Jaws, 1975.
Directed by Steven Spielberg.
Starring Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfus, Lorraine Gary, and Murray Hamilton.
SYNOPSIS:
Jaws gets its eighty billionth home video release this week, but I’m happy because I have always loved, and will always love, that film, despite the disinterest in it shown by my family. For the film’s 50th anniversary, Universal added a new 90-minute documentary, Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story, that occupies its own Blu-ray disc, so this time, you get three discs, rather than two. Is it worth the upgrade? Read on and find out.
Did we need yet another home video release of Jaws? If you’re me, the answer is “Yes!,” especially since this 50th Anniversary Edition features a new 90-minute retrospective documentary, Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story. (I’m surprised they didn’t call it #Jaws @ 50.)
I’m not going to rehash my thoughts on this classic film, which I talked about in my review of the 45th Anniversary Limited Edition. I was five years old when I saw it in a drive-in, and it kicked off my love of so many movies during the Spielberg/Lucas era of the 70s and 80s.
Sure, you can include films by Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, John Carpenter, and others in that list, but if you want to push my nostalgia buttons, the Spielberg/Lucas body of work does the trick for me every time. For my money, those movies really captured the thrill of sitting in a dark theater with a couple hundred strangers and going on an amazing adventure with them.
And, of course, Jaws @ 50 includes thoughts from a lot of people who were around the same age in 1975, including J.J. Abrams, Greg Nicotero, Robert Zemeckis, and other Hollywood luminaries. However, we also hear from author Peter Benchley’s wife Wendy and daughter Tracy, some of the Martha’s Vineyard natives who played various roles (a brilliant casting decision, by the way), and various shark scientists who weigh in on the film’s impact on the work they do to study sharks and ensure they remain vital parts of the oceans’ ecosystems.
As a result, this isn’t just a standard making-of, although Jaws @ 50 does touch on the highlights of the film’s development, production, and post-production, with Richard Dreyfus, Universal CEO Sid Sheinberg, and others appearing in older interview clips and Spielberg and Lucas showing up in contemporary footage. This documentary was made by Laurent Bouzereau, who also made the classic two-hour The Making of Jaws documentary that’s celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, so he clearly made sure that the two documentaries would complement each other.
The new documentary occupies its own Blu-ray disc, with the other Blu-ray the same one that’s been issued multiple times before. That’s where you’ll find all the great legacy extras that have been kicking around for a long time: that aforementioned The Making of Jaws documentary, a featurette about the film’s restoration, deleted scenes and outtakes, vintage on-set footage, and the original theatrical trailer.
And, yes, you also get The Shark is Still Working: The Impact and Legacy of Jaws, a 100-minute retrospective documentary that debuted on the 2012 Blu-ray. While it treads some of the same territory as Jaws @ 50, it also offers a different group of interview subjects, since it’s primarily focused on the years after the film’s release, and it’s notable for containing the final interview with Peter Benchley.
The 4K Ultra HD disc included here is the same one issued five years ago, which is fine since this movie has reached the pinnacle of home theater presentation, at least in my view. I’m sure some people online would quibble with that and would really love to see an 8K version they can watch on their high-end system, but for the vast majority of us, 4K is just fine. And, hey, it’s a gigantic improvement on the way we had to watch Jaws on home video for decades.
Finally, you also get a code for a digital copy. If you used your digital copy code from a previous release, the Jaws @ 50 documentary should appear as one of the extras. (At least, it did in my copy of the film in Movies Anywhere). So keep that in mind if you already have this one on 4K and are wondering if you should buy it again just for the new documentary.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
