In 1975,Steven Spielberg’sJawschanged film history forever. It was, at the time, the box office king, and the movie thatcreated the trend of summer blockbusters. Like all good things, though, Hollywood couldn’t leave it alone. Desperate to try to recapture that magic, in 1978 cameJaws 2, where starRoy Scheiderreturned but Spielberg did not. While the first sequel wasn’t as big as the original, it wasstill successful enough to keep the terror fresh in our minds.Jaws' hold on our pop culture was so great that in the early ’80s,National Lampoonwanted to make a parody sequel.John Hugheswas brought in to write it, andJoe Dante, fresh from helming theJawsripoffPiranha, was set to direct. Perfectly titledJaws 3 People 0, the sequel would have taken lovingly hilarious jabs at the icon Spielberg had created. So why didn’t it ever happen?
When a killer shark unleashes chaos on a beach community off Cape Cod, it’s up to a local sheriff, a marine biologist, and an old seafarer to hunt the beast down.
‘Jaws’ Is One of the Most Important Movies Ever Made
BeforeJawswas a movie, it was a novel, written one year earlier byPeter Benchley. Though thenovel has some differenceswith the characters (Ellen Brody and Matt Hooper have an affair!), most of what happens on the page with the main shark plot later happens on the screen in some form. If you didn’t like the characters in the book, they became the best part of Spielberg’s film. Seeing as how the shark barely worked,leaving it up toJohn Williams' scoreto provide a lot of the tension, it was up to the characters and the actors playing them to sell the fear.
Jawsis not some simple body-count horror film. It’s anadventure with contrasting characterswho we grow to love.Roy Scheider’s Chief Brody is a man who hates the waterbut now must go into it.Richard Dreyfuss' Matt Hooper is an oceanographer who is smarter than the residents of Amity Island, but he can be of superior intelligence without being unlikable. Then there’sRobert Shaw’s Quint, a gruff local fisherman who oozes confidence and charisma in his quest to be the one to kill the man-eating Great White. Oh yeah, and there’s a shark sometimes too.
John Hughes’ ‘Sixteen Candles’ Almost Had a Very Different Jake Ryan
We’ll give you 16 guesses.
To say thatJawswas a success is an understatement. Today, after being made for $7 million,Jawshas amassed $477 million worldwide. It not only changed the course of movie history, but it altered how we think. Even those in landlocked states were terrified of sharks. Not knowing what was beneath the waves of not just the ocean, but the nearest river or local swimming pool had a nation scared to death. Few movies have ever had themselves so ingrained in the zeitgeist asJaws.
Joe Dante and John Hughes Almost Made a National Lampoon ‘Jaws’ Parody
In 1978, Joe Dante hadn’t yet become the genius behind movies likeThe HowlingandGremlins. Those would come a few years later. Instead,Dante was in the beginnings of his film career, and in 1978 he directedPiranha, one of the betterJawsripoffs of the era. Ironically, the film only ever saw the light of day because of Steven Spielberg. As told by Joe Dante in theShudder documentarySharkspolitation, Universal (who distributedJaws) was so offended by the similarities that they wanted the film canned. Dante said:
“I discovered much later that Spielberg had stepped in… and said, ‘No, you don’t get it, this is a spoof, this isn’t really a rip-off,’ although itisa rip-off. And we basically got away with it, I guess is the phrase. And because of that, I was offeredJaws 3, People 0.”
The idea forJaws 3, People 0came from a man namedMatty Simmons, the publisher of theNational Lampoonmagazine, andalso a producer forAnimal House, which came out the same year asPiranha. While meeting with producersDick ZanukandDavid Brown(who just so happened to be his next-door neighbors) for a new project, Simmons made up a concept for a new movie on the spot. InSharksploitation, Simmons said:
“So, out of the blue — I just started kidding around — I just said, ‘Jaws 3, People Nothing.’ I said, ‘Peter Benchley walks out of his house in a bathing suit, jumps into his pool, and disappears. And the next thing we see a fin floating around in the pool.”
To his amazement, the producers loved the idea and told Simmons they wanted to make the movie. Joe Dante was offered the chance to direct it and accepted it. Just as great,John Hughes was brought on board to writeit. Like Dante, he too was a man at the beginning of his career who had no idea how influential he was about to become to the 1980s with both his writing and directing. Everything seemed ready to go, but then the project began to fall apart due to creative differences. According to Dante,Matty Simmons and National Lampoon wanted the parody to be rated R, while Zanuck and Brown wanted a family-friendly PG moviethat could get a wider release.
Two More ‘Jaws’ Sequels Were Made That Were More Bizarre Than Any Parody
InSharksploitation, Joe Dante revealed that since the two sides couldn’t agree, with one side caving into the preferences of the other, the project was canceled. Dante said, “You can’t go into a movie with two entities as powerful asNational Lampoonwas at that time and Zanuck and Brown and have them fighting constantly through the entire movie.” If that wasn’t enough, word about the project made its way to Steven Spielberg and he wasn’t a fan. Dante confessed, “They had to choose between me and Spielberg and I suspect they made the right choice.”
Instead,Universal decided to skip the parody idea and make a straightforward sequel. It can only be described as ironic that what Universal put out forJaws 3-Din 1983 andJaws The Revengein 1987 was unintentionally so bad that it was funnier than anythingNational Lampooncould have thought of. These two maligned sequels sadly feel like a parody. The third film, whichtried to capitalize on the 3D movie trend, has some of the worst effects ever put on a big-budget ’80s film, including the shot of a weird-looking stiff shark moving towards the screen, its nose breaking the glass in a scene so awful you have to laugh so you don’t cry about your childhood being ruined.Jaws the Revengewent even deeper into craziness by having a shark that’s out to kill every member of the Brody family for murdering its fellow Great Whites in the past movies. Itplays out like a maddening slasher filmmore than anything at all realistic.
Jaws the Revengewas so bad that, almost four decades later,no one has dared attempt another sequelor reboot. They’re still fun midnight movies to put on if you want to laugh your ass off at their absurdities, but they are nowhere near as good as evenJaws 2. Still, you can’t wonder about howJaws 3, People 0would have turned out. At least it would have had audiences laughing on purpose.
Jawsis available to rent on Amazon Prime Video in the U.S.
