Here's How You Can Watch Every Movie In The Jaws Series
In the annals of cinema history, there are few movies quite as revered as the seafaring killer shark thriller known as Jaws. Fittingly, there also aren't many which had quite as seismic an impact on the way movies are made, marketed, and released.
Based on the novel by Peter Benchley, Jaws tells a harrowing tale of a small beach community which spends a summer under siege from a bloodthirsty Great White shark. Adapted by Benchley himself (with help from Carl Gottlieb), and directed with astonishing skill by a then relative-unknown Steven Spielberg, Jaws made its way to theaters in the summer of 1975, and quickly became one of the year's biggest box office hits before shocking the whole of Hollywood with three Academy Award wins and a nomination for Best Picture.
In doing so, Jaws became an overnight sensation of Spielberg, and (for better or worse) essentially ushered in the age of blockbuster cinema. And while many of the so-called blockbusters that came in the wake of Jaws hardly live up to the billing, Spielberg's pulse-pounding thriller — even more than 45 years after it's release — continues to be well worthy of the buzz. Over that same period, the film has only grown in esteem too, becoming one of the most beloved blockbusters ever produced, with fans and cineastes of all ages continuing to devour it's savvy mix of character-driven chills and creature feature thrills.
If you've somehow never seen Steven Speilberg's first official masterpiece, it might interest you to know the film (along with its three ensuing sequels) is now available in the land of streaming. And if you want to cross it off your must-see list, or just re-watch it for the millionth time, HBO Max is the place to do so.
Jaws spawned an unlikely, and largely unnecessary franchise
Now that you know you can watch the entirety of the Jaws franchise on HBO Max, you really ought to consider whether you should. Because even if Spielberg's original is a cinematic masterwork as worthy of study and dissection as Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, or Ridley Scott's Alien ... the same cannot be said of its sequels.
Most folks in the know would actually tell you all three of those sequels — 1978's Jaws 2, 1983's Jaws 3-D, and 1987's Jaws: The Revenge — are more worthy of skipping altogether. And it's hard to argue that point, as the films get decidedly worse as you trudge through them, a fact confirmed by the rapidly descending scores each boasts on Rotten Tomatoes, with Jaws 2 netting a 58% fresh, Jaws 3-D dropping down to 12%, and Jaws: The Return scoring a well-deserved 0%.
Regarding the obvious lack of quality in each of the Jaws sequels, it's worth noting that Steven Spielberg was not involved in the making of any of them. Still, those sequels are not entirely without their charms.
In fact, Jaws 2 is actually a decent enough follow-up film that doesn't entirely eschew the bold style that made the original such a singular experience. As for Jaws 3-D, aside from the overwrought absurdity of its plot and the kitsch value of its abhorrent eighties style 3-D effects, it often thrills in the way many cheesy, B-level monster movies do. Jaws: The Revenge, on the other hand, has little redeeming value. But it's absurdly watchable in that "so bad it's funny" sort of way, and yeah, it's a genuine hoot to see the great Michael Caine slumming it so shamelessly.
Of course, since you now realize that you can now watch every Jaws film ever made on HBO Max, the question rightly becomes, "Will you?"