SILVER SCREEN

JAWS, THE AUTEUR KILLER: HOW A SHARK ATE NEW HOLLYWOOD

ROMER SHAW

July 4, 2025

Fifty years ago, in the summer of 1975, something unprecedented happened at the movies. Audiences lined up around the block—not for an artful, existential crisis about America but for a big, dumb shark. That shark, of course, was “Jaws,” and its gaping maw, dead eyes, and faulty animatronic frame didn’t just devour vacationers off the coast of Amity Island—it swallowed the entire New Hollywood era.

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In the 1970s, American cinema was in the throes of a beautiful crisis. Directors were in charge. Not producers, not executives, not marketing departments—directors. They were ambitious, angry, obsessive, and often bearded. Francis Ford Coppola made The Godfather (1972), a movie about the Mafia framed as a Greek tragedy about power and corruption. Martin Scorsese turned a disturbed loner into an existential hero in Taxi Driver (1976). Robert Altman eschewed plot entirely in Nashville (1975), a tangled portrait of intersecting lives. Hal Ashby, with Harold and Maude (1971) and Being There (1979), embraced the satirical and the offbeat, crafting delicate, melancholic comedies about American alienation. William Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971) and The Exorcist (1973) pushed genre films into dark, psychologically unsettling territories. Brian De Palma dissected voyeurism and paranoia in Blow Out (1981), while Peter Bogdanovich captured nostalgia for Hollywood’s past in The Last Picture Show (1971).

These were films about America’s post-Vietnam disillusionment, Watergate paranoia, and countercultural malaise. They were messy, complicated, and often difficult to watch. They also happened to be brilliant.

The swimwear might be dated, but the message still slaps: Don’t be the top of the food chain in the wrong ecosystem.

Then came Jaws—and the movies were never the same again.

Before Jaws, movies were released like secrets. They started in a handful of cities and trickled their way across the country, like whispered gossip. If something was good, it spread. This was how The Godfather became a phenomenon. Its audience of critics and cinephiles discovered it over the course of time. But Jaws shattered this model. Instead of a slow rollout, Universal released it to more than four hundred theaters simultaneously—at the time a completely unprecedented strategy. It was also relentlessly marketed on television, something likewise unheard of. Before Jaws, you didn’t see a movie trailer during The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Now, you couldn’t escape it.

The strategy worked. Jaws became the first summer blockbuster, raking in more than $100 million to become the highest-grossing movie ever. Suddenly, Hollywood saw what audiences wanted: fast-paced thrills that could be sold to everyone, everywhere, all at once. No more slow burns. No more patience. Movies were now a national event.

Compare Jaws to some of the auteur-driven films of the 1970s, and you see the seismic shift in real time. Taxi Driver is a slow descent into madness, with a protagonist who spends half the movie staring into the abyss, his only action being that he occasionally does push-ups and plans assassinations in his head. Jaws, on the other hand, is pure cinematic adrenaline. Spielberg keeps the shark hidden for much of the film, building tension with John Williams’s now-iconic score—a minimalist two-note warning signal for death.

If salt could grow facial hair, it would look like this. Quint: part sea dog, part Shakespearean death foreshadower

The pacing of Jaws was a rejection of the deliberate slowness that defined auteur films. Consider Apocalypse Now (1979), which, for all its brilliance, unfolds like a long, sweaty dream. Coppola wanted audiences to get lost in the haze of war. Spielberg, meanwhile, wanted to terrify them into spilling their popcorn. And Hollywood took notice. Why make a film about existential crises when you could make a film about a crisis that eats people?

Another thing happened in the wake of Jaws: the movies became a business first, and an art form second. Before Jaws, marketing was mostly an afterthought. The studios would print a few posters, send critics some screeners, and hope for the best. Spielberg’s film changed everything. Jaws was the first film to be marketed like a product, complete with a nationwide TV campaign. It was merchandised to death—toys, T-shirts, lunch boxes, even board games. Its success paved the way for franchises, which studios suddenly realized could generate money beyond the box office.

The shift didn’t just stop at marketing. It extended to the very structure of Hollywood. Studios took back control from directors, ushering in an era where executives rather than auteurs dictated projects. The mid-budget, experimental films that had defined the early 1970s all but disappeared, replaced by formulaic blockbusters with mass appeal.

Jaws also played a role in the changing nature of film ratings. Many of the great auteur films were R-rated, filled with gritty violence and adult themes. But Jaws proved that an intense, thrilling film could still be accessible to families, helping to usher in a wave of PG and (later) PG-13 action films that would dominate the 1980s and beyond.

When your Airbnb review says “cozy boat” on Amity Island, just stay away.

The concept of the “event film” was born with Jaws. Jaws didn’t just invite audiences to watch—it demanded participation. The idea that a film needed to be experienced on the biggest screen, with the biggest crowd, became the new Hollywood standard. Auteurs had made films that asked audiences to think deeply. Jaws asked audiences to react viscerally.

And then there were the sequels. Unlike the stand-alone masterpieces of the auteur era, Jaws proved that a massive hit could be endlessly extended, regardless of artistic integrity. The franchise culture we now take for granted—where every major film comes with built-in sequels and spin-offs—began with the success of Jaws.

To be fair, the auteurs fought back. Scorsese, ever the cinematic pugilist, gave the world Taxi Driver, a film that stews in the filth of urban decay and builds to an unforgettable blood-soaked climax. Coppola took audiences down the river in Apocalypse Now, an operatic descent into the madness of war, its production as infamous as its haunting imagery. Meanwhile, Terrence Malick painted Days of Heaven (1978) like an Impressionist canvas, a lyrical meditation on love and ambition set against endless golden fields. Bob Fosse looked inward and crafted All That Jazz (1979), a surreal autobiography that played out like a musical directed by Death itself. And then there was Woody Allen, whose Annie Hall (1977) rewrote the rules of romantic comedy, fusing neurotic self-reflection with narrative playfulness in a way that still feels revolutionary today.

Brody said “bigger boat”; the shark heard “dinner reservation.”

But the writing was on the wall. Jaws had sent the message loud and clear: audiences wanted thrills, not moral dilemmas, and New Hollywood was fading. People wanted movies they could experience, not movies they had to dissect.

Two years later, George Lucas’s Star Wars (1977) would complete the transition. The blockbuster era had arrived.

“Smile, you son of a—” The beast finally meets his explosive end.

Some argue that Jaws was a triumph of pure cinema, a master class in tension and storytelling that reminded everyone that movies were supposed to be fun. Others believe it marked the end of director-driven storytelling, reducing cinema to popcorn spectacle and endless sequels. The truth, as always, is somewhere in between. Yes, Jaws changed Hollywood—but only because Hollywood wanted to change. The studios had always been uneasy with the auteur era. Directors like Coppola and Scorsese went over budget, feuded with producers, and delivered challenging, often unmarketable films. Jaws proved that a simple, exciting story could make far more money than a morally complex masterpiece. The studios simply followed the cash.

Romer Shaw (b. 1973 in New Bedford, Massachusetts) comes from a long line of fishermen and sea adventurers, which makes his deep, irrational fear of “Jaws” all the more ironic. As an editor at Universal Pictures, he spends his days fine-tuning the magic of movies and, on occasion, giving VIP tours of the still-intact “Jaws” film set. A lifelong cinephile with a special talent for overanalyzing blockbusters, Shaw has dedicated an alarming amount of time to unraveling the mysteries of Spielbergian suspense.

Cover image: “Just a quick midnight swim,” she said. Cut to: the most traumatic opening scene in movie history.