20 Things You Didn't Know About Jaws 3D
9. It Was Joe Alves Only Directorial Film
There is little question that Jaws, Jaws 2 and Close Encounters of the Third Kind are gorgeous to look at. For all three, the latter earning an Oscar nomination, Joe Alves was largely responsible. He served as Spielberg's production designer - not an easy feat for a film boldly shot on the open water instead of a controlled tank with a backdrop.
Alves also worked regularly as an art director on equally impressive-looking works with minimal budgets such as Escape From New York. He even worked uncredited Alfred Hitchcock on Torn Curtain. The man has a long-storied career behind the curtains of great major motion pictures.
It was first suggested that Alves co-direct Jaws 2, given his experience with a notoriously difficult mechanical shark. But when no one would touch Jaws 3D with a ten-foot pole, Alves first stepped behind the lens. You'd expect a man who had spent a career watching masters at work to have picked up a trick or two, but his work on 3D proves that some people just aren't cut out for the job.
3D is just artless, a showcase for some of the most unimpressive 3D effects of the gimmick's history. It also has severe pacing issues, with multiple plotlines that don't always coalesce. Overall, it's a mess, and Alves never tried his hand balancing spinning dishes again.