With the recent release of The Meg, a movie about a giant shark wreaking havoc and eating everyone, you may find yourself thinking about Jaws. It is a movie that simultaneously defined the modern blockbuster as we know it as well as gaining much critical acclaim to this day. Yes, it has its share of ridiculous moments including a shark that seems to have a vendetta against one town in America but it is still regarded as one of the best modern movies ever.
Particularly praised for the fact that director Steven Spielberg refrained from showing the titular creature for most of the run time, Jaws maximises the tension and horror of the build-up to every attack. This was particularly effective when coupled with John Williams' famous score. It is well known that this was because the animatronic shark didn't look convincing enough to Spielberg resulting in the reduced screen time and he instead utilised camera work to show the shark's rampage.
Skipping forward to more modern films, plenty of filmmakers have tried to emmulate the success of Jaws- not just by making endless dumb shark movies like Sharknado and a handful of ridiculous Jaws sequels, but by reducing the amount of screen time the main 'threat' has in order to build anticipation. One example is a film that I have talked about often- Signs- in which the aliens have less than 2 minutes of screen time. It proved particularly effective in a scene where the aliens try to break into the house; like the characters, the audience only has sound effects to work out where the monsters are.
Another example is the 2014 Godzilla adaptation- the trailer for the sequel released not too long ago, promising more monsters than ever. Perhaps this promise comes after the reboot infamously contained only 8 minutes of actual Godzilla action. This disappointed many fans who were eagerly anticipating a huge Godzilla rampage, complete with updated CGI (compared to the ghastly 1998 adaptation anyway). So why was this technique much maligned here but universally praised in Jaws? Is it the difference in sensibilites between modern audiences and 70's movie-goers? Or is it because Godzilla is an existing and beloved character that people want to see?
SPOILERS for Godzilla (2014) and Jaws (1975)
The characters
The main reason for the difference, in my mind, comes down to the characters. Jaws created iconic characters, played by respected actors, that people remember even today. We have Chief Brody, a family man who we root for throughout the film. He is the voice of the audience- trying to persuade people to stay out of the water, but rarely listened to by the ignorant public (mirroring my struggle of screaming at the TV to tell the characters to stay out of the freaking water).
The next most memorable character is Quint, a gruff shark hunter whose past we learn more about as the story progresses. We also have shark expert, Matt Hooper, who not only butts heads witth Quint, but plays a valuable role in explaining the sharks behaviour, reinforcing the idea that the shark is just a deadly animal and not a rampaging monster (in this way he is similar to Alan Grant from another Spielberg movie, Jurassic Park, who also sees the dinosaurs as animals and not monsters).
And we also have Bruce the shark, of course.
Let's compare this to Godzilla. We start out our journey with Bryan Cranston- comparable to Chief Brody in that he is a family man (I just looked it up and it turns out the characters share the same last name! Coincidence? I think not!). The story starts off promising- his wife dies in a tragic accident at a nuclear power plant, and he has to balance his obsession with knowing what happened to her with caring for his son (er I meant promising, story-wise). Of course, the obsession consumes him and we've got a nice set up for a father/son bonding story and a Bryan Cranston vs Godzilla ending presumably. But alas (spoilers!), Bryan Cranston is killed off and we have to spend the rest of the movie with his son, whose personality is limited to bomb diffuser and 'man-with-wife-and-son'.
Additionally we have Ken Watanabe who mainly exposits and delivers cool lines ("they call him...GODZILLA!" and "let them fight!"). Elizabeth Olsen who plays stereotypical nurse-wife character is also in the movie, and her young son- who spends most of the movie without his parents on a random bus- barely counts as a character.
Monster movies are never going to be Citizen Kane dramas with intense emotional conflict, but characters that we can root for is a fundamental requirement. We can't relate to huge levels of destruction, monsters with atomic blast breath and rampaging sharks but we can relate to the struggles of a father to protect his family for example. Godzilla sets this up but ultimately sacrifices it in favour of a shock moment and a typical Hollywood leading man formula. Perhaps this would have been forgivable had there been other interesting characters- not just heroes, but memorable antagonists and supporting characters like Quint.
When we don't see the shark in Jaws, we are spending time developing characters that we actually like. Whether it be watching Brody interacting with his younger son, Hooper losing his temper at a money seeking mayor or Quint's haunting monologue about his time in the war. Imagine if we hadn't had the latter moment with Quint- would his death be as shocking and tragic? It would just be another body for the shark to eat. Compare this to Godzilla- Ford spends a lot of time trying to get a random boy home to his parents and tagging along on military missions. An admirable quality, but since we aren't attached to his character, there's no reason to root for Fords endeavours. Why is he helping this boy? Does he feel the need to protect others? Is it because his father wasn't there for him? Well, we'll just have to read into the lines with that one.
Bigger and ... Better?
Apart from the characters, perhaps modern audiences feel the desire to see grander action. We don't want a small scale shark attack, we want a Megaladon. We don't want to see the struggles of a family during a Kaiju (a word meaning 'big monster') attack, we want Godzilla vs the mutos. Remember, before Jaws, summer 'blockbusters' as we know them today did not exist.
So when we were previously satisfied with the artistic decision to omit most of the shark carnage because it meant higher stakes for a few characters, we now want to see Godzilla cause destruction that threatens the entire world because only then will it feel high stakes. With only 8 minutes of this, it's no wonder audiences weren't satisfied.
A well known character...
Godzilla is a character steeped in history and beloved by many movie-goers. It is an imporant part of Japanese pop culture, and Hollywood (in its quest to remake all the monster movies ever) continues to adapt it because of the big box office draw, simply from the name.
When a Godzilla movie comes out, people are expecting a fair amount of Kaiju for the ticket price and the 2014 adaptation under-delivered in this way. Jaws, on the other hand, is about an ordinary great white shark. Of course, Bruce is famous now- but before it came out, audiences didn't have the same obsession with deadly sharks so were watching for the story in general. We wanted to see Roy Scheider protect his home town and kill a shark, rather than going for the sole purpose of seeing maximum carnage and destruction.
With Godzilla, one can argue that as the titular monster, he (is it a he?) is the main character of the story rather than the humans and therefore perhaps fans were right in expecting the famous monster to have more screen time than we were given.
Thank you for reading this article- what are your thoughts on why Godzilla doesn't work compared to Jaws? Leave your comments below or alternatively on Instagram (cinematicwallflower) or Twitter (@filmdomblog)
I do not own any of the images used in this article
Comments