3. The Effects
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz1J9PUcMQ0 When talking about the effects in a shark movie, its basically all about the shark. Where Jaws is concerned, in all but the penultimate scenes in the film, there is no shark. This was down to the malfunction of several robotic sharks leading to script rewrites. This worked out in the favour of the film, as it created much more suspenseful scenes where even we didn't get to see what was gnawing down on the ill-fated characters. When ol Bruce does finally make an entrance he does it in style, popping up from the water to give Brody a nice, toothy grin and eventually chowing down on anything and everything, including poor Quint. Unfortunately, though, Bruce does not receive much screen time due to how chintzy he was with working underwater - which is a little fussy for a bloody shark. Good for the screen, bad for the special effects world. Deep Blue Sea made no such attempt at subtlety. The shark models are out from the gate from scene one and ready to devour whatever they want, right on camera. What Jaws did to eeriness off camera, Deep Blue Sea did to shocks on camera. So, a definite win for Deep Blue Sea, right? Wrong, and that's for two reasons. Firstly, the sheer determination that Spielberg and the effects crew held to get that shark working in the water could have been made into a feel-good water sports film in itself (working title: Happy Gills-more) and that means that the finished product is convincing and well worth the effort. Even as it sprouts out onto the Orca, you still convince yourself, Hey, a real shark could do that easily. Secondly, one particular scene of CGI sluggishness completely kills the mood following an uplifting Samuel L. Jackson speech (more of that later), featuring a hilariously computerised shark dragging a featureless Jackson into the depths. These two ill-advised shots have cost the film the chance at clawing itself back. Total: Jaws (3) Deep Blue Sea (0)