Jaws may be 50 years old, but Steven Spielberg's shark thriller is still a blockbuster in a league of its own

If you've made the excellent decision to rewatch Jaws anytime lately, you'll probably agree that it's hard to believe it's half-a-century old. But, five decades later, the iconic thriller is back on the big screen to celebrate the anniversary milestone.

Directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the novel of the same name by Peter Benchley, Jaws first hit theaters in June 1975 (this was Spielberg's third feature and he