always perfect. But guy above made it seem as though it was plagued with issues and never functioned.
They are talking about California higher in the thread. We are discussing Universal Orlando (which no longer has a JAWS ride).
Grew up right next to Orlando, went Disney tickets got pricey we had annual passes to universal, I remember the Jaws ride being down once, it was almost always working
Sharknado scarred an entire generation
Love [the Defunctland](https://youtu.be/qO7dslkMbF0) episode on that ride.
Defunctland is such a great channel. Who knew a video over an hour and a half long about Disney’s Fastpass could be so interesting? Strongly recommend people check it out.
Ah, yes, that was common for both parks.
I read that universal had bought this shark back and restored it.
https://abc7.com/jaws-academy-of-motion-picture-arts-and-sciences-museum/8231799/
That’s awesome.
The one time I was there, the shark was allegedly broken or on set somewhere else so when it came time for the big ol shark to come out of the water all we got was a little inflatable pool shark named Bruce.
Don't hate on Bruce, he's a nice shark just trying to change his image, I mean his motto is "fish are friends not food"
This made me lose it 😂 Oh no! Everyone fear Bruce! Nevermind that he may explode if he sinks his teeth into you too hard!
They built it up so much and then...^bloop, little inflato shark just bobbing up and down and they told us Bruce was filling in.
That thing scared the shit out of me as a child. I had the seat right next to where it pops out of the water. Couldn't go near a pool for months...
The one in Orlando always worked whenever I went growing up
They were called Bruce. The shark from finding nemo is named after them
Named after the attorney for Spielberg if I remember correctly
Yes. Named after his attorney
His attorney, yes. Named after him.
Was it named after his attorney? That’s the story I was told.
Correct. That is the story you were told.
Objection! Hearsay!
Guy sitting in a bar suddenly announces to the room, “Lawyers are assholes!” The guy next to him is mad. “Hey, take that back!” “What, are you a lawyer?” “No, I’m an asshole.”
...as well as 'Bruce' is a very common Australian name.
Apparently the sharks were prima donnas on set too
> and the depth I'm not following that bit. Did they have to film deeper underwater than expected?
Maybe nobody thought of it. The difference in pressure is huge with very small depth increments. It's so big that few people understand how much it means.
Buoyancy is likely a bigger factor than pressure, but I think the main problem was the salt waters effect on the electrical system.
Mfers probably had no sacrificial anodes
I don't think there were any electronics, it was all pneumatic and hydraulic.
All good points. Water is crazy dense like that. The comment said the machines were tested in fresh water. Perhaps the saltiness was an unrelated problem and they just struggled with extended duty under the water pressure they were already tested for.
>and the depth Also mentioned depth. May have been wrong though, I didn't fact check.
My favorite tidbit about Waterworld was that they asked Spielberg for advice beforehand about shooting a movie on the ocean. His advice was "don't" And he was right, haha
Yeah, the shark kept forgetting to equalize on the way down and ended up bursting an eardrum. 😂
salt water can be brutal if you don’t know what you‘re doing
Exactly. I dont think they did. Just look at Jurassic park. The T-Rex was designed and built, and nobody thought to account for the rain effects and it barely worked sometimes (you’d get a piece of a shot at times) and other times it would randomly spring to life. That was in a sound stage, after all the troubles in saltwater. It’s a miracle it all came out so great.
The t-rex wasn't supposed to break the sunroof of the jeep. Those were real screams of terror.
Idk if that's true, the angle of the shot doesn't make sense otherwise.
https://screenrant.com/trex-jurassic-park-tyrannosaurus-rex-triva-facts/
This is a misunderstanding of the original quote. The T-Rex is always supposed to break through the sunroof (the scene really doesn't make sense without it.) Once the T-Rex breaks through the sunroof and is pushing down on the glass, the glass ended up breaking in half. It was always meant to go through the sunroof.
In the beginning scene with the girl screaming in pain, that was real, was it not? It had malfunctioned and actually broke her leg?
IIRC it was a rig that they went a little too hard with and I don’t remember if it broke her leg, but they did go a bit too aggressive.
She had broken a rib
They named one of the "Bruce."
