I was 13 years old when I first viewed one of the greatest movies ever made. Yet, it did not make a great first impression with me.

In all fairness, the viewing conditions were horrible.  

Without dating myself too much, I had taped a two-hour block on TBS in order to see what the fuss was all about.

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I had only recently become seriously interested in the film world, and I was spending my meager pocket money multi-packs of Kodak, Sony or Maxell videocassettes to record as many movies as possible, a collection that still lingers even though VCRs have long since joined their Betamax brethren in the afterlife of home entertainment technology.

This particular VHS tape was already very well-worn as I was recording over whatever content had been on there for at least the third time.

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The video and audio quality would be best described as “warpy” — this and CD skips were frequent and annoying but tolerable occurrences in our day, quoth Uncle Millennial — plus the fact that I had recorded it off basic cable meant I was at the mercy of commercial breaks.

Nothing like having your fast-forward button finger constantly at the ready to avoid an ad from Burger King or whatever other intrusions TBS programmers deemed acceptable enough to interrupt one of the classics.

Though Starz and Encore carried an ad-free catalog — run ad nauseum, you may recall — they didn’t have this movie that I could recall

However, either the runtime on TBS was compressed or my recording timing was a little off, so I missed the last 90 seconds or so of the movie, but I got the gist.  

I wouldn’t say I didn’t enjoy this movie as a teen — it was simply good not great.

Older cousins, kids at school, multiple people throughout my life at that point had told me that this was an amazing one-of-a-kind film with a profound, lasting effect on them.

My verdict at 13?

It was fine. Not the worst two hours of my life, but a little bit of a letdown after having my expectations raised so high.

I carried that less-than-favorable assessment up until a few years ago, in 2022, I happened to attend a 3-D screening of this movie and had my mind blown.

There is nothing like the feeling when you suddenly understand the popularity of something you spent decades believing was unremarkable and overrated.

“Oh, that’s what everyone was talking about!”

The enhanced visual component of that day — I don’t know if I consciously chose frames the size and shape of 3-D glasses, but that does sound like something I’d do — was enough to make the screening special, but finally experiencing this piece of pop culture in the proper format of a big screen made me completely reassess everything about it.

Hopefully I haven’t gotten your expectations too high before I even name it, but it’s the one-word, four-letter title that changed the movie business — I am talking about “Jaws.” 

What’s it about?

Given that it’s been around for 50 years, I feel no guilt in revealing any spoilers, but the story is simple enough — a small seaside New England town is terrorized by a great white shark.

You can categorize it as a monster movie, a horror show, a thriller, the main drive of the narrative is about being scared of the natural world.

However, when you get deeper into the story, you find out why the situation is more complicated than at first glance and the motivations of the people who try to step up and save the community.

We’ve got a default protagonist main character in the form of Police Chief Martin Brody — the defining role for 70s mainstay Roy Scheider, if you ask me — who is flanked in equal, starring capacities by Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw as oceanographer Matt Hooper and salty sea dog Quint, respectively.

While Brody is the overall focus at the start of the film, it feels more like all three men are the main character at times. They each display heroic elements as well as moments of weakness.  

Even though you might not like all of them In terms of personality, you come to understand and respect them.

The way these three men interact with each other in the first half of the movie compared to the second half is night and day as they begrudgingly strike up an allyship to take on a much bigger threat on open water.

Still not that complicated, right? There’s conflict in the town with the shark’s presence and between the triangle of men trying to take it on in its element, but that also requires an examination of the full scope of why the presence of a shark is such a thorny issue for the town of Amity.  

The villain of the movie isn’t who (or what) you think

One would assume that anybody would take a shark attack seriously and two attacks even more, seriously, right?

It is very easy — and fun — to vilify Amity Mayor Larry Vaughn, portrayed with panache by character actor Murray Hamilton. He is the embodiment of every stereotype about small-town politicians: a bloviating gladhander with a memorably tacky wardrobe — even for the 70s — and a perfectly coifed, yet no less ridiculous-looking head of hair.

