“It’s just so ridiculous”: Quentin Tarantino on the horrible ending that ruined ‘Jaws 2’
The ending is arguably the single most important part of any movie because nothing sucks the wind right out of a picture like a lacklustre finale. It’s not something Quentin Tarantino has ever had to contend with, but he’s happy to call out the films that manage to undo their audience goodwill in an instant.
One of the filmmaker’s many signature flourishes since he debuted with Reservoir Dogs back in 1992 is that every single one of his features has ended on a memorable note for a number of different reasons, and it’s a belief system that was instilled in him long before he ever stepped behind the camera.
When the credits come up, it’s the ending that’s the freshest thing in the minds of viewers, so if it’s terrible, then everyone is going to completely overlook the positives in favour of the solitary glaring negative that drew a line under an otherwise-excellent flick in the worst possible fashion.
On the other hand, the production Tarantino specifically spotlighted probably shouldn’t have existed in the first place, even if there was far too much money being left on the table if it didn’t. Some movies shouldn’t be given sequels or used to launch franchises under any circumstances, and history has shown that Steven Spielberg’s Jaws is one of them.
Of course, it ended up giving rise to three follow-ups of drastically diminished quality, none of which could hold a candle to the original. Jaws was much more than a shark attack thriller, though, with Spielberg creating relentless dread and constant tension, regularly punctuated by the exchanges between characters who felt real, relatable, and lived in.
It was also the highest-grossing release in cinema history, changing the landscape of the industry forever, so in certain respects, sequels were inevitable. Jeannot Szwarc’s Jaws 2 was the best by far, but even that’s damning it with faint praise. Discussing the film on Eli Roth’s History of Horror podcast, Tarantino shared his dissatisfaction with not only the ending but the overriding sense of repetition and familiarity.
“It’s another shark, and we’re just going to watch four, five, six random shark attacks and everything,” he lamented. “And then Murray Hamilton is going to say ‘don’t close the beach again’, and then Brody’s going to have to go out there and fight this beast again.”
All true, but the climax, where the man-eating shark is lured to an electrified doom and then frazzled after biting into a power cable, was Tarantino’s point of no return. “The ending is horrible,” he said, not inaccurately. “The ending of Jaws 2 is horrible. What ruins Jaws 2 is the way they kill the shark. It’s just so ridiculous.”
The two-time Academy Award winner isn’t of the opinion that Jaws 2 is an actively bad movie, but neither is he alone in voicing the opinion that an inoffensively by-the-numbers sequel was done dirty by its own preposterous on-screen swansong.
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