Summer Blockbusters

During this Fourth of July weekend, from Friday (July 1^st) through Sunday (July 3^rd), the latest installment of the Despicable Me franchise, Minions 2: The Rise of Gru set the all-time record for box-office receipts on the first weekend of its release. This fact might have escaped you, but for us, the release date of July 1^st for this summer blockbuster was unavoidable. You see, our 9-year-old grandson reminded us of that impending date every time we saw him. He saw the film on opening day with his parents and sister, but has let us know emphatically that he would be willing to see it again. Kathleen and I don’t mind taking him to see it again either, because we also find the Minions movies to be hilarious. Then there is the added pleasure of hearing Lucas’s uninhibited, infectious giggles echo through the theater during every scene. Finally, at the Falls Theater here in town, it’s only $5 a ticket, and popcorn is only $2.

The other thing that crossed my mind on Monday was the question: Is there an iconic 4^th of July movie? Everyone has a favorite Christmas movie or two, but how about one for the 4^th? Mine would undoubtedly be Yankee Doodle Dandy, and I watched it again from beginning to end on the 4^th. At a time when the American flag is seen in news footage being wielded as a weapon against police officers in Washington and used as a symbol for hatred by Trump supporters, it’s nice to be reminded that the flag was, until recent years, a symbol of hope and democracy around the world. The patriotic theme and stirring music of YDD were perfect for the US during that first year of WWII (1942), and it always inspires me. While watching it, though, I began to wonder about other films that would fit the holiday. Several movies are aired on TV that day every year, so some programming directors must have decided they fit the holiday theme. One is 1776, a musical about the Founding Fathers and the Declaration of Independence. Some people really like that one, but I find the songs to be abysmal and the whole thing painful to watch. (If you like that sort of thing, the recent musical Hamilton is light years better.) Another film that shows up every year on the 4^th is Independence Day, a sci-fi shoot-em-up that takes place on July 4^th. If you like special effects and invading aliens, it might be the film for you. But the plot is thin as paper and the characters are cardboard cliches. It finally occurred to me that the 1975 thriller, Jaws, might also fit the bill, because all of the action takes place around the July 4^th holiday.

Jaws was the first “blockbuster” film and its producers created the business model that has dominated the film industry since it first appeared. The novel of the same name had already been read by millions of people, so anticipation was high for the film version. But myriad problems beset the production, delayed the filming and caused the budget to double. Director Steven Spielberg, a young and unproven filmmaker, insisted on filming on the ocean, rather than in a back lot in Hollywood. A number of screenwriters worked on the script, but Spielberg found himself rewriting scenes every night before they were filmed, leaving the actors to wonder what they would be saying on film that day. Then the mechanical shark, in many ways the star of the film, failed repeatedly to work properly. That caused Spielberg to treat the Great White shark as primarily an implied menace, rather than an on-screen presence as he had planned.

The studio saturated the air-waves and other forms of advertising for months ahead of the film’s late-June release. Then, the film premiered on hundreds of screens across the nation, rather than a few select screens as had previously been done. The result was that the film broke all existing box-office records and created the marketing strategy that has been used in countless summer blockbusters since then, from Star Wars in 1977 to Minions 2 this week.

The story itself is a familiar one to those who have read Moby Dick. In the 1851 Melville classic, Captain Ahab is obsessed with finding and killing the white whale who took his leg in an earlier encounter. It is told from the point of view of a crew member who introduces himself in the novel’s famous first line: “Call me Ishmael.” In the final confrontation, the white whale gradually destroys the Pequod, Ahab’s ship, and drags the captain to the bottom of the ocean, leaving just one survivor, Ishmael, who rides an empty casket until he is rescued.

The film version of Jaws, which differs in many respects from Peter Benchley’s novel, owes much to Melville’s book. The story is told from the point of view of police chief Martin Brody, who has an aversion to water and a pronounced fear of drowning. When a Great White Shark terrorizes Brody’s beachside town of Amity and kills several people in the days leading to the July 4^th holiday, the mayor refuses to close the beaches. He becomes the symbol of unrestrained corporate greed, because he puts business and profits ahead of the safety of beachgoers. More people die on the 4^th, leading Brody to rely on a marine biologist (Matt Hooper) and a professional shark hunter named Quint to fight the beast. Quint, like Ahab, is obsessed with sea creatures, having been stranded in the water surrounded by sharks during World War II and watching one after another of his shipmates being eaten by the voracious predators. The last half of the film shows the battle between these three men and the massive White Shark. They each bring a different approach to the conflict. Quint is the old-school fisherman, using a lifetime of experience and the type of weapons used by Ishmael and the crew in Moby Dick. Hooper is the scientist, using modern methods and technology. And Brody is “everyman,” seemingly the one who brings no skills to the table, but the man who ends up winning by using common sense and ingenuity. As in Melville’s story, the shark drags them out to sea before systematically destroying Quint’s ship, the Orca. (His boat is named for the killer whale, the only natural predator of the shark). In the end, Brody kills the Great White, and (in the book) is the sole survivor, afloat on a piece of wreckage from the Orca. (In the film, Hooper also survives.)

The film launched Spielberg’s career and made him, along with George Lucas, the king of the summer blockbuster film. It also gave a huge boost to John Williams, who wrote the music for Jaws, and is best remembered for the iconic, two-note theme which appears whenever the shark has zeroed in on another victim. Often, we see the victim from the point of view of the shark while that music increases in intensity, a technique that rachets up the suspense and has been copied by nearly every slasher film made after 1975. Williams went on to write the score for countless film franchises such as Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Home Alone, Jurassic Park, and Harry Potter.

Moby Dick might be the most analyzed novel ever written, with layer upon layer of symbolism confounding literary scholars for 171 years. Jaws has also had its share of analysis. One writer thought the film, coming just a year after Nixon’s resignation, represented a sort of national catharsis, “a communal exorcism, a ceremony for the restoration of ideological confidence” following the national cynicism that followed Watergate. I don’t know about any of that. The truth is, that for me, both the book and film make for rousing good tales, and I prefer to leave it at that. Next year, I think I’ll have a double feature, watching Yankee Doodle Dandy for the 7, 212^th time, then enjoying Jaws. I’ll sip on some root beer, and eat a couple of hot dogs, too. Heck, I might wash it all down with a slice of apple pie.