Longer than just Shark Week: The lasting legacy of ‘Jaws’ in Spokane and beyond

If you’ve ever swum in the ocean, chances are this thought has entered your mind: Could there be a shark down there?

The fear, however irrational it may be, spread throughout an entire generation of beachgoers.

And you have one movie to thank for that: “Jaws.”

It’s been 50 years to the day since the trauma-inducing seaside thriller hit the screen. Though it is decades later, the film’s legacy extends wider than just kitschy movies about shark-tornados. From its transformational impact on Hollywood to the reputation it afforded sharks, “Jaws” changed the game.

The first summer blockbuster

Summer doesn’t just bring hot weather. A key part of the season today is the summer blockbuster – big-budget films with mass appeal released during a period when people have more free time.

With the reeling impacts of summer films like 2023’s “Barbie” or “The Avengers” in 2012, it can be easy to take the phenomenon for granted as a trend that has been around since the film industry’s inception.

But it hasn’t always been this way.

Prior to “Jaws,” Hollywood studios were not advertising their movies on network television, according to PBS’ Frontline. It was expensive, and the summertime was considered a lull for filmmakers. The lack of air conditioning in theaters made it difficult for audiences to sit through two-hour movies.

Yet when a 30-second trailer swarmed the networks in June 1975, bringing images of sharp teeth closing in on unsuspecting swimmers and John Williams’ nail-biting score to living rooms across America, something changed.

This time, the marketing worked, and record numbers of people flocked to theaters, curious to get a taste of the terrifying spectacle.

Though many remember “Jaws” as the scariest PG-rated movie they’d encountered, people couldn’t take their eyes away from the action.

It grossed a record-breaking $100 million in its first 59 days, becoming the first film to earn that amount of money in U.S. theatrical rentals. The original release grossed a total of $476.5 million worldwide.

“Jaws” was also one of the first movies merchandised on a large scale. T-shirts, towels, action figures, movie soundtracks and more hit the shelves around the country, resulting in even greater attention brought to the film.

Dan Webster, the senior film critic at Spokane Public Radio and former film critic for The Spokesman-Review, remembers being blown away the first time he saw the movie during its original release in theaters.

“I think it’s pretty clear that it changed the whole notion of what a summer movie could be,” Webster said. “It was a tough production in so many ways, and everybody thought it was going to be a failure, and then it came out and just blew everybody away.”

The filming of “Jaws” was infamously complicated. The rough ocean waves on Martha’s Vineyard made it hard to capture steady shots and keep equipment safe. Three mechanical sharks playing the villain, all affectionately nicknamed Bruce, were prone to malfunctions as the saltwater corroded their insides.

The film crew had to think on their feet about how to depict the shark, resulting in the animal seldom showing up in the movie aside from the signature gray fin patrolling the shallow waters. This ended up working in their favor, as it slowly built suspense for the creature’s reveal in the final act. This strategy ended up inspiring many movies to come.

“Ridley Scott used that really well in the first ‘Alien.’ You never really saw the predator,” Webster said. “You don’t see the alien creature until the very end, and up until then, it was this mysterious presence. So yeah, I believe it really did have an impact.”

After seeing the movie on TV as a kid, Nathan Weinbender, former film critic for The Spokesman-Review and The Inlander, became “Jaws-obsessed.”

Though the allure of an action-packed shark movie for grown-ups is what likely sparked his childhood fascination, the movie’s realistic characters and sense of place is what keeps him coming back.

“It’s the way the characters talk and interact with each other and their relationships. That’s the stuff that sticks out to me,” Weinbender said. “It’s a great suspense machine, but it also has really vivid characters and a really vivid sense of place that I think make it more than just a shark jumping out at people.”

Reality bites

While “Jaws” set the stage for countless iconic films to come, for shark conservationists, its effects were not all positive.

The movie had an “absolutely devastating” impact on the public’s perception of sharks and public support for shark conservation, said David Shiffman, a marine conservation biologist and author of “Why Sharks Matter: A Deep Dive with the World’s Most Misunderstood Predator.”

The 50 years since the film premiered coincide with the start of dramatic declines in shark populations. A study published in Nature found a 71% decline in abundance of sharks and rays around the world since the 1970s.

Shiffman does not attribute “Jaws” directly to these declines – the culprit is primarily industrial commercial fishing practices, he said. The widespread fear of the creatures, however, stoked by the movie made it a lot harder to get people to care about shark conservation and lobby for change.

“These animals are older than the rings of Saturn,” Shiffman said. “It’s really striking that within my parents’ lifetime, so many of them have been killed.”

So, are sharks really the blood-thirsty, boat-eating creatures the film makes them out to be? Research and experts say not exactly.

Sharks evolved hundreds of millions of years ago, before dinosaurs roamed the earth and trees existed. These ancient creatures have existed for the most part uninterrupted by human interference.

They have varied diets consisting of mammals, fish and invertebrates, but not humans. Most shark bites occur either because it mistakes a person for its usual prey, or it is simply curious. Sharks lack hands, so they are left to investigate strange objects with their mouths, which sometimes results in a bite. The likelihood of actually getting bitten is low.

The Florida Museum of Natural History’s International Shark Attack File found that 2024 had 47 unprovoked shark bites on humans and 24 provoked bites. Considering the millions of people visiting beaches globally, the chances of actually getting bitten while you’re in the ocean are small.

In fact, more people are bitten by other people on the New York City subway system each year than are bitten by sharks in the world, Shiffman said.

“If you have been in the ocean, there was a shark not that far from you,” Shiffman said. “It knew you were there, and it probably didn’t bother you. You probably didn’t even know it was there.”

Though the film spearheaded Spielberg’s career and established him as a big-shot Hollywood director, he rues the negative impact it brought to sharks.

“I truly and to this day regret the decimation of the shark population because of the book and the film,” Spielberg said in a 2022 interview with Entertainment Weekly. “I really, truly regret that.”

Making waves in Washington

If you’re planning on hitting the state’s beaches, but fear being food, you don’t have much to worry about.

Only two shark attacks have been reported in Washington since 1837. There are seven shark species in the state, according to The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, with the great white shark occasionally making appearances on the Pacific Coast.

Despite being 300 miles inland, “Jaws” still managed to make its way to Spokane.

It was first shown in Spokane at the Fox Theater downtown on Aug. 29, 1975, more than two months after its original premiere. It went on to break Fox records, playing the theater into November when it celebrated its renovation into a three-theater multiplex and even into December.

Attendance was certainly not sparse.

Two hours before the premiere, there was a line halfway around the theater’s block, according to a review by Spokesman-Review staff writer Les Blumenthal .

“ ’Jaws’ is not merely scary,” Blumenthal wrote. “It is one of the most terrifying movies ever produced, a thriller in the grandest Hitchcock tradition guaranteed to produce hysterical shrieks, continuous nervous laughter and millions of dollars.”

Fifty years later, “Jaws” is again returning to Spokane theaters.

Audiences can catch the cult classic on 35mm film on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Garland Theater.

Editors note: Les Blumenthal wrote a review of “Jaws” in The Spokesman-Review’s Aug. 30, 1975, edition. Blumenthal’s name was misspelled in the byline of that review and in an earlier version of this report.