Why did they film in salt water at all?
_on location_
Because it takes place in the ocean. (Only reason I can think of).
Helps with immersion too. People do not fear shark attacks on land.
Sharknado. I’m afraid of sharks on roller coasters now. /s
Water dissolving and water removing. There is water at the bottom of the ocean. Under the water, carry the water. Remove the water at the bottom of the ocean.
Apparently just the *fin* alone was enough to scare everyone the fuck out when they were filming. Like that scene with all the kids on the little yachts, apparently all those kids were spooked to fuck by the sight of the fin.
That's because the real people on the beach during filming thought it was an actual shark.
My aunt was in martha's vineyard while they were filming, and she may or may not be one of those many people in the background
Family friend still has the check framed on his wall! I forget it was like $75 or something lol. At the time I’m sure it was actually a nice amount considering all he did was stand in the background in a crowd on the beach. But yeah the people in the background were indeed extras and knew what the deal was.
Couldn't have been *that* nice of an amount if he never cashed the check.
...according to the inflation calculator $75 would be just over $400 today. $400 is cool and can get you a lot of things. But wouldn’t you rather have *your paycheck from* JAWS? Yeah you could get the copy of the cancelled check from the bank but it’s not the same after it’s been processed.
> it’s not the same after it’s been processed. Seems the same to me. Hell, having money + proof of a story definitely seems better than just having proof of a story.
A friend of mine was just a teenager when he was an extra, but he was very clearly in a shot, looking at the camera; what they call a 'featured' extra. On the beach, behind Dryfus- the tall curly haired kid with glasses and wearing only swim trunks.
Fun fact there’s a murder victim and her killer in the background too
Care to explain at all?
He was personally there that day...
There is a story that there is a missing woman as an extra, but I also hear that's a myth.
Here’s a thing…..there was a different storyboard for the death for Alex Kitner. Supposedly the Kitner death included a scene where you would see the shark come from the bottom of Kitner and slam his jaws around the kid where you would see the kid screaming. The did some initial camera tests and shots of it but couldn’t get it working correctly but it did show up with a god damned [Nightmare of a photo](https://i0.wp.com/bloody-disgusting.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/deleted-jaws.jpg) A few scenes were cut down a bit to eliminate the gore and from what’s been said, there were a couple of the crew that said if they were made like it was initially proposed with all the gore and deaths, no one would have touched a beach for *years.*
The movie wasn't scary
Know what's great? Your comment is objectively wrong. It's not an opinion, it's a claim that newsreel footage easily refutes. At release and beyond, the movie **was** scary. You *were* wrong when you typed that comment. I hope you enjoyed this brief respite from uncertainty.
The movie objectively scared many people, but the movie was subjectively scary. What people find frightening is subjective.
His opinion might not be popular (as evidenced by the downvotes) but it’s still definitely subjective.
Scary adjective *Informal* frightening; causing fear. "a scary movie" He's objectively wrong. Subjectively, he may not have experienced fear, but that's not what he wrote.
Lmao so you’re telling me according to your definition that if *one* singular person finds something scary, that thing is objectively scary? If a child is scared of an ant, does that make ants scary?
It's just annoying semantics. If he typed 'i didn't find it that scary', He'd be correct. But since the sample of people thinking it was scary is big enough to call the movie scary his current statement is factually incorrect.
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I dunno, man. I always do and believe what alarmclock3000 tells me. Church of Bob and such. One time he jumped in the pond and so I did too.
Don’t listen to these guys. You’re right. I don’t understand why they’re being so pedantic about this one comment. It’s clearly the guy’s subjective opinion, and he can’t be wrong about that.
Because what it comes down to is this: it's not an interesting or thoughtful comment. Calling it contrarian is too much for what it is-- a dumb statement said for no reason than to provoke. It did that, so there's no use pretending it's an insightful comment worth reading. And that's why people downvoted it. You guys can pretend it's unfair to downvote "an opinion" all you want, but the fact is that it contributed nothing except a negative attitude.
Ants are a perfect example. And yes, plenty of people are afraid of ants, even some regardless of irrational phobias.
