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Old 06-03-2010, 06:58 AM
ManchestrMorgue's Avatar
ManchestrMorgue ManchestrMorgue is offline
Synthetic Flesh

 
Join Date: May 2006
Location: Australia
Posts: 2,601
Hilarious, but sadly too close to the mark...

However, I think a good deal of the impact that Jaws had at the time (the hysteria it created) was because it was a new concept. The first real super-predator shark film. It came at a time when sharks were much more poorly understood than now (not that we still know an awful lot)

Sure, Blue Water, White Death preceded it by several years, but it was more a documentary and didn't have the same level of impact.

It is interesting to look at the sequence of events... Jaws creates hysteria, people are afraid to go into the water. Sadly, people start killing sharks. It takes said geniuses to bring some species almost to the point of extinction to realise the problem with their plan. Meanwhile, study of sharks spurred on at least partly by the hysteria shows that, indeed, not every shark in the ocean is out to eat every human it can find. In fact, they find people a bit unpalatable and usually spit them out.

But all this means that killer shark films necessarily would have a very different impact today than they did in the mid 70's. However, today's production values just don't have to gritty realism that was a feature of the 70's and early 80's cinema. The gloss and effects seem to make films less realistic, even if the shark itself looks less mechanical.
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