He’s not the smartest guy in town, but his boundless self-confidence propels him through a largely undemanding job that’s often as simple as smiling and waving to a crowd.

As Vaughn faces his first real crisis in office, you can tell where his priorities lie, and you’re at least a little disgusted. 

His initial response to the reports of a shark near his beaches is to blow it off entirely because the negative news will damage the area’s reputation as a summer destination given that the local economy lives and dies by tourist dollars. The sunny months mean plentiful cash and presumably it’s the only time of year when most Amity businesses see a real profit. 

From Vaughn’s perspective, the idea that one teenaged skinny-dipper saw a bloody end is not convincing enough to call off or delay the whole summer season. And even when that little Kintner boy is gruesomely assailed, Vaughn is a little too accepting that putting a bounty on all nearby sharks solves the problem and that the first carcass brought back is the culprit.

It’s very fitting that a movie released in 1975 so perfectly captures the atmosphere of the nation — a post-Watergate erosion of trust in elected officials leading into the bicentennial insistence that everything is fine as long as we slap a red, white and blue Band-Aid on every issue.

Though you may find Mayor Vaughn’s actions reprehensible, it’s hard not to see his point from the view of Amity’s local merchants who are eager, even desperate, to make a buck, be it from restaurants, hotels, or souvenir stands.

The presence of a predator forces them between the figurative rock and a hard place as they must choose between financial security or physical safety for themselves and their families.

A shark is a risk but not a certainty, while a dearth of patrons pumping money into their businesses this summer almost certainly means potentially not being around next summer.

It’s a somewhat self-serving choice they make to push for fewer safety protocols, but it’s one with reasoning behind it.

If you ask me, I posit that the closest thing to a villain in this movie are the throngs of vacationing people swarming Amity like a plague of locusts, forcing the locals to throw common sense to the wind in order to put food on the table.

Oh, you thought the shark was the villain? The movie is called “Jaws,” right?

That can only be referring to the literal mandible of a great white shark, after all.

And yes, on its best day, any shark is immediately threatening and fear-inducing, even more so when you see it face to face and see its merciless eyes — “like a doll’s eyes.”

It’s easy to see why Quint has his own personal vendetta against such an animal when he recounts his time with the USS Indianapolis and the carnage that ensued while the vessel sank into the Pacific.

Fictional character, horrifying real-life incident…

If Shaw hasn’t already intrigued you at this point of the movie, his late-night, drunken monologue is riveting as the actor reveals the one moment of vulnerability in a modern Captain Ahab. Quint is a ruined human being still looking for vengeance three decades later, and the change of attitude that we see in both Brody and Hooper is haunting as they realize the extent of his madness and how they’ve been conscripted to help satisfy their companion’s bloodlust.

Nonetheless, you feel a twinge of sadness for Quint in his final fate…

But getting back to the shark, it’s increasingly intense attacks on the Orca and its crew represents man conquering nature against all odds. A complicated shoot on the ocean by director Steven Spielberg pays off with an adventurous spirit the likes of which feel akin to “Mutiny on the Bounty” or “Moby-Dick.”

These three men are reclaiming their dominance over the beasts of the world, one with murderous intent, one with academic curiosity and another with a sense of reluctant duty.

In the movie’s leadup, we occasionally see the action from the shark’s perspective along the shallows of Amity, but out on open water, the suspense is amped up by the isolation and a genuine sense that these guys might not make it home.

Still, can we really consider the shark the bad guy when it’s simply acting on its instincts? There’s no nonsensical plot device like an evil scientist choosing victims via remote control thanks to a microchip in the creature’s brain — the behemoth is merely following its animal proclivities to swim and eat.

I would argue that makes it much scarier…

The movie that terrified a generation

If you saw this movie under the age of 10 in 1975, you are absolutely forgiven for having a fear of swimming in the ocean.

I have no doubt the man who made it wanted to create a certain specific tension like fearing a shower after seeing “Psycho.”