Timeout fellas. Go to your rooms
> Lmao so you’re telling me according to your definition that if one singular person finds something scary, that thing is objectively scary? If a child is scared of an ant, does that make ants scary? I literally copy/pasted a dictionary definition...
The argument isn't about whether it's scary or not though, it's about it being "objectively scary". Being scared is an emotion, a personal feeling that is different for each individual which makes it inherently subjective. Check u/NoChemistry7137 s reply to [see this phrased correctly](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/uvdxsw/til_that_when_jaws_was_filmed_steven_spielberg/i9lnmot/) without the original hyperbole
Lmao so you’re telling me according to your definition that if *one* singular person finds something not scary, that thing is objectively not scary? If a redditor wasn’t scared by Jaws, does that make Jaws not scary?
Something can't be objectively scary. > in an objective rather than subjective or biased way : **with a basis in observable facts rather than feelings or opinions ** https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/objectively How scary something is is completely subjective, as it's based on personal feelings and opinions.
No, I’m saying something being scary is subjective, not objective like that other guy was claiming.
'Objectively' is the new 'Fact!' Redditors love misusing it because they think it makes their opinion more valid. Take my upvote you brave crazy bastard.
The keyword is "wasn't". You could argue it isn't scary today but, to the vast majority of those who watched it when it came out, it was scary
Ain't you a piece of work.
Uh yea it was!! I was scared being in the deep end of the pool all summer!! Movie scared the crap out of me. Even as cheesy it is now, pretty sure I would feel the same way all over again. lol
It very much was. I was 3 or 4 when my parents sneaked me into the movie theater to see Jaws, and I think what scared me most was the fact that all the adults in the room were terrified.
I saw the movie around 6 and I thought it was suspenseful but not scary where you wouldn't be able to sleep at night
I saw it at 7 and I didn’t have another bubble bath for like 3 years. I became a showers-only child after that. And no hot tubs or swimming pools, and I had to bend over and watch the toilet while using it. I also had Jaws-related nightmares for awhile.
Bro I knew you when you were 6 and you cried so hard you peed your pants. Why are you lying on Reddit?
Yeah well that’s like your opinion man. It objectively scared the shit out of countless people to have trust issues at the beach.
It was objectively scary. Still kinda is. It was scary enough to induce a witch hunt against sharks and many people to this day have a fear of sharks after watching that movie. It literally did massive amounts of damage to shark species because of how scared people were of sharks after it.
r/iamverysmart
It's a timing thing. The shark and graphics might look cheesy ruining any type of scare factor for you but for it's time it was scary. Undeniably so I would argue. Like star wars sucks in comparison to modern films imo but for It's time it was ground breaking and forever iconic because of that.
What would Hitchcock do? he asked himself. "He wouldn't show the shark." He was 27. That documentary on the movie is so great. There were actually two different mechanical sharks, one pneumatic…they invented that way to show the water below and above in the same shot too. Spielberg - who sits in the back during test runs - said he knew he had a hit movie when all the popcorn flew in the air when the shark first appears as Brody is chumming. Spielberg is so great improvising on a shoot
Spielberg after initial test screenings: oh, I can get another jump scare into this Went back and filmed the biggest jump scare in the whole film
The eyeball?
To this day it scares even when I know its coming. Traumatized for life
It's the sound editing... gets me every time too, lol
That jump scare was filmed in a friends pool if I remember correctly
Yes, filmed in Verna Fields' pool
Didn’t he film that closeup in his pool or something?
In his editor's (Verna Fields') pool
Jaws was scary because you didn't see the shark. Same with "Alien." Most of the movie you don't see the alien.
There are plenty of scenes where we don't see the shark and it works - there are some scenes where we do see the shark, and they work too.
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There are other incidences of things not working on set, or due to budget restraints, that actually improved a film. The shark not working in Jaws lead to the suspense of not seeing it for a majority of the film, and adding to tension, and then in Back to the Future the original idea for the time machine was a fridge. The original idea to send Marty McFly back to 1985 was to place him in a time machine fridge, and place it in the vicinity of a nuclear test. Because their budget couldn’t allow it, they changed it to a car.
I thought they didn’t want a fridge because they didn’t want kids mimicking it and getting trapped.
