It has been decades since I last read the original Jaws novel and the novelization of two of the sequels, so I decided it was time to revisit them on the 50th anniversary of the first movie. That summer, I was six years old, and our house was on a suburban street two blocks away from the single-film theater that played the movie the entire summer. And for that whole summer, there were cars parked up and down the streets and lines at the ticket booth that literally wrapped around the block and ended back at the theater!
I think anyone who is both a reader and a film fan loves to compare and contrast novels that are adapted into movies, as well as movies that receive novelizations of their screenplays, and in this case we get a dose of both. So, let’s get into the differences in Jaws, Jaws 2, and Jaws: The Revenge. Note that you will need to be greatly familiar with the movies to recognize the differences I lay out here.
JAWS by Peter Benchley
Some of the major highlights from the 1975 movie come from Peter Benchley’s original novel, with the general plot of the mayor wanting to keep the beaches open and Sheriff Brody taking the heat for it at the forefront of the plot.
The book opens like the movie, with the drunk girl and guy on the beach, him passing out, her getting devoured by the shark, and parts of her body being found on the shore later. As the joke used to go in the 1970s: How come the girl from Jaws had dandruff? Because she left her head and shoulders on the beach.
The infamous scene of the woman’s son getting eaten while out on his raft is in the book, although there are very few witnesses, because the beach is not full when this happens. There is also a scene of Brody and Hooper finding a hole in a deserted boat, but no head pops out. There’s simply a large tooth embedded in the boat.
Notable differences in the novel? There’s a whole organized crime subplot, the story with the mayor is more complicated, and Brody has three children, not two.
However, the most massive and shocking element of the book that is skipped in the movie is that…brace yourself…Brody’s wife Ellen has an affair with the Richard Dreyfuss character Hooper. Turns out she dated his older brother when she was younger, so now she has a shot with him since he’s no longer a little boy. Gross. There’s also a totally misogynistic, totally 1970s moment when she reveals to Hooper that she has a sexual fantasy of being raped by a man.
Brody does go out on the boat with Quint and Hooper for the final act, and they do attach barrels to the shark with harpoons, but it doesn’t all happen in one night. In fact, when Hooper goes down in the cage, he gets killed and then Quint and Brody return home! They go out on the boat again the next day, which is when the shark sinks the boat. However, Brody doesn’t kill the shark. Quint stabs it before he is eaten, and just as the shark is about to attack Brody, it simply dies from its wound.
JAWS 2 by Hank Searls
I don’t even know why this book says “based on the screenplay”. It is virtually a completely different story, and not a compelling one at that. Meanwhile, the author seems to be walking the line between writing a sequel to the movie and a sequel to the original Jaws novel. For instance, there’s brief mention of Brody suspecting Ellen was having an affair with Hooper, yet in this novelization, they have just the two sons, Sean and Michael, as in the movies. Several other town characters from the original novel that weren’t in the first movie or the Jaws 2 movie appear in this novel as well. Also, the events of Jaws are referred to as “The Troubles”, which is what Brody called them in the first novel.
So what’s the same? There are two divers that find the name plate of the Orca at the beginning of the book before getting attacked. There is a photo recovered from a camera that shows a sign of a shark being the culprit. There is the water-skiing scene, but this time it’s a husband and wife team. There also is an old lady in her rocking chair who sees it happen as in the movie. And finally, a helicopter does get attacked. It has two men on it, but they aren’t trying to rescue teens out on their sailboats when it happens. There’s a reason for that, which I’ll get to below.
Actually, there are barely any shark attacks in this book. It has a plot involving criminal activity affecting the government and businesses, expanding on themes from the original novel.
There is also heavy focus on some seals trying to stay alive and avoid the shark in their habitat. It terrorizes them more than it does humans! On top of that, a huge chunk of story is about some cop who shoots a baby seal on the beach and then becomes a thorn in Brody’s side as he tries to press charges against the man. Brody also brings the wounded seal home, and his young son Sean nurtures it back to health.
And the shark? The shark is mostly hunting for food because it’s pregnant and carrying baby sharks that get quite feisty in its belly. This bitch doesn’t have the time or energy to slash her way through a bunch of sailboats full of teenagers. Therefore, the bulk of the movie plot is completely missing from the book! WTF? The only thing similar in the book is that Mike and Sean go out on separate boats for some sort of sailing competition. Mike has the girl named Jackie on his boat, but she doesn’t lose her shit like Donna Wilkes did portraying her in the movie. We also don’t get Tina and her boyfriend being attacked in their boat, nor is there a scene with them coming upon the washed-up killer whale on the beach.
At the last second, the book forces something similar to the movie’s final moments into the plot—only it takes place at night. The boats in the competition are targeted by the shark, the cable comes up from under the water, and the shark bites it, but with no help from Brody. It’s just a lucky coincidence. The books really don’t seem to want Brody to be the hero.
Would you believe one of the seals gets the epilogue in the book?
JAWS: THE REVENGE by Hank Searls
With the same author writing the next novelization, there’s clear continuity from the Jaws 2 book. It even opens with the latest shark snacking on two seals, almost like it’s closing out the story of the seals from the previous book, which are mentioned, as is the cop that shot the seal in the Jaws 2 book.
The connecting threads to the original Benchley novel are also referenced, including Ellen’s affair with Hooper, the shark attacks being referred to as “The Troubles”, and mention of characters that originated with Benchley’s book and reappeared in the novelization of the second movie.
As with the movie on which this book is based, the events of Jaws 3-D are totally ignored.
The book begins like the movie, but after Sean is killed and Elen arrives in the Bahamas, there’s a chapter in which a whale that has already been harpooned several times by pirates is killed by the shark. This adds nothing to the plot and is just cruel!
We learn very early on in the book that the Michael Caine character Hoagie does some drug smuggling with his plane, and there’s a hitman after him. The Brodys in the books seriously can’t stay away from lowlife crime syndicates. The hitman action gets intense, with the mob even shooting Hoagie and Ellen down while they are out flying in his plane. On top of that, the art created by Ellen’s daughter-in-law plays a significant role in the plot and is tied to the organized crime subplot.
The book also delves into elements of racism on the island, and themes of psychic powers and voodoo are brought more to the forefront, from both Ellen and the locals. Her little granddaughter is even targeted in some serious rituals.
To add excitement to one of Mike’s encounters with the shark underwater, he hides out in an old wreck and comes across the skeleton of a long dead body. And although the point of the story is that the shark is supposed to be targeting the Brody family, the shark does chow down on some random victims now and then.
In the end, the book’s climax is like that of the movie, with a few extraneous characters on the outskirts of the action. Mario Van Peebles dies as he does in the theatrical cut, not in the alternate ending, in which he lives. And no, the shark does not growl…
