The Novel JAWS VS The Movie Adaptation of JAWS

There was a terrible rumor at 1 point that they were going to remake JAWS with Spielberg making it, but it would be the Novel version which would've been boring given the shark takes a backseat to the man vs greed storyline..

I think I got halfway through the book before giving up, and it was a short book!

It was terrible. I think the movie studio bought it for the title and the idea of sheriff-vs-shark, if they'd planned to throw the rest out from the beginning they had the right idea.

Not sure it's a heart attack. It's charging at Brody and basically just succumbs to its wounds and dies right before it reaches him.

I read the book in 1974 before the movie went into production. I recall a People magazine article when the movie was filming in the summer of 1974. One of the photos was of Richard Dreyfuss as Hooper. People wrote: "Dreyfuss's character died in the book -- he will survive in the movie." I guess Universal wanted the world to know that cute, cuddly and loveable Dreyfuss(then) would NOT be horribly killed.

With the adultery angle in the book, Hooper(more of a young stud a-hole type) quickly seduced Brody's wife, Brody found out and they were at each others throats on the boat -- with Quint oddly in the position of having to play peacemaker. It was ridiculous, and the three leads ended up ALL being horrible and unlikeable. A popular film could not have been made about THOSE three men.

But the adultery also allowed for what was pretty much obligatory in the novels of the 60's and 70s: sex scenes that were impossible for films even with R ratings. The Godfather had been wall-to-wall with sex scenes(especially Sonny's against-the-wall sex on pages 28-29 of the paperback; hah) so Peter Benchley felt required to get at least one sex scene into Jaws. Clearly, The Godfather also dictated the Mafia subplot in the book.

Though Benchley protested the Big Boom Climax of Spielberg's movie of Jaws, clearly the ending of the book -- the shark just giving up and dying with Quint caught in the ropes and sinking with him-- was 'un-cinematic." Benchley groused: "the shark explodes like an oil tanker" from a measly oxygen tank but....this is where the movies were going , blockbuster-wise.

CONT

"3) the shark died from cardiac arrest, basically it's the scene at the end when It's coming at Brody in the finale and once it reaches him, it just sinks as it's heart gave out due to the shark's potential age.. "

That's really the dumbest shit I heard so far about the book. Jesus.

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In 2010, they made a remake of True Grit in which they restored the very dull ending of the original novel , whereas the 1969 John Wayne movie had taken out that ending and added two great, better scenes to conclude the story.

The 2010 producers were proud to have "filmed the book True Grit as written."

If Jaws were to be remade to have "filmed the book as written" --THAT's how the shark and Quint would have died.

Be grateful for movie re-writes, sometimes.

The shark's age might have had something to do with it, but the bigger factor would be that Quint, Brody and Hooper had put it through a grueling multi-day hunt.

good job it chose to die in front of Brody , rather than off on its own somewhere , or they'd have to keep looking for it!