JAWS 3-D is Sadly Two-Dimensional
“In 3-D!” is a small but provocative phrase that locks a movie into a moment in time perhaps more than any other.
3-D fads within the Hollywood marketplace appear to be on a thirty year cycle. The technology most associated with 3-D (the classic glasses with one red lens and one blue lens!) was patented in the late 19th century, and the first 3-D film screened for a general audience is considered to be the now-lost 1922 THE POWER OF LOVE. The first real 3-D movie boom ran more or less from 1952 through 1955, with a resurgence in the 80’s and yet another in the late 2000’s/early 2010’s. By that point, the red-and-blue glasses had been replaced with more sleek gear that resembled plastic sunglasses. It managed to cut the migraines in half while still making sure you looked like a complete dork. By that point, however, 3-D had cynically turned into a blatantly financial gimmick (as opposed to simply a creative one), an excuse for the movie theater to charge you an extra five bucks for the privilege of watching THOR: THE DARK WORLD in post-converted three dimensions.
Still, it’s hard to deny the allure of 3-D, even if there’s only ever been one movie that’s ever been considered to transcend it and move it into an art-form (James Cameron’s AVATAR movie/series). I really do think you have to be a kid during one of its high periods for it to really enter your heart. And, brother, did I ever grow up during one of its high periods.
It wasn’t like I saw a lot of 3-D movies as a kid (actually, outside of a couple of early IMAX things, I’m not sure I saw any). But the concept of the 3-D glasses was prevalent. For some reason, they were talked about a lot in kids’ magazines, sometimes even including them in the magazine itself in order for you to enjoy some gimmicky page. And specialty 3-D glasses are still cool now; you can find 3D glasses specially made for FREDDY’S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE on eBay right now for about 15 dollars.
The issue with 3-D movies, of course, is that the movies themselves almost uniformly coast on the gimmick themselves and then call it a day. Another issue is that movies from the 50’s and 80’s couldn’t possibly have anticipated that these junk 3-D movies would one day be available for home 2-D viewing, completely stripping it of its one and only reason for existing in the first place. Thus, any “3-D” movie is going to be playing from behind now in 2022.
This brings us to JAWS 3-D, a movie that feels like such a far cry from the original in terms of plotting, performance and direction that it really could have been any generic shitty shark movie. Oh, and the 3-D is shockingly terrible, even when accounting for the fact I’m watching it on a two-dimensional screen. Besides that, though, it’s great!
JAWS 3-D
Directed by: Joe Alves
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Bess Armstrong, Lea Thompson, Louis Gossett Jr.
Written by: Richard Matheson, Carl Gottlieb
Released: July 2, 1983
Length: 98 minutes
JAWS 3-D is almost exclusively set at SeaWorld Orlando, which you might have noticed is a very real place that was definitely operational in 1983. As near as I can tell, this truly isn’t meant to be any other place but the canonical SeaWorld Orlando that exists in our universe, or at least an exact Jawsiverse. Characters have the logo on their shirts and everything!
This is a very curious licensing decision for SeaWorld for many reasons, the primary one being that JAWS 3-D tells the tale of a great white shark getting trapped within the bounds of the park, then being unable to leave due to a broken gate, then having its child die in the custody of SeaWorld staff after an overzealous owner moves it to an exhibit too soon. Sounds like a cool place! At least it’s not nearly as bad as what’s gone on at the real SeaWorld.
And, look, I think the movie being set at a real place adds some realism to the proceedings (at least, relative to the standards of a 3-D shark movie). I’d always prefer a movie be set at SeaWorld than some extremely fake Hollywood screenplay place like OceanTown or WaterVille or something. I’m just shocked that SeaWorld signed off on it at all. Did they, like, read the script or anything? Did they even read the title of the movie? Why in the world would you let your multi-million dollar water park be associated with a JAWS sequel?
