Quentin Tarantino Claims ‘Jaws’ Was Better Than Any Movie That Came Before It
Quentin Tarantino‘s movies have a lot in common with Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, as they are all violent, funny, and intelligently crafted. Tarantino may have gone too far by saying Jaws was once the greatest movie ever made. He contrasted Jaws with films from an earlier generation.
Quentin Tarantino said ‘Jaws’ was so much better than every previous movie
In his 2022 book Cinema Speculation, the Kill Bill director had a lot to say about a certain movie about a giant shark. “When Jaws came out in 1975 it might not have been the best film ever made,” he wrote. “But it was easily the best movie ever made. Nothing ever made before it even came close.”
Tarantino’s take is provocative. Spielberg released Jaws in 1975. By that point, many of the most widely beloved films of all time had come out, including The Wizard of Oz, The Ten Commandments, and The Sound of Music. In addition, many classic films that were not massive blockbusters predate Jaws, including Casablanca, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and Nosferatu.
It’s pretty bold of the Reservoir Dogs director to say that Jaws is better than all of those films, especially considering that Jaws is a great thriller but it doesn’t have a lot of heart and soul. However, everyone is entitled to their own taste in movies. A cinematic master like Tarantino has more insight into the art form than just about everyone else.
Quentin Tarantino put Steven Spielberg’s movie into the context of other 1970s films
Tarantino contrasted Spielberg with other movie directors of the era. “Because for the first time the man at the helm wasn’t a Richard Fleischer or a Jack Smight or a Michael Anderson executing a studio assignment,” he added. “But a natural-born filmmaker genius who grooved on exactly this kind of movie and would kill himself to deliver the exact vision that was in his head. Spielberg’s command of Jaws showed how clumsy and badly timed most studio genre films were (Logan’s Run, Airport 1975, Towering Inferno, the ’70s James Bond movies).”
Jaws was based on the novel of the same name by Peter Benchley. While that novel was a best-seller, it didn’t receive glowing reviews. “This new generation didn’t aspire, like the generation before them, to adapt the great literature of their day: Catch-22, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Day of the Locust, or Little Big Man,” he wrote. Tarantino said that filmmakers from the 1970s seemed to be more interested in popular novels like Jaws, Carrie, The Godfather, and The Last Picture Show. He felt that the younger generation of directors also took inspiration from lowbrow B movies, such as those released by American International Pictures. For this reason, they were able to attract a large audience while maintaining their artistic credibility.
How the world reacted to ‘Jaws’
Box Office Mojo reports Jaws earned over $266 million in the United States. Today, that gross doesn’t even rival the price tag of some Marvel movies, but in 1975, Jaws was so huge it was almost inconceivable. The film earned another $210 million in the international arena, for a total gross of more than $477 million.
Whether or not Jaws was the best movie ever, it is still a perfect thriller.
