Jaws: The Revenge (also known as Jaws 4: The Revenge or simply Jaws 4), is a 1987 American horror-thriller film directed by Joseph Sargent. It is the third and final sequel to Steven Spielberg's Jaws and the fourth and final installment in the Jaws franchise. It also had the shortest production window of the Jaws movies. While the other three films in the series took around two years to produce, Jaws: The Revenge was made in less than nine months.
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 How to not end the Jaws franchise. We will miss you, Jaws...
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According to associate producer and production manager Frank Baur during the sequel's filming, "This (Revenge) will be the fastest I have ever seen a major film planned and executed in all of my 35 years as a production manager."
Plot
On Amity Island, Chief Martin Brody, the hero of two previous shark attacks has died from a heart attack. His wife, Ellen Brody (Lorraine Gary), attributes it to his previous encounters with killer sharks. She now lives with Brody's younger and more obedient son Sean (Mitchell Anderson) and his fiancée Tiffany (Mary Smith). Sean works as a police deputy and is sent to clear a log from a buoy a few days before Christmas. As he does so, a massive great white shark bursts out of the water, severing his arm, then pulls him under the surface and devours him, sinking his boat in the process.
Ellen is convinced that the shark deliberately targeted Sean on purpose. She decides to go to the Bahamas to spend time with Brody's older son Michael (Lance Guest), his wife Carla (Karen Young), and their 5-year-old daughter Thea (Judith Barsi). At the islands, Ellen meets carefree airplane pilot Hoagie (Michael Caine). Michael — along with partners Jake (Mario Van Peebles), William and Clarence — works as a marine biologist.
The shark that killed Sean unexpectedly appears and attempts to devour their boat. The crew decides to keep quiet about the shark's presence due to Ellen's attempts to convince Michael to find a job on land. Ellen becomes so obsessive that she starts having nightmares of being attacked by a shark. Then she starts getting psychic feelings when the shark is near or attacks. She and the shark seem to share a strange connection that is unexplained. The crew decides to attach a device to the shark that would track its heartbeat. Using chum to attract it, Jake stabs the device's tracking pole into the side of the shark. The next day, Michael is chased by the shark and barely manages to escape unharmed.
Thea goes on an inflatable banana boat with her friend Margaret and her mother. The shark attacks and kills Margaret's mother. Thea and Carla are traumatized following the attack. Ellen boards Jake's boat to track down the shark, intending to sacrifice herself to save the rest of her family. Michael and Jake are flown by Hoagie to search for Ellen and find the shark in pursuit of their boat (which Ellen has hijacked). During the search, Hoagie explains to Michael about Ellen's theory that the shark that killed Sean has followed her to the Bahamas to exact revenge on the Brodys. When they finally found her, Hoagie lands the plane on the water, ordering Michael and Jake to swim to the boat as the shark drags the plane and Hoagie underwater.
Much to Ellen's disbelief, Hoagie survives. Michael was upset with Ellen because he was worried that she would have been killed by the shark. Jake and Michael hastily put together an explosive powered by electrical impulses. They begin blasting the shark with the impulses, which begin to drive it mad; it repeatedly jumps out of the water, roaring in pain. As Jake moves to the front of the boat, the shark lunges giving it the chance to pull Jake under and maul him. He manages to get the explosive into the shark's mouth before he is taken underwater.
Michael continues to blast the shark with the impulses, causing it to leap out of the water again, igniting the bomb as Ellen rams the shark with the sailboat. The broken bowsprit impales the shark, spraying blood everywhere, and its corpse sinks to the bottom of the sea. In the DVD cut, when the shark is impaled by the bowsprit, its head explodes and sinks to the bottom of the sea. Michael then hears Jake calling for help. He is seriously injured, but he is alive and conscious floating in the water. The four survive the harsh encounter and make it back to land. Hoagie then flies Ellen back to Amity Island.
Why This Time, It's Not Personal
- Similar to Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (which came out the same year as this film), it officially turned the shark movie genre into a dead horse, with no new action or content and led to some later shark-related films to be this way.
- The effects of the fourth film’s shark are just awful or outdated by 1980s standards.
- Aside from the obvious animatronics, there's a moment near the end of the film where the shark gets impaled and explodes.
- A freeze-frame reveals that the special effects crew just used a toy shark and a toy boat. The practical effects for the shark are far worse than the practical effects used in Jaws 3-D, which is weird since Universal re-used the mechanical shark from 3D in this movie; presumably the four years it spent in storage didn't do it justice.
- As to why the shark explodes, it's because there’s another ending (only shown in some TV versions) which simply had the shark bleed to death, taking the prow of the boat with it; an ending that got altered after the test screening.
- Speaking of the ending shown on DVD, Jake gets eaten by the shark and there's blood coming out. This would normally mean he's dead.
- However, instead, after the shark explodes, he somehow survives.
- Unbelievable, illogical and laughable scenes, like the shark chasing after a plane and roaring after getting zapped with an electronic shocker. What the heck? Sharks can't roar because they don't have vocal cords!
- Speaking of which, the shark's roaring sounds seem to be taken from an old Tom and Jerry cartoon, which sounds incredibly out-of-place in this film.
- The shark sometimes stands on its tail like it's the cartoon character Jabberjaw.
- The shark has a revenge plot. It's as stupid as it sounds.
- Plot hole: There are plenty of other people to eat, so why is the shark after the Brodys?
- The movie feels like a melodramatic soap opera and less like an entertaining summer blockbuster whenever Ellen interacts with Hoagie.
- Lots of bloopers (e.g. Hoagie climbs up out of the water and his shirt is totally dry, there's blood in the water before the shark attacks Sean and when the shark crashes through the shipwreck wall, in which Michael is in, the mechanical system of the shark can be seen)
- Kitsch and laughable dialogue (e.g. When Michael tells his wife "I've always wanted to make love to an angry welder. I've dreamed of nothing else since I was a small boy."), while it is appropriate enough, it's delivered with complete deadpan.