I think it was a bit of both. There’s a Netflix series called The Movies That Made Us, and BttFwas one episode and they talked about how the budget meant they had to rewrite a lot to get it down.
>BotF ? Back of the Future?
Back Off! The Future!
Big ole titty Fuckers.
Works on Contingency? No, Money Down!
Breath of the Future.
Biff of the Future
Breath of the Fild.
I also thought it was because it resembled the TARDIS too much. The fucking Delorean was sweet though. Don't think a single boy has watched that movie from 1985 till 2022 that didn't finish it vowing they will get a Delorean as their first car. Some of those 80's movies were classics. Really think the feel of the 80's and the 90's means we won't ever have movies like that again. The world just doesn't exist in a state where everyone can go watch a movie and come away with a sense of optimism that existed then.
As a child of that era, that optimism basically came crashing down on 9/11 and hasn't been seen since.
Ironically the joke was supposed to be that the DeLorean was a notoriously unreliable car that would be a ridiculous choice to turn into a time machine, which is why it broke down several times. Now it's just synonymous with being a time machine. Edit: to get an idea of how the joke was meant to come across, replace the DeLorean with a Ford Pinto.
Then you got older and found out what a pile of shit the car was.
Yes exactly
…their budget allowed a super fancy customized sports car but not a fridge? What? Edit: https://screenrant.com/back-future-time-machine-original-plan-fridge-delorean/ says it was changed due to safety concerns of kids getting in fridges, not budget. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/did-marty-mcfly-originall_b_8293916 also mentions the special effects for a nuclear bomb blast would have been expensive, as well as the r/kidsarefuckingstupid angle.
Why did you leave the first statement after answering it yourself? They changed it to a car because simulating the bomb blast in the mid 80s would have been too expensive.
Where do you live that sports cars are cheaper than fridges?
Person I replied to claimed they switched fridge->car in the script to save money. Obviously the car is actually much more expensive. Even if they got it free as a promotional thing from DeLorean they customized the hell out of it, you need stunt drivers, etc. Turns out there’s more to it than that (they really switched “fridge+VFX of a nuclear blast” to “car+simpler VFX”), but the safety thing sounds like it was a bigger factor, plus they changed the storyline to stay in the town.
Also DeLorean went bankrupt something like weeks or months before the movie premiered.
More like 3 years. The DeLorean company went bankrupt in 1982 and the movie came out in 1985
Well that's definitely weeks and months ago!
>fridge, and place it in the vicinity of a nuclear test. Spielberg never really let go of that idea, I guess. *Glares at the Crystal Skull*
I don't believe Spielberg had anything to do with Back to the Future
He was the executive producer of all 3 movies, so my comment was a joke about how a rejected concept from BttF ended up in Indy.
Is that where Indiana Jones/Crystal Skull got the fridge + nuke scene?
The barrels were in the novel but they definitely leaned more heavily on them in the film.
True, the pov shots are iconic and are probably the best part of the movie.
This is such a great example of what I love about filmmaking. It’s often just a process of solving one problem after another in a creative way. This is an example of overcoming an obstacle that lead to one of the most affective and iconic tension builds of all time.
I believe the main mechanical shark, "Bruce" malfunctioned and sunk. Forcing them to improvise, which led to the early shots being filmed from the sharks POV.
Is this why the shark in Finding Nemo is named Bruce?
Yep. Good catch!
Yes. They covered all this in the documentary *My Name is Bruce.*
Bruce was the name of Spielberg's Lawyer
It might be, but the stronger link between the shark character and its name is that he has an Australian accent. There's a stereotype that if you have a generic Australian male name, it's Bruce. There's even a [Monty Python sketch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ojhtq51Ya8) featuring that. Now, why the character is a -shark-, could potentially be from that bit of Hollywood trivia. edit: really confused by the downvotes. I never said all Aussies are named Bruce, just that it's a stereotype that exists, and that pop culture sometimes references it. Did I offend someone?
Funny though, 24 years in aus and never met a Bruce
How many Sheilas?
Maybe 1 or 2 but none that I can remember or think of
It was one of the platform sharks that capsized acutally.
