Jaws Turns 50!

Here are some facts about the cult classic.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
One six point seven Light FM. It's Jack and Nina
and producer Kristen on Friday, June twentieth, good to be
with You. It is summer Solstice, but perhaps more interestingly
for today, it is the fiftieth anniversary of Jaws. Wow.
Came out fifty years ago to day. Incredible, right, Who
hasn't seen Jaws? True? Even if you weren't around then.
It's so iconic.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
It's one of those movies that when your kids get
a certain age, you've got to watch this. Yeah, and
then you play it.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
It's scary, but it's it's good scary, I think. Right
in the end, there's a happy ending except for the shark.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Yeah, if you're a shot plan don't watch this spoiler alert.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
He dies. So one of the great things about that
movie is that movie was so successful in so many ways.
It became the template for all these kind of disaster
films and creature films that came later. And yesterday the
Times put out a list of fifty movies that fit
a very specific template. They have nine things that they fit.
For instance, just a couple of them, like there's a creature,

(00:54):
there is a victim that happens in the beginning, so
you get a little scared. There's a reluctant hero, remember
where sher like he doesn't want to go Captain Brodie
to go in whim. Yeah, there's a major sacrifice. Remember
when Quinn gets eaten by the shark. One of the
major characters gets eaten, and at the end the creature
obviously disappears or goes away in some form.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
I remember the summer that that came out. Everybody said,
what a dumb idea, This is the dumb who's gonna
go watch a shark? And then we went to watch it,
and then you went to watch it. Then I live
out by the water, and I did not want to
drive home over the bridge.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
I didn't want to go out in the weeds in
the backyard of our house because the weeds were scary.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Everything was scary, Like that was scary.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
So this list of movies that are exactly fit the
template exactly. The first one was actually Alien. They pitched
it as Jaws in Space get Out. So if you
go and look at the format of Alien, it's exactly
the same. So you have to watch it now with
the Yeah, so this list includes movies they're not all perfect,
like Alien, but a lot of them are very close,
like Piranha if anybody remembers that movie, the Thing which

(01:57):
came out in eighty six, a rackna phobia. Jurassic Park
is also on the same map Twister, except for the
end because a tornado doesn't blow up right, it goes away,
it goes away, it ends in a happy ending, and
a conda follows that same thing Contagion, remember the movie
about the.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
I don't know if these are a quality of Jaws.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
There's a grid, so you've got a map over there.
There's a literal map of all these films that are like,
like A Quiet Place is another one that has a
very specific format that goes after Jaws. That's interesting and
that's pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
We've got our summer viewing all set up. Fifty were
going to be binging these things.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
And a little scared. Yeah, more Covey and Christine and
the great music variety you expect next on Light at Them.