The vast majority of cinephiles and laymen alike have precious few negative things to say about Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. The one oft-mentioned complaint is that “the shark looks fake.” Well, it was a relatively low-budget film and, for a 1975 mechanical shark, it actually looks pretty intimidating to this day. But the sharks in the three sequels? Nothing short of increasingly laughable in appearance.
The original film received one of the best 4K remasters for a ’70s movie to date, while the Jaws 2 release was… fine. Not spectacular, but fine. The same could be said of the movie itself, and it seems the appropriate “Yikes” that could describe the third and fourth films will be applicable to their treatment in 4K. Why? Because it’s been revealed that Universal Pictures has allowed for AI upscaling in their forthcoming releases of Jaws 3 and Jaws: The Revenge. In other words, things are only going to sink further for two much-maligned movies, one which plays as a 90-minute unintentional joke and the other a baffling vengeance tale of an apparently telepathic toothed fish.
Just When You Thought Jaws 3 & Jaws: The Revenge Couldn’t Be Any Worse
A few movies have received AI upscaling for their 4K releases by this point. The most notable examples are the recent home media editions of James Cameron’s classics Aliens, True Lies, and The Abyss. For those who were, understandably, quite excited about those releases and knew what to look for, they were a disappointment.
This is especially true of The Abyss, which never even received a Blu-ray release until the 4K/Blu-ray combo hit shelves. And yet, even the occasionally plastic-looking True Lies gets an overall pass. The leaked screenshots from the Jaws 3 4K? Not so much. That’s both logical, considering Jaws 3 and Jaws: The Revenge‘s newest home media releases didn’t have a master like Cameron overseeing them, and worrisome. If AI is the way of the future, and that certainly looks to be the case, then movies far better than the latter Jaws sequels will have scenes (or, goodness forbid, their entirety) ruined.
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LEGO Releasing a Jaws Set Featuring Both the Orca and Bruce the Shark
You’re gonna need a bigger table to build this set.
But, for collectors, Jaws 3 and Jaws: The Revenge are still coming to 4K on July 23. Will die-hard Jaws aficionados refrain from purchasing them now that this AI tweaking has come to light? Not across the board, but if someone is going to shell out $30 for a movie that’s both 40 years old and critically trashed, there’s a high likelihood they’ll want it to be for a reason. And, at the end of the day, there’s always the original Jaws on 4K, not to mention Ridley Scott’s Alien, which received an equally impressive Ultra HD home video edition.