For the next few weeks, we will be counting down our 25 favorite blockbusters! Read all of the entries here.

1. Jaws (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1975)

When Colin Trevorrow had his giant fish monster kill a shark like “haha take that, Jaws” in the film Jurassic World, I wanted to shoot him in the knee.

This is one of the most iconic “Everything that could go wrong instantly did” movies, which I always think about. And John Milius, an actual lunatic convinced the only examples of proper society can be found in Conan paperbacks, writing Robert Shaw’s big monologue about floating in the water, fighting off sharks, watching them pull people under. You wonder why more movies don’t give parts of the script over to different people who are brilliant at writing specific types of scenes and moods. The answer is some combination of writer’s guild union rules, author ego that makes you think you’re the best person to tell every part of your story and basic impracticality.

I bring these two things up because they show that 1) Jaws can’t be repeated if some of its smartest choices were made to accommodate problems the crew didn’t see coming, and 2) Jaws should be able to be repeated, but nobody learned from its lessons. It’s the first modern blockbuster, a perfect movie that led to a million rip-offs, and yet we live in a weird world where Spielberg can crack a code in the 70s and then everybody else can spend 50 years pretending they have better ideas. But that’s art. –Alex Rudolph, Staff Writer

Jaws has this jump scare in it that's so cheap… The music literally screams the way a sitcom audience would laugh. Whenever I see it in the theater I giddily await that part so I can see the audience leap ten feet high. It's cheap, but goddamn it works. –Billy Russell, Staff Writer

My high school film teacher sat at the back of the room while most of us watched this for the first time. He wanted to see which of us jumped at certain jump scares in the movie. Pretty messed up, but I did get to watch Jaws in a class and it became one of my favorite films. The Colonial Theater in Phoenixville PA also shows Jaws on the big screen every summer and I was lucky enough to go one year. Seeing it on the big screen is an amazing experience and something everyone should do if they have the opportunity.  I mean it is THE summer blockbuster. At this point I try to watch it every summer. It never seems to get old. I find new things to appreciate every time I watch it. The dialogue and filmmaking are incredible. It is an example of filmmaking truly at its best. Brody and his wife are one of my favorite couples on screen and Richard Dreyfuss is very dashing in a fisherman's sweater. I still get scared watching the beginning of this movie. There is nothing like it.  –Victoria Potenza, Staff Writer

Jurassic Park is probably 60% horror movie, but packaged in a way that is safe for kids. You see the two kids and you know they’re going to be OK. They have to be OK to market the film overseas and get kids to buy the toys. The only people who die in Jurassic Park are a villain, an obnoxious lawyer, and that other guy. Everyone else flies home in a helicopter at the end giving each other loving looks. “What an adventure we had.” Groan. 

Not Jaws. Spielberg kills a kid in Jaws. And everyone sees it happen. That’s how ruthless it is. 

(Also it has nudity and somehow was mostly unedited and aired on TV a lot when I was a kid?)
–Audrey Callerstrom, Staff Writer

There’s a lot to love about Jaws - that iconic score, the dolly zoom, the jump scares - but for me, two main things stand out when I think about why I love it so much. 

The first is Richard Dreyfuss. Yes, the central trio only works so well because you have that specific combination of characters and crucially, character actors. But Hooper has always been my favourite. He’s the most relatable - the exacerbated scientist that no one listens to. I love his glasses, his curly hair, his beard, his double denim. His love-hate relationship with Quint, including literally sticking his tongue out at him. Hooper is the best.

The second thing I love about it is that although it famously launched the entire concept of the summer blockbuster and the franchise movie, it is still very recognisably a 70s ensemble drama. The family scenes involving Brody - the most loved of which is his son copying his actions at the dining table - could slot into an Altman, an Ashby or the work of any other 70s auteur. The shark wouldn’t matter if we didn’t care about the characters and the ‘little background’ scenes are really what makes Jaws as rich as it is. –Fiona Underhill, Contributor

Jaws wasn’t one of the earliest movies I saw- in fact, I was very afraid of sharks already, so I had to build up some courage to finally rent it on VHS. Looking back, not only is Jaws one of the great films of all time, but it was one of those movies that taught me how to watch movies. This is largely due to its unique structure- now copied many times over, but when I was young in the 90’s, was something that I had never seen before.

You have the opening scene that plays like a mini slasher film, setting up the horror and the stakes. I remember being prepared for the rest of the movie to play out in a similar fashion- a single location horror film, playing out like Halloween or other movies I had already seen. Then suddenly, halfway through, the whole movie shifts- Quint (Robert Shaw) comes into the picture, and then suddenly, we have our three heroes- each considerably different from the other- on a boat together for the rest of the run time. What was already a small town horror film was suddenly a chamber drama mixed with survival adventure. I didn’t know you could do that- have your movie be one thing for half of it, then something else for the second half. The two parts work so perfectly together- imagine if we were introduced in medias res to the shark hunting expedition, or if the final climax was just off the beach with a crowd of terrified onlookers. After the opening horror, you are disarmed by the quaint, beautiful oceanside life- but it pulls you in deeper and deeper, until you’re on the boat too, staring natural evil right in its black, dead eyes. 

As I aged, I found more and more riches to enjoy- how so many of the town scenes play like a Robert Altman film, with the panning camera and the overlapping dialogue. The power of Quint’s heart stopping monologue, written by John Milius, that functions like a fireside scary story plopped into the middle of things. Finally, the realization of what makes Jaws so truly menacing- that we never really see the shark until the very end. It really is not what you see, but what you imagine, that scares you. So many choices are made by the filmmakers, and they are all the perfect ones. What is so interesting is how, for a film that kick-started the age of the blockbuster, so few big modern movies seem to remember that lesson- that less is often more. 

