Box office performance Jaws was the first film to use "wide release" as a distribution pattern. As such, it is an important film in the history of film distribution and marketing. Prior to the release of
Jaws, films typically opened slowly, usually in a few theaters in major cities, which allowed for a series of "premieres." As the success of a film increased, and word of mouth grew, distributors would forward the prints to additional cities across the country. The film became the first to use extensive television advertising. Universal executive
Sidney Sheinberg's rationale was that nationwide marketing costs would be amortized at a more favorable rate per print than if a slow, scaled release were carried out. Scheinberg's gamble paid off, with
Jaws becoming a box office smash hit and the father of the summer
blockbuster. When
Jaws was released on June 20, 1975, it opened at 464 theaters. The release was subsequently expanded on July 25 to a total of 675 theaters, the largest simultaneous distribution of a film in motion picture history at the time. During the first weekend of wide release,
Jaws grossed more than $7 million, and was the top grosser for the following five weeks. During its run in theaters, the film became the first to reach more than $100 million in U.S. box office receipts.
Jaws eventually grossed more than $470 million worldwide ($ billion in 2010 dollars) and was the highest grossing box office film until
Star Wars debuted two years later.
Jaws 2 was the most expensive film that Universal had produced up until that point, costing the studio almost $30 million. The final domestic gross for
Jaws 2 was $102,922,376, making it the sixth highest domestic grossing film of 1978.
Jaws 2 grossed $208 million worldwide.
Jaws 3-D grossed $13,422,500 on its opening weekend, playing at 1,311 theaters at its widest release. It had achieved a total lifetime worldwide gross of $87,987,055. Despite being #1 at the box office, this illustrates the series' diminishing returns, since
Jaws 3-D has earned nearly $100,000,000 less than the total lifetime gross of its predecessor and $300,000,000 less than the original film. The third sequel would attract an even lower income, with around two thirds of
Jaws 3-D's total lifetime gross.
Jaws: The Revenge received largely negative reviews from critics, and earned the lowest amount of money from the series. It is considered one of the worst movies ever made. The film was a commercial failure, with a worldwide box office take of $51,881,013 and continued the series'
diminishing returns. It only grossed $7,154,890 in its opening weekend, when it opened at 1,606 screens. This was around $5 million less than its predecessor. Due to the film's success in advance screenings, studio executives decided to distribute it in a much wider release than ever before.
The Omen followed suit in the summer of 1976 and then
Star Wars one year later in 1977, cementing the notion for
movie studios to distribute their big-release action and adventure pictures (commonly referred to as
tentpole pictures) during the summer.
Jaws is widely regarded as one of
the greatest films of all time.
Jaws was number 48 on
American Film Institute's
100 Years... 100 Movies, a list of the greatest American films of all time, dropping down to number 56 on the 10 Year Anniversary list. It was ranked second on a similar list for thrillers,
100 Years... 100 Thrills. The sequels are not held in such high regard. The reception of
Jaws 2 was mixed. While the performances of Scheider, Gary, and Hamilton, the soundtrack by John Williams, were praised. Many reviewers criticized
Jaws 2 director Jeannot Szwarc for showing more of the shark than the first film had, reducing the Hitchcockian notion "that the greatest suspense derives from the unseen and the unknown, and that the imagination is capable of conceiving far worse than the materialization of a mere mechanical monster." In retrospect,
Jaws 2 had nonetheless been considered to be the best of the three
Jaws sequels. Reception for
Jaws 3-D was generally poor.
Variety calls it "
tepid" and suggests that Alves "fails to linger long enough on the Great White." On
Rotten Tomatoes it has an approval rating of 10% based on reviews from 39 critics. The 3-D was criticized as being a gimmick to attract audiences to the aging series and for being ineffective. Derek Winnert says that "with Richard Matheson's name on the script you'd expect a better yarn" although he continues to say that the film "is entirely watchable with a big pack of popcorn."
Jaws: The Revenge attracted the poorest critical reception of the series and was nominated for Worst Picture in the
1987 Golden Raspberry Awards. It was rated by
Entertainment Weekly as one of "The 25 Worst Sequels Ever Made."
Roger Ebert said that it "is not simply a bad movie, but also a stupid and incompetent one." He lists several elements that he finds unbelievable including that Ellen is "haunted by flashbacks to events where she was not present." Ebert also laments that Michael Caine could not attend the
ceremony to collect his
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor earned for
Hannah and Her Sisters because of his shooting commitments on this film. In an era in which documentaries were attempting responsible, accurate reporting about the natural world,
ecocriticism says that Hollywood continued to produce films that exploited the fear of animals. Scholar Greg Garrard cites David Ingram's suggestion that the
Jaws series "represents a backlash against conservationist ideas in which an 'evil, threatening nature is eventually mastered through male heroism, technology and the blood sacrifice of the wild animal.'" Greg Garrard observes in
Jaws: The Revenge that "the marine biologist Mike Brody's environmentalist concerns are effectively ridiculed as his colleague is eaten by the enraged fish; he joins the hunt for it and the shark in turn hunts him down." ==Music==