Jaws: The Revenge – An Educational Experience
This year marks the 35th anniversary of JAWS. I’ve been getting pretty jazzed about this fact, annoying friends with my reciting of misremembered lines and begging them to join me at a local screening. Today, I decided to celebrate this monumental event by watching JAWS: The Revenge.
Despite the series’ fourth entry being regarded as one of the worst films of all time, it has a soft spot in my heart. Part of my admiration for this cash-grab stems from the fact that it was the only JAWS flick released after my birth. Moreover, the movie was the basis for the NES game that I watched my brother play for countless hours (of terror).
But today, I realized that JAWS: The Revenge is a worthwhile movie because of its educational properties. A viewing of the final chapter of this renowned shark-saga provides information that is simply not available elsewhere.
I. Jaws is a Psychic Terrorist
The premise of this movie is as follows: Ellen Brody and her son Sean still live in Amity. As a deputy for the Amity Police, Sean has to go out and clear some shit out of the water. Or something. Anyways, Jaws comes up and chomps his ass to death. Everyone is bummed out.
However, this standard fare takes a turn for the supernatural when Ellen starts to claim that she knew Jaws was coming for her son. And then she has kooky dreams about shark attacks, receiving clear visions of her son’s death that would be impossible without having been there. Feeling vulnerable, Mrs. Martin Brody decides to spend Christmas in the Bahamas with her son Michael, his wife and daughter.
Uh-oh! Since Jaws is a damn psychic-terrorist, he knows that Ellen has split town. So he packs his gear and heads to the Bahamas to join his beloved Brody family! Yes, Jaws’ mind-powers enable him to follow his prey to the damn Bahamas.
II. Jaws Loves Warm Water
Great whites don’t live in warm water. They just don’t It’s a fact. Okay, I don’t know if that’s true, but in JAWS: The Revenge Mario Van Peebles claims that great white sharks prefer cold water. Hrm. I wonder what WikiAnswers thinks?
Well, either Mario Van Peebles or WikiAnswers is wrong; in either case, a trusted source of information is going to lose some credibility. The bottom line, however, is that Jaws loves warm water. He goes down to the Bahamas and survives just fine. Hell, not only does he survive, but he flourishes.
So if you’re going to a tropical paradise, stay out of the water. Drink coconut beverages and stare at members of the opposite sex from the safety of the beach.
III. Banana Boats are Dangerous
I’ve been saying it for years — banana boats are a goddamn hazard. I could just feel it in my gut, there’s no way that a giant yellow banana-shaped floatation device is anything less than risky. But I never had the evidence to prove it.
Hey, JAWS: The Revenge, what do you think of banana boats?
I rest my case.
IV. Some Sharks are Highly Combustible
You probably didn’t know this, but some sharks are highly combustible. At the end of this movie, Ellen Brody decides to kill the beast that has terrorized her family for decades. With the mast of her ship having been shark-bitten into a convenient spear, she aims right for Jaws. He pops up. She stabs him!
In theory, you might think that inflicting such a wound would lead to a slow, painful death for the shark. Perhaps Jaws should’ve become impaled by the mast, sinking into an ocean grave and bringing the ship down with it.
Well, the producers of the movie did a little research and decided that wasn’t the case. Or, you could hypothetically say that test audiences didn’t approve of this ending.
Instead, JAWS: The Revenge presents a little-known truth: some sharks are prone to explode simply by being stabbed.