I Watch Films: Jaws 3-D

 

Jaws 3-D

Mike Brody, son of Martin Brody of Jaws and Jaws 2, is now the Chief Engineer of Seaworld. His girlfriend Kay is the Chief Biologist. We get a nice tour of the facilities, including the underwater tunnel and viewing platform, as well as the acrobatic water ski display troupe. These will be important later.

Calvin Bouchard, the park manager, is focussed on getting the park open as a big event; his other priority is that he’s got explorer and hunter Philip Fitzroyce to come, which is good for publicity. Also coming to the opening is Mike’s brother Sean, who immediately hits it off with Kelly, one of the water skiiers.

Something's wrong though, and we know it’s a shark because one of the mechanics mending the sea gate got killed by it in an opening sequence. The two dolphins don’t want to go into the main lagoon and some thieves trying to steal coral are also killed. Going out to look for the mechanic, they encounter a ten foot long shark. After some argument Kelly’s plan to capture it and use it for publicity is agreed; they succeed though it’s not well and Kelly is furious when Calvin puts it on display.

The opening is in full swing when they find the body and realise that a ten foot shark couldn’t make the wounds on it, there must be a bigger one. At this point a 35 foot shark attacks, breaks various bits of equipment, grabs people, traps people in the underwater tunnel and foils all their attempts to kill it for a while.

This film is inconsistent with the next Jaws film Jaws: The Revenge; as such you can have one or the other in your canon, and good luck. This was made for 3-D so there’s some shots where the shark comes out the screen at us that the film very obviously lingers on.

Watch This: Giant shark attacks seaworld
Don’t Watch This: Very silly, unnecessary resetting of much the same story