Steven Spielberg’s classic Jaws birthed a franchise consisting of four movies to date, and here’s how those shark adventures stack up, worst to best. When it comes to horror movies with killer sharks on the hunt, there’s no question Jaws sits at the top of the ladder. With a future legend in Spielberg at the helm, Jaws was and is possibly the best made creature feature in history, featuring great acting, writing, cinematography, and a really cool looking mechanical shark monster, when it worked anyway.
With the Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park franchises being notable exceptions, Spielberg has never seemed too keen on sequels to his films, although that often hasn’t stopped Hollywood from making them without his input. This was very much the case with Jaws, as Spielberg had no interest in making a follow-up, and quickly turned down the chance to direct Jaws 2. Still, Jaws 2 proved to be a big hit, and Universal pressed on with a third and fourth film.
After a 30-plus year absence from the big screen, it seems unlikely they’ll ever be another Jaws sequel, but what’s not certain is if a remake will ever happen. One assumes it only could with Spielberg’s blessing. For the time being, let’s take a look back at the Jaws films that exist, and rank them worst to best.
4. Jaws 3-D (1983)
Lots of Jaws fans might be inclined to balk at Jaws: The Revenge not taking this bottom spot, and to be sure, The Revenge is an awful film. What makes Jaws 3-D just that much worse is some of the most shockingly terrible special effects to ever be shown in a studio-produced blockbuster film. It’s also just plain boring, which is basically the kiss of death for a movie. A movie can be great, or so bad it’s good, but boredom is hard to overcome. Not even the presence of Dennis Quaid, Louis Gossett Jr, and a young Lea Thompson can save this disaster.
3. Jaws: The Revenge (1987)
As mentioned previously, Jaws: The Revenge is unquestionably awful. It’s poorly written, the characters are bland and mostly fail to make an impression, and the premise of a shark having a vendetta against particular people – explained away with a voodoo curse of all things in the movie’s novelization – is just plain stupid. Putting this above Jaws 3-D though is a smattering of moments that are so bad that they cross the line over into being entertaining, albeit in a “laughing at it, not with it” kind of way. This includes the shark that stands up straight out of the water and roars like a lion, which no, is not a thing sharks do. Michael Caine is also fun to watch, even if one can’t help but wonder what he’s doing there.
2. Jaws 2 (1978)
While Jaws 2, directed by Jeannot Szwarc, is multiple steps down in quality from Steven Spielberg’s original classic, it’s not a bad sequel, and looks like Citizen Kane compared to Jaws 3-D or Jaws: The Revenge. The film benefits from the return of Roy Schieder as Amity’s easy to root for chief of police Martin Brody, and Murray Hamilton as Amity’s laughably selfish mayor, who – as has since become a meme – somehow managed to win re-election after serving up tourists as shark snacks by insisting the beaches remain open.
1. Jaws (1975)
This is one ranking where the #1 pick was never remotely in doubt, nor should it have been. Jaws is a great film more than 40 years after its original release, and will presumably remain great 40 more years into the future. Jaws is a fairly lengthy movie, but never feels it, and the shark-hunting trio of Brody, Quint (Robert Shaw), and Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) never fails to engage and entertain. It’s a blast, as a horror film, as a high seas adventure, and as a dramatic summer blockbuster, and remains one of Spielberg’s greatest works.