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I wasn't allowed to watch "Jaws" when I was a kid. In fact, I never even saw the full movie until last year. I thought it was okay, kind of like two movies in one, with the first one being about a shark killing people and the second about people hunting for said shark. Nowadays, Lil' Stevie Spielberg would've broke it up into two (or three) movies and it would probably still be a summer blockbuster. I give it less than 10 years until they remake it. My uncle Jigger had the novel and I read the first couple chapters this past summer. It's pretty bad, although with the subject matter, it's no mystery how the movie became the blueprint for all future blockbusters.
I spent a lot of time on the beach as a kid, and so it's no wonder my mom didn't want me watching that movie. It would have probably scarred me a little bit and made going to the beach a chore for her, as I would be scared to go swimming because Jaws would obviously be waiting in the water and ready to eat me. I knew about the movie, of course. It was mythological to all kids my age, and kids would talk about it with the same reverence as King Kong and Godzilla. In the early 80's it was as famous as any previous movie monster had ever been (I know that it came out in 1975, but I wasn't born yet and by the time I was able to discuss these important topics in elementary school, it was almost 10 years old). But the thing that probably made Jaws scarier than the Wolfman or Dracula was that Jaws was real, sort of. Granted, Jaws was a caricature of the Great White shark, but (s)he was based on a real live living thing that actually is a threat to humans sometimes. People are still scared of sharks, and every summer, one of them attacks someone, chomping off an arm or nibbling on legs. This fact makes Jaws a timeless movie monster that will always be scary.
In this picture, however, the real monsters seem to be the people. I mean, there isn't even a shark pictured; or is there? Yes, there is a giant squid present but that is more out of the 1954 classic "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." That movie, I was allowed to see. I was allowed to watch a lot of Disney movies and those classic ones are sometimes pretty crazy. I don't remember much about the movie, but the squid attacking the Nautilus will always be with me. It might even be where this squid came from, although now that I think of it, there have been a couple of squids in my life that have been influential. The first, and scariest is obviously the one from the aforementioned movie, the second would have to be from the cover of They Might Be Giants album, Apollo 18. This album came out in 1992, a couple years after I was introduced to the band and listened to them almost solely until high school. The squid on the front cover is attacking a Sperm Whale, not unlike in the Museum of Natural History in New York City. Above the aquatic battle scene is the Apollo 18 moon landing craft. I always liked the bringing together of space and sea. I still do, as I find the two places eerily similar and sea creatures to be incredibly alien. In fact, more people have been to the moon than have been to the very bottom of the ocean. I think that is why people are so afraid of the ocean and the creatures that live within the ocean. The ocean is vast and seemingly endless, and then when you think of all of the things beneath the surface, it is a bit unnerving. The same can be said about space; the size is almost too big to even imagine and the lack of knowledge of what exists out there is fodder for a million more movies.
However, the guy at the end of the food chain seems to be the surfer dude. This seems unlikely, since most surfers seem to be pretty laid back and have a respect for all of the creatures of the ocean. This is not always the case, and there have been numerous accounts of surfer dudes being pretty awful, but the prevailing stereotype is that they are not actually monsters. Maybe this guy was in Swayze's surfer gang in the movie "Point Break" and he was the last remaining dude after Swayze caught the 100 year wave. Either that, or the guy really loves sushi style calamari. Regardless, the whole scene could be a pretty bizarre scene in some extremely surreal summer blockbuster.
I wasn't allowed to watch "Jaws" when I was a kid. In fact, I never even saw the full movie until last year. I thought it was okay, kind of like two movies in one, with the first one being about a shark killing people and the second about people hunting for said shark. Nowadays, Lil' Stevie Spielberg would've broke it up into two (or three) movies and it would probably still be a summer blockbuster. I give it less than 10 years until they remake it. My uncle Jigger had the novel and I read the first couple chapters this past summer. It's pretty bad, although with the subject matter, it's no mystery how the movie became the blueprint for all future blockbusters.
I spent a lot of time on the beach as a kid, and so it's no wonder my mom didn't want me watching that movie. It would have probably scarred me a little bit and made going to the beach a chore for her, as I would be scared to go swimming because Jaws would obviously be waiting in the water and ready to eat me. I knew about the movie, of course. It was mythological to all kids my age, and kids would talk about it with the same reverence as King Kong and Godzilla. In the early 80's it was as famous as any previous movie monster had ever been (I know that it came out in 1975, but I wasn't born yet and by the time I was able to discuss these important topics in elementary school, it was almost 10 years old). But the thing that probably made Jaws scarier than the Wolfman or Dracula was that Jaws was real, sort of. Granted, Jaws was a caricature of the Great White shark, but (s)he was based on a real live living thing that actually is a threat to humans sometimes. People are still scared of sharks, and every summer, one of them attacks someone, chomping off an arm or nibbling on legs. This fact makes Jaws a timeless movie monster that will always be scary.
In this picture, however, the real monsters seem to be the people. I mean, there isn't even a shark pictured; or is there? Yes, there is a giant squid present but that is more out of the 1954 classic "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." That movie, I was allowed to see. I was allowed to watch a lot of Disney movies and those classic ones are sometimes pretty crazy. I don't remember much about the movie, but the squid attacking the Nautilus will always be with me. It might even be where this squid came from, although now that I think of it, there have been a couple of squids in my life that have been influential. The first, and scariest is obviously the one from the aforementioned movie, the second would have to be from the cover of They Might Be Giants album, Apollo 18. This album came out in 1992, a couple years after I was introduced to the band and listened to them almost solely until high school. The squid on the front cover is attacking a Sperm Whale, not unlike in the Museum of Natural History in New York City. Above the aquatic battle scene is the Apollo 18 moon landing craft. I always liked the bringing together of space and sea. I still do, as I find the two places eerily similar and sea creatures to be incredibly alien. In fact, more people have been to the moon than have been to the very bottom of the ocean. I think that is why people are so afraid of the ocean and the creatures that live within the ocean. The ocean is vast and seemingly endless, and then when you think of all of the things beneath the surface, it is a bit unnerving. The same can be said about space; the size is almost too big to even imagine and the lack of knowledge of what exists out there is fodder for a million more movies.
However, the guy at the end of the food chain seems to be the surfer dude. This seems unlikely, since most surfers seem to be pretty laid back and have a respect for all of the creatures of the ocean. This is not always the case, and there have been numerous accounts of surfer dudes being pretty awful, but the prevailing stereotype is that they are not actually monsters. Maybe this guy was in Swayze's surfer gang in the movie "Point Break" and he was the last remaining dude after Swayze caught the 100 year wave. Either that, or the guy really loves sushi style calamari. Regardless, the whole scene could be a pretty bizarre scene in some extremely surreal summer blockbuster.
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