Anyway, that’s more or less the thrust of JAWS 3-D. A shark (or two!) trapped at a SeaWorld park. If you’re expecting this to lead to anything resembling commentary, keep in mind that this was thirty years before BLACKFISH, so there aren’t really any parallels drawn between the shark and the other fish and mammals imprisoned there against their will. Also, if you’re expecting this to lead to anything resembling a movie, you may be waiting awhile.
Dennis Quaid is our main link to the original film, playing the grown-up version of Michael Brody, Sheriff Brody’s oldest son (Scheider is nowhere to be seen in this; I suspect the creative team knew better than to even ask this time around). Quaid pretty famously has noted his daily cocaine habit during the filming of this, specifically saying he was high during “every frame” of JAWS 3-D. It’s as decent an excuse as any for his weird performance here, somehow both totally bizarre and completely mailed in.
It struck me while watching this that Quaid is a guy who needed to become older before becoming interesting, or even…well, handsome. Quaid’s definitely a good looking guy now, but he looks kinda odd in this movie! There’s nothing wrong with him in JAWS 3-D, he’s just a gangly dude in his late twenties. It happens!
Bess Armstrong, who plays Dr. Kay Morgan, started her career with some Off-Off-Broadway stuff, before settling into work in mostly television movies, although she would eventually work alongside Tom Hanks in 1986’s NOTHING IN COMMON. For such a major role she has here (Kay is basically the second lead), she really made no impression on me, which represents a first for adult roles in the JAWS series.
Like most people, I knew Lea Thompson from the BACK TO THE FUTURE trilogy, although I had forgotten she was also in RED DAWN (and who could forget HOWARD THE DUCK?). She’s okay in this, although the movie isn’t ultimately really interested in her character at all, either. I even had to look up her name after the fact (Kelly Ann Bukowski, for those keeping score). It’s just a light, love interest role for Sean Brody, and it isn’t treated with any more weight than that.
I also wanted to make mention of Simon MacCorkindale, who plays the hunter Phillip FitzRoyce. This is not only because he had one of the all-time names in the acting game, but because, in the same year that JAWS 3-D was released, he appeared as the title character in all eight episodes of NBC’s MANIMAL. For those not familiar, this was a show about a man who could shape-shift into any animal, and used this power to help the police solve crimes instead of, I dunno, declaring himself the President of the United States. 1983 was a big year for MacCorkindale!
I’ve never seen AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN, so I’m not familiar with Louis Gossett Jr’s biggest claim to fame. But I’ve never seen a more affable presence be in so many shitty movies that he’s completely unable to elevate on his own. Thus, just like in so many other films, Gossett is just stranded on an island here. He almost seems Photoshopped into most of his scenes. It’s rough, especially considering his character, the SeaWorld owner Calvin Bouchard, is ripe for dramatic conflict.
Foolhardy men in positions of power are great catalysts for the type of changes and catharsis that drive the best stories, whether in film or no. Remember how sobering it felt when John Hammond was forced to ruminate on how much damage had been wrought in pursuit of his JURASSIC PARK dream? Even after he had endured two hours of everyone calling him a fucking idiot, the wonder of the creatures at his park still overrode all reason, which ultimately led to chaos and destruction (and a run of increasingly bad sequels, but that’s a different article).
In a real movie, Bouchard could have been a character just like this! But JAWS 3-D is not a real movie, so instead, Bouchard is a buffoon. For one, he brings in his hunter friend, who immediately wants to kill the shark on national television for some reason. Bouchard is also the one who makes the call to move the first juvenile shark from the medical tank to the show tank, where it immediately dies. Why does he think these are good ideas? I couldn’t tell you, outside of something broad like “greed” and “foolishness”. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to his decision-making, so there’s nothing for us to track. It’s not even clear to me why he owns the park. Is it money? Is he a fail-son of a previous successful owner? Is it because he thinks sea animals are cool? Because, as writ, it appears he’s just there to get in the way.