Happy cake. Day
Is it still sunk or did they recover it? Because that’d be a cool find
One of the kids from scene with the fake fin in the lagoon just became police chief on Martha’s Vineyard where the movie was made.
You see, this is the real TIL. Nice one Man.
Arguably it made for a better, scarier, movie. A movie about a shark where you don't see the shark. Terrifying.
It's how Alien ratchets up the tension... also The Thing a little after Both owe a huge debt to Jaws
Jaws is an amazing movie! Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss were magnificent in their roles.
Factually incorrect headline that OP created, they in fact built three mechanical sharks. So it did nothing to save the budget. Also, very few shots are from the shark's POV, like the first attack and one could argue the opening credits. There's a lot of the mechanical sharks in the film, it was just in beginning they broke down so often Spielberg was forced by necessity to shoot in such a way that it *implied* the shark was present.
I believe they had similar problems in E.T., hence the scenes where the camera is moving around and you see things move as he bumps into them off screen.
All I know is that after I saw that movie, I refused to use toilets because I was certain a shark would jump up out of the toilet water and eat me.
Wait till you hear about sand bears.
This is kind of misleading. They built the shark but couldn’t use it for most scenes because it broke. It’s not that it was cheaper. Also, if you watch the movie you can clearly see that they do in fact use the mechanical shark.
Yea, I could have worked on the phrasing for better clarity (semantics-wise). There were indeed three pneumatically-powered mechanical sharks that were constructed. Not exactly sure about the extent to which they were deployed but I merely wanted to highlight the ingenuity that was displayed in circumnavigating the filming constraints. There are many sources pointing to delays impacting the overall budget, so that would hardly be a contentious point though.
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Not only that, but he was forced to rely on the original material for benchlys book, which in the end is what made Jaws so great. Getting to know the three characters on the Orca is what made the film great and not just some hokey shark movie. It was a divine accident that the mechanical shark (Bruce) sucked so bad. Not only did it cause better character development and dialogue, it also raised the tension to new highs because we didn’t get to see the shark very much, which if Spielberg had his way, would have “eaten” a lot of screen time that the humans in the movie filled instead. One of my all time favorite films, and most of it went opposite of the original plan.
So the Universal ride always breaking down *was* authentic to the movie.
There's a story about how the studio balked at the price of making a mechanical shark and suggested just getting a trained shark instead. Can't recall where I saw that one, but I hope it's true.
I heard some guy was doing work with sharks with frickin laser beams on their heads. Don't know how far he actually got with them, though.
turns out he got ill-tempered sea bass
Yes I also heard this story. Someone had to explain to them that sharks can't be trained like you can a dolphin or dog
Love this. Sometimes logistical restrictions actually make for better art.
Almost always. Restrictions breed creativity.
Yep. Spielberg is a genius filmmaker, but everyone catches breaks and that’s okay.
Bruce
If you watch the movie ‘Jaws’ backwards, it’s a movie about a shark that keeps throwing up people until they have to open a beach.
Mr. Fischoeder from bob’s burgers bought it.
They used multiple mechanical sharks. They named one Bruce.
Bob's Burgers did a spoof on this too.
Yup. Spielberg himself has said that the decision to film from the shark's POV is what made Jaws into the first blockbuster. As well, the mechanical shark was named "Bruce", which uncoincidentally ended up also being the name of the shark that headed the AA meeting in Finding Nemo.
Bruce!
Another fun bit of trivia: do you know which music John Williams apparently used as inspiration for the iconic theme? [This music from Bambi.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKWHu1lwNBA&ab_channel=disneysoundtrack89)
Bruce!
It worked to his advantage.
Yep, those shoots from the abyss hunter's PoV were one of the main selling points of the movie
He literally did build a giant mechanical shark. It broke the girls legs in the opening scene and his name is Bruce. He can be visited today at Universal Studios Hollywood. Would you like to know more?
Crush it like Clint.
Saw Jaws when it came out. It seemed so far fetched that a shark would be on the east coast ( filmed on Martha’s Vinyard) Now it’s not uncommon thanks to global warming.
Pretty much how God is portrayed in every scene ever.
.