by pinback » Sun Jul 19, 2020 6:13 pm
JAWS 4
=======
We made it! There's no more of these, right? Oh please let there be no more of these.
All of the sequels are varying levels of awful, but I'll tell you something, I'd rather watch this one again than the others. Mainly because the photography of (at least what's meant to be) the Bahamas and some of the shots of boats and planes are quite pretty. I mean, unless it was some sort of trickery, someone had to land that twin-engine plane on the ocean with no landing gear, which I had to rewind to watch again it was so cool.
Also, it absolutely shamefully rips off the original, down to specific scenes, and the entire structure of the thing, so at the end, instead of Brody, Hooper and Quint on a boat, you've got Brody, Brody, Mario Van Peebles and Michael Caine on a boat, which is really really bad, but when you spent the rest of your day watching the other sequels, it's nice to see a few characters that you can root for on a boat hunting the big shark. Like an old pair of shoes which used to be great, but now stink all to high hell, but they still, barely, fit.
It's awful. But it's the least awful of the sequels, which I know nobody else agrees with, and it's fine. It's like arguing over which fart smells worse. Everyone is correct.
I will say that in addition to rewinding the plane-landing-on-water scene because of how cool it was, I also had to rewind the climactic scene because I thought I missed something. Apparently something happens? The boat runs into the shark or something? And then it ends? Or something? It's so terribly edited together that there's no way anyone walking out of the movie for the first time could tell you what happened. But they wouldn't tell you even if they could. Because you would never ask. Because this is all terrible.
I can't believe how bad these three movies are. I mean, everyone's gotta eat, so I understand them slapping the "Jaws" brand on a few crappy flicks to make some money, which I'm guessing these all did.
Ultimately, in my opinion, the issue is twofold:
1. I mean, they just got whoever they could to run the camera and film enough crap where they could sell tickets. Nobody was interested in art, just cashing in. I get it.
2. This is a story you can only tell once. Chrissie Watkins getting yanked down by an unknown predator the first time was shocking, amazing, and great. After the seventeenth Chrissie goes down, who gives a crap. You would have had to do something else with the story to make it interesting, not just set up more scenarios for more Chrissies to go down. But nobody was going to do that, because everyone's gotta eat.
I'm glad I made it through. I was afraid my memory had jumbled stuff up, and Jaws was just the best in a series of four dopey shark movies. No, there are three really, really bad movies with "Jaws" in the name, and there's Jaws, and that's it.
I consider the matter closed.
JAWS 4
=======
We made it! There's no more of these, right? Oh please let there be no more of these.
All of the sequels are varying levels of awful, but I'll tell you something, I'd rather watch this one again than the others. Mainly because the photography of (at least what's meant to be) the Bahamas and some of the shots of boats and planes are quite pretty. I mean, unless it was some sort of trickery, someone had to land that twin-engine plane on the ocean with no landing gear, which I had to rewind to watch again it was so cool.
Also, it absolutely shamefully rips off the original, down to specific scenes, and the entire structure of the thing, so at the end, instead of Brody, Hooper and Quint on a boat, you've got Brody, Brody, Mario Van Peebles and Michael Caine on a boat, which is really really bad, but when you spent the rest of your day watching the other sequels, it's nice to see a few characters that you can root for on a boat hunting the big shark. Like an old pair of shoes which used to be great, but now stink all to high hell, but they still, barely, fit.
It's awful. But it's the least awful of the sequels, which I know nobody else agrees with, and it's fine. It's like arguing over which fart smells worse. Everyone is correct.
I will say that in addition to rewinding the plane-landing-on-water scene because of how cool it was, I also had to rewind the climactic scene because I thought I missed something. Apparently something happens? The boat runs into the shark or something? And then it ends? Or something? It's so terribly edited together that there's no way anyone walking out of the movie for the first time could tell you what happened. But they wouldn't tell you even if they could. Because you would never ask. Because this is all terrible.
I can't believe how bad these three movies are. I mean, everyone's gotta eat, so I understand them slapping the "Jaws" brand on a few crappy flicks to make some money, which I'm guessing these all did.
Ultimately, in my opinion, the issue is twofold:
1. I mean, they just got whoever they could to run the camera and film enough crap where they could sell tickets. Nobody was interested in art, just cashing in. I get it.
2. This is a story you can only tell once. Chrissie Watkins getting yanked down by an unknown predator the first time was shocking, amazing, and great. After the seventeenth Chrissie goes down, who gives a crap. You would have had to do something else with the story to make it interesting, not just set up more scenarios for more Chrissies to go down. But nobody was going to do that, because everyone's gotta eat.
I'm glad I made it through. I was afraid my memory had jumbled stuff up, and Jaws was just the best in a series of four dopey shark movies. No, there are three really, really bad movies with "Jaws" in the name, and there's Jaws, and that's it.
I consider the matter closed.