JAWS 3-D occasionally wades into water deeper than it’s capable of dealing with. For instance, it’s revealed during a soft, tender walk on the beach between Kay and Michael that Sean has developed a severe phobia of the water. Kay finds it odd, until Michael fills her in on the context. The phobia, naturally, has developed due to the events of the first two films (you know, two shark attacks).
And, you know what? Fair enough! That’s a really serious thing. But the movie has no intention of doing anything with this at all. You’re sort of preparing for Sean to maybe have a hero moment somewhere in the story, where he saves the day by getting in the water, overcoming his fear and his genuine, understandable trauma. But…nope! Sean’s standing in the water a few minutes later, necking with Kelly Ann. As far as I can recall, this never gets brought up again. Oh well!
But, at least the 3D looks like shit! I mean, beyond the normal goofy standard of going from 3D to 2D. Yes, you get the goofy “some action being done straight to camera for no reason” kind of shots. But it becomes crystal clear that the 3D was misconceived even in 1983.
Take the “money shot” of the shark. The whole movie, you naturally assume we’re heading towards a straight-to-camera shot of the shark done in 3D that looks like it’s coming right for us, the dear viewer! Well, not quite. What you get is the shark slowly moving towards a glass pane in 2D, then stopping (again, in 2D). Fake “glass” then shatters and the glass is in 3D. Cool! It’s such a miscalculation that you wonder why they bothered making the movie 3D at all.
Finally, the shark also looks bad. Most of the time, it seems like it can only really move along a horizontal plane, so most of the shark attacks seem like they’re being committed by a verrrrry slow moving rubber shark that has its mouth permanently open. It’s legitimately been strange to track the evolution of how these movies have answered the big question: how much of the shark do we show? The irony of it all is that the first one figured it out, albeit accidentally. It turns out the shark can’t look fake if you never see it. Furthermore, it will never look fake in your own mind’s eye. So why not roll with that, and play with new ways to imply the presence of the shark without ever seeing it, saving yourself some heartache in the process?
But no, JAWS 2 went forward with trying to make the mechanical shark work again, to slightly diminishing returns. This one just doubles down on the shark, showing it over and over again. And it looks horrible and fake! Why reinvent the wheel here, guys?
It’s especially confounding because the creative staff weren’t total outsiders to the franchise. Joe Alves was the production designer of JAWS 1 and 2 before helming the director’s chair for 3. And, believe it or not, Richard Matheson and Carl Gottlieb got the writing credits again (although this one feels written much more by committee). So this didn’t appear to be a case of know-nothings being brought in to crank out a crappy sequel. No, these were folks well-versed in what could make a JAWS movie work and, most importantly, collapse entirely.
So, what happened? Matheson has gone on record as blaming Joe Alves, saying “the man is a very skilled production designer, but as a director, no”. This feels a little unfair and a bit like Matheson passing the buck, although it’s easier to single the one director out than it is to pinpoint one specific screenwriter. You also get the sense from a review of the production history that there was never a clear vision of what exactly JAWS 3 was ever going to be. It started life as a parody film, of all things, named JAWS 3, PEOPLE 0. This eventually got shut down by Universal Studios for being beneath the franchise. The movie also almost went down an experimental route, with Murray Lerner hired as director, before he read the first draft of the script and freaked out, leaving the project soon after.
But, to me, it comes down to the 3-D gimmick. It’s weird and sad to see a JAWS movie succumb to a gimmick in the first place. After all, the first movie’s “gimmick” (rarely see the shark) was borne from production and necessity, and the film shifted its resources and time to developing its core three human characters and drawing conflict from their relationships to the shark AND to each other. Even JAWS 2 tried to wring SOMETHING out of Brody being re-traumatized by his past.
Here? No time for that. Here’s some crappy shark jaw flying at you! Anything that could have been interesting is ignored, or landed on completely by accident. The human characters are completely abandoned in the name of spectacle, of which the movie can ultimately provide none.
It makes it ironic that Universal shut down the comedy version of JAWS 3 for it not being becoming to the JAWS franchise. Because I can’t imagine a version of this movie that could tarnish the original any further.