Friday, March 6, 2009

Death of a Series- ‘Jaws’ (Part 3)

Jaws: The Revenge

Revenge is a dish best served cold, which was also the audience reaction to this film. Following Jaws II, Mrs. Brody has seen her two sons grow up, but, sadly, lost her husband due to a heart attack. Things turn bad when her youngest son is killed by a shark in what appears to be a sort of trap. This makes her believe that her family is cursed- she blames the heart attack on the shark somehow- so she goes to the Bahamas to see her eldest son, now a marine biologist. The beast follows her, apparently being able to thrive in both fresh and salt water. Once in the island region, our heroine meets a charming, young man named Hoagie, played by Michael Caine. The cycle of attacks soon moves there as well, with a friend of the son's girlfriend killed on a boat. This drives Mrs. Brody to go out to sea, convinced that she should finish off the beast herself. Hoagie, the son and his friend Alex (Peebles!) fly out to stop her, but their sea plane is attacked when they land. All of them survive the attack, however, and get on the boat with our heroine. Hoagie even emerges from the wreckage completely dry. This builds to the climactic face-off between woman- in boat- and shark. If you are must watch any part of this movie- poor soul- at least choose to watch this part. So many bizarre and stupid things happen in the span of a few minutes. A shark roars, a shark is impaled by the barely-sharp plank of wood, a giant shark turns into a tiny one in a puddle of water & a shark explodes. While I won't recommend this movie to anyone, this part is funny. At the same time, however, it also tries to mirror its finale to that of Jaws. The film got one holdover star because she was the wife of a studio executive that released the film and wanted to be top-billing on a poster. This is an affront to good cinema, with its implausible story, bad acting and terrible pacing. They wisely chose to end the series here. Little did they know that it was too late.

So how does a series go so bad, so quickly? Changing directors is never a good thing. Jaws is a great film, but no others are. Is that solely due to Spielberg's absence? No. Second, watch how stars flee from your series like rats on a sinking ship. Dreyfuss, while not killed off, only appears in the first film. By the third film, Scheider and Gary were replaced with young actors Quaid and Thompson. Gary did return in the fourth film, but they wrote out Scheider. It is similar to how Linda Hamilton's character died of 'cancer' in the interim between T2 and T3. Another film series to look at for comparison is Tremors. With every successive film, a star or two chose not to appear, to the point where only the guy from "Family Ties" was left to carry the franchise. Let's also not forget how the quality of writing got diffused as well. The first film is a mostly-direct adaptation of the Benchley novel. After that, the series was constructed around brand new stories. You see how that ended up. Some film series can go off-material and survive- see the Bond and Bourne films. Another thing that helps put the nail in a franchise coffin is experimentation. The third film changed the setting, cast and dimensionality. The response to this was bad box office and awkwardness regarding its place in continuity. Key things are ignored from three- particularly in regards to what jobs the two sons have- and even the studio referred to Jaws: The Revenge as the climax of the 'Jaws trilogy' in a press release. Do not mess with the cast, writing or setting just because you want a new film out really quickly. This is what happens, Hollywood.

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