I can’t help but roll my eyes whenever anyone says that the shark effects in Jaws don’t hold up, because if you’re asking me, that animatronic shark still looks like the real deal over 40 years later. Jaws is a testament to the enduring effectiveness of practical effects work, but it seems star Richard Dreyfuss doesn’t agree. In fact, he wants CGI added atop the classic film.
Hey, even great actors have terrible ideas sometimes.
Speaking with Deadline, Dreyfuss just floated his awful, terrible, no good idea.
“There are people who say Jaws is a perfect film otherwise and it is amazing what Steven accomplished with the challenges he had,” Dreyfuss told the site. “But… they should put the money in to CGI [to replace] that beast and make it come alive. I think they should do it, it would be huge and it would open up the film to younger people.”
He added, “Is that blasphemy? No, no, I don’t think so. The technology now could make the shark look as good as the rest of the movie.”
Look, we get that modern CGI has gotten insanely good – the CG shark in The Shallows, in particular, looks fantastic – but Dreyfuss’s suggestion that the shark in Jaws doesn’t “look as good as the rest of the movie” is indeed kinda blasphemous. As is his suggestion that the *perfect* film could somehow be improved by messing with its incredible effects work.
The good news? Steven Spielberg is firmly anti-messing with the past, especially after that whole E.T. debacle years back. He explained to Screen Rant earlier this year…
“When E.T. was re-released, I actually digitized 5 shots where E.T. went from being a puppet to a digital puppet and I also replaced the gun when the F.B.I. runs up on the van, now they walkie talkies. So there’s a really bad version of E.T. where I took my cue from Star Wars and all of the digital enhancements of A New Hope that George put in, and I went ahead, because the marketing at Universal thought we need something to get an audience back and see the movie so I did a few touch up in the film; in those days, social media wasn’t as profound as it is today but what was just beginning, you know, erupted a loud, negative voice about how could you ruin our favorite childhood film by taking the guns away and putting walkie-talkies in their hands among other things.”
Spielberg continued, “So I learned a big lesson and that’s the last time I decided to ever mess with the past. What’s done is done… I’ll never go back.”
So don’t worry. Jaws is in safe hands. Bless you, Steven.
