A Multi-Angled Retrospective on the Film That Changed Everything

There’s blood in the water, and it never really cleared.

In the summer of 1975, a mechanical shark that barely worked chewed its way through film history, tore apart a sleepy seaside town, and accidentally invented the modern blockbuster. Jaws didn’t just change movies—it devoured them, spat out the bones, and called it summer. Fifty years later, we’re still paddling in its wake, trying to piece together how something this primal, this malfunctioning, this brilliant, took hold of the cultural imagination and refused to let go.

Yes, the stories are legend: Spielberg nearly broke, the shark that wouldn’t cooperate, the endless rewrites, the saltwater editing suite. But we’re not here to just rehash anecdotes. No, this is about mythmaking and myth-breaking. It’s about the movie that killed the decade it was born in. The movie that redefined what fear looked like, sounded like, and sold like. The movie that taught us not just to be afraid of the water—but to buy the T-shirt, the action figure, and the VHS re-release.

This anthology is a series of dispatches from the belly of the beast—cultural, cinematic, economic. Each essay peers down the gullet of Jaws from a different angle, chewing on its legacy with teeth bared. Because 50 years on, the fin may be distant, but the ripple it left on the surface? Still there. Still circling.

Now, let’s talk about how it all went south.

• Saul Muerte

1. “The Shark That Ate the ‘70s: Jaws and the Death of the Director’s Decade”

2. “Out of Sight, Into Terror: Jaws as the Accidental Masterclass in Minimalist Horror”

3. “When the Shark Never Died: Jaws and the Birth of the Franchise Machine”

4. “Hooper, Brody, Quint: A Class War at Sea”

5. “You Never Saw It Coming: Jaws and the Cinema of the Unseen”

6. “Amity Is America: The Small-Town Politics of Jaws”

7. “Between the Teeth: Sound, Editing, and the Sonic Terror of Jaws”

8. “Real Fear, Real Fish: How Jaws Birthed Shark Panic and Changed the Ocean Forever”