They were getting more psychological in the New Hollywood era, and Spielberg was no exception. The mid-70s were a time when auteur directors reigned supreme, but the guy who could completely revamp the system to make a critical and commercial darling was thinking even further ahead.

Spielberg got his start directing television, but it was quickly apparent the small screen could not contain his talent. The 1971 TV movie “Duel,” a masterclass in building suspense on a budget, became so beloved it soon moved to drive-in screens. Likewise, his feature film debut, “The Sugarland Express,” is an exemplary road movie with subtext about reconnecting a broken family permeating the spectacle of high-speed chases.

“Jaws” was Spielberg’s chance to prove himself, and while the making of this film saw every conceivable thing go wrong — the budget went out of control, the shooting schedule ballooned to triple its original length, the animatronic shark was a mess — his abilities as a filmmaker grew as a result of the hardships.

It’s fun to theorize what might have happened if the original visual effects had worked the way they were intended. Would the shark really have been that convincing? Not if the exhibit at Universal Studios is any indication…

Or was the compromise of “less is more” simply a happy accident? By not showing the shark for most of the film and instead letting John Williams’ menacing score fill viewers with dread and uncertainty, did Spielberg stumble across a winning technique?

I have to believe it was his ability to adapt to the unfavorable conditions that made the director even stronger than his early wunderkind days.

As much of an iconic film as “Jaws” may be, its follow-up, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” is an example of a movie maestro who got a little closer to perfection thanks to the trial by fire — By water? — he endured when the studio placed all their trust in him.

If you need further proof, just look at his 90s spiritual redux of “Jaws” in “Jurassic Park,” an example of revisiting familiar territory and finding new ways to create magic with the technology of the day.

If the generation before me was scared to sit on the toilet for fear of their butt being bitten, I had the same phobia of a T-rex knocking down the bathroom and gobbling me whole…

50 years later

Before I geek out too deeply over Spielberg, I should get to the point of why I wrote this column, which is to urge you with all my might to see “Jaws” on the big screen rather than limiting yourself to a smaller, lesser viewing window, like I did lo, those many years ago.

The anniversary isn’t a bad reason — if you need one — but if you need further convincing, I say with full confidence that the movie holds up better than you’d think, largely because of how life imitates art.

“Jaws” was the prototypical summer blockbuster, spawning multiple imitators in the subgenre of “oversized animal creates panic among a peaceful populace.” Very few even came within a hair of its success, but five decades later, the idea of a tentpole movie midway through the calendar year is still a guiding principle in Hollywood.

We’ll see how long that system stays in place as the industry continues to cope with changes in the 21^st century, but the dynamic at the core of “Jaws” has switched as far as movie attendance these days.

The Amity tourists who overtake the island ready to partake in summer fun have been replaced by indifferent audiences hesitant to risk a moment away from their screens, rationalizing that two hours in the theater isn’t worth the emotional investment for something they can eventually see on their preferred streaming service.

Folks, do yourself a favor and take the plunge. There’s a reason this movie is so iconic, with quotes ingrained in American culture more than you know. It’s been parodied and referenced relentlessly — including by Spielberg himself — and watching it in retrospect adds extra meaning to it all.

Even if you’ve never seen it, you only need to hear two notes of Williams’ musical theme to identify the audio component, proving that it is one of the few true shared cinematic experiences of the past five decades.

Granted it’s not as gory as modern audiences would like — look to the thoroughly mediocre “Jaws 2” and its subsequent releases for that — but I’ll take a genuinely startling reveal of a long-dead body floating in the water and the somber terror of a child’s raft ripped to shreds washing up on the shore over 90 minutes of slasher mania any day.

It’s a film with layers that you might not have appreciated upon first viewing — once you clock Amity’s white picket fences’ resemblance to huge teeth, you’re not going to be able to stop seeing the many subtle touches within this world.

Whether it’s a forgotten treasure of your youth or a first-time viewing experience, you will latch onto “Jaws” at some point. It’s too visceral to inspire boredom and too cerebral to dismiss as mere escapism.

And once you give in to the ride, your only complaint will be that you need a bigger boat.