As much as I love Jaws because it is a great movie, I also love it because it introduced me to so much of what I love about movies. 

–A. Freedman, Staff Writer

When we think about the Summer Blockbuster we tend to focus on the Blockbuster part, with its thrills, kills, and explosions. 

But Jaws – the original and still the great grandaddy of them all –  has plenty of thrills, and some of cinema’s greatest kills, is also about the summer part. The quaint seaside town suddenly awash with tourists, the sun, the sand, the sailboats. In the beach scenes you can practically smell the Coppertone. 

I always thought this was one of the reasons this picture sunk its teeth into us so deep. It hit us where we lived. 

Star Wars was an exciting movie, but was unlikely I was going to find myself confronting an evil galactic empire any time soon. I was, on the other hand, probably going to the beach the day after I watched Jaws. Though I was definitely not going into the water. 

Spielberg’s genius, especially in his early films, lay in his ability to create scenes, neighborhoods, towns that felt real, like the ones we lived in. ET's subdivision, with it’s legacy of divorce, was spot on to the youth of Gen X. And in Jaws, that feeling of languorous, boring but beautiful summer, with the chirping of AM radios and the sun burns, was what we knew. Spielberg, in unleashing that leviathan on Amity Island, was coming after us. –Kevin Bresnahan, Contributor

We don't talk enough about how hot Roy Scheider is in Jaws. A fish out of water determined to find the bigger fish in the water, his Martin Brody faces a daunting task - not only confronting his fear of the ocean but also getting the residents of Amity Island to understand the danger the community is in. Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw bring the humor and an inimitable spark to the movie as a hotshot shark hunter and a grizzled oceanographer, but Scheider's Brody is the heart of the movie. And he does it all in those glasses, the little 70s shorts (that luckily are back in style), and that one scene where he rocks an excellent short-sleeved sweatshirt.

It's no surprise that Harrison Ford went from hunky carpenter to wise-cracking heartthrob with two roles in three of our top summer blockbusters. You get the sense that it was only a matter of time before he was swashbuckling on the big screen, his charisma and good looks too powerful for anything but the multiplex. But up until Jaws, Scheider was best known as Jane Fonda's pimp in Klute or Gene Hackman's narcotics detective partner in The French Connection. Not exactly the cute dad next door.

And I think that's part of Steven Spielberg's genius in Jaws. He combines New Hollywood grit with an almost Capra-esque can-do attitude. Sure, there’s a monster shark terrorizing the island and killing people, but if Brody, Quint, Hooper put their minds together, gosh darn it, they can stop it! And what is Mayor Larry Vaughn but a seaside Mr. Potter, Amity’s tourism prospects standing in for Mr. Potter’s bank. Spielberg turns Scheider into Jimmy Stewart (and it works!) and turns the heat of the 70s into warmth. Other blockbusters might have outdone Jaws in terms of technical achievement, but few, if any, have ever matched its heart. - Ryan Smillie, Staff Writer

If pressed, I will own up to being someone with “basic,” mainstream taste and admit that jaws is my favorite movie of all time. There are many reasons why, but for right now I just want to talk about the “scar scene.”

The opening third of the movie is shark vs. island, with all of the danger and intrigue that implies. The last act is man vs. shark, with our trio of men on the Orca battling against the cold heart of nature itself. But the middle third is what I think makes the film truly great. Hooper, Brody, and Quint sort of represent the three stages of man: the foolish youth, the practical middle age, and the wizened elder.

Like Fiona mentioned above, I used to identify with Hooper the most. But now I watch the film and I see him as kind of a know-it-all, someone who keeps distance between himself and the people of Amity. He sees the shark as a science problem, an experiment. He is also a bit of a coward (which I also did identify with). And at some point I used to idolize Quint. The hardened, wizened man who doesn’t take any shit from anyone. His confidence seems earned, though now when I watch, I recognize more and more a man who has used these things–boiling shark jaws, ribald jokes, an unkempt appearance– to try and seem superior to everyone else around. Ultimately he’s just as much the fool as Hooper is, but he hides it behind experience instead of PhDs. But Chief Brody, the middle age, middle class practical man, who pushes himself beyond his fear of the water, is who I find the most relatable now. He’s an outsider, but he cares about the islanders, he takes his responsibilities seriously, and isn’t afraid to do what he sees as right even when it is unpopular.

The differences between these three men all play out wonderfully as they embark on the Orca in search of the shark. Hooper and Quint are in constant conflict, measuring the size of their egos, while Hooper tries to learn basic knots and be useful. But then we get to the scar scene. Finally Quint and Hooper are finding common ground, even with Hooper’s soft hands. A little alcohol and some sharing of stories and they are bonding. This section includes Shaw’s incredible monologue about the Indianapolis, which is more arresting than any on-screen shark in Jaws. The whole sequence is an example of masterful storytelling.

Brody declines to share his appendix scar. Once again, he is an outsider. The ocean is alien to him, just as whatever shred of culture is shared by Hooper and Quint. As a New York cop, he likely had to deal with some of the hardest challenges offered by other humans, but in his mind, it doesn’t seem to count against whatever the ocean has to offer. But the moment passes, and then all three men are singing “show me the way to go home,” and they have all turned some kind of corner in these relationships. And then the shark chooses that moment to ram the boat. The peace is shattered.

–by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, The Red Herring