- A bizarre storyline, though the novelization clears things up a little.
- Awful and unnecessary subplots, like Michael not liking that his mom is hanging out with Hoagie and he and Carla arguing over their lives.
- Unexplained tagline: The tagline "This time it's personal!" makes no sense since a woman said to Martin in the second film "Sharks don't take things personally, Mr. Brody."
- Many scenes copy the original film (e.g. Michael and Thea touching their faces and imitating each other like Martin did with Sean when he was a child and when the shark dies, a scene from the first film is stolen where it has the exact shot of the shark sinking into the ocean, not only they copy scenes, but they change the lighting of the copied scenes just to make it less obvious.
- Unexplained ending: The film doesn't even explain how the characters got back on land if their boat and plane sank.
- Chief Brody died of a fear-induced heart attack brought on by his previous encounters with sharks (How can he die from the fear of sharks when he killed two of them?!).
- The idea of placing a Jaws film during Christmas was a poorly thought idea since the first three films took place in the Summer.
- The shark animatronic in this film looks really fake and obvious, as well as the blood, especially when compared to the original film.
- In that film, the shark looked incredibly realistic for the time due to the way Steven Spielberg skillfully filmed and edited it.
- Terrible and sluggish pacing.
- For a 90-minute film, it has a really small body count, with only two kills (Four, if you count the shark or Jake in the original cut. But even that's smaller than the body counts from the previous films).
- Pointless dream sequences.
- Jake is annoying and is always complaining.
- To add to that, his phony Jamaican accent is annoying.
- Awful acting for the newer cast members in this film and none of them serve any charm from the first two films.
- It got so bad that the film permanently killed the Jaws franchise, as no movies or sequels have been made since (unless you count the unofficial Cruel Jaws, which is not made by Universal).
- When the shark is killed and the main characters are still in the water after the fact, the sky suddenly becomes a fake wall painting.
- Horrible direction by Joseph Sargent.
Redeeming Qualities
- Unlike Jaws 3-D, this movie did have a returning cast member, Lorraine Gary, who appeared in the first two movies.
- The film also takes place in Amity Island, unlike the third film.
- The original score by John Williams and the additional score by Michael Small is well done, especially during the opening credits.
- Michael Caine's reaction when the shark appears is appropriate and unintentionally amusing.
- The original uncut ending is much better than the actual ending, as the way the shark dies (by getting stabbed and bleeding to death instead of exploding) isn't anywhere as far-fetched as in the final version.
- The scene where Sean Brody loses his arm and gets attacked by a shark, killing him insantly is very terrifying and emotional after he is revealed to have died.
- However, it is sadly the only good scary scene in the movie.
- Although she was sadly wasted, Judith Barsi's performance as Thea was great.
- This was sadly one of the last films she appeared in before she was shot to death by her father (a year after this film was released).
Reception
Just like Jaws 3-D, Jaws: The Revenge was universally panned by both critics and moviegoers alike. it is frequently listed as one of the worst films ever made. Jaws: The Revenge currently holds a rare 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 39 reviews, with an average rating of 2.7/10. The critics consensus states, "Illogical, tension-free and filled with cut-rate special effects, Jaws: The Revenge is a sorry chapter in a once-proud franchise." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 15/100, based on 15 reviews, indicating "overwhelming dislike". The film has a 1/5 on Common Sense Media and a 3/10 on IMDb. Film critic Gene Siskel of The Chicago Tribune stated in his review, "Let's put it this way: When you see and hear Lorraine Gary on screen you just want the shark to eat her." Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film a rare zero out of four stars and stated in his review "The shark models have so little movement that at times they seem to be supporting themselves on boats, instead of attacking them. Up until the ludicrous final sequence of the movie, the scariest creature in the film is an eel." Trace Thurman of Bloody-Disgusting described the film as "a lazy, dumb and (most unforgivably) boring film that does not need to exist at all."
Box Office
Jaws: The Revenge opened at #3 on its opening weekend grossing $7,154,890 domestically. The total domestic gross was $20,763,013. In foreign markets, it made $31,118,000 and the film had a worldwide gross of $51,881,013 against its $23 million budget. The film was a box office disappointment and the lowest grossing film in the franchise.
Awards and nominations
Jaws: The Revenge won one Razzie Award for Worst Visual Effects for Henry Millar while it was nominated for six including Worst Picture. The film lost the other Razzies to Leonard Part 6, Who's That Girl, Over the Top, Tough Guys Don't Dance.
Videos
Trailers
Reviews and Top 10s
Original Ending
Trivia
- On October 5, 2015, 16 days before Back to the Future Day, Universal released a Jaws 19 parody trailer (see above).
- In response to the negative reception, Universal poked fun at the film in Back To The Future Part II when Marty McFly gets "bitten" by a holographic shark advertisement for a fictional sequel titled Jaws 19 and his overall reaction is "Shark still looks fake" and when his jacket dries up immediately after climbing out of the water after he fell in the water during the hoverboard chase.
- This film introduced the famous tagline "This time, it's personal!".
- Final film to star Lorraine Gary.
- The shark in the film is nicknamed "Vengeance" by fans of the franchise. Although not confirmed by the movies nor the original novel, there are theories that the great white sharks are actually mutated white sharks rather than ordinary great white sharks, which would make sense for the strength and intelligence of these sharks.
- Like Jaws 3-D, Roy Scheider was offered to star in the film. However, he refused to reprise his role.
- The roaring sound came from a Tom & Jerry cartoon, in which that particular roar sound effect was a stock sound effect originating from a 1957 monster movie called The Land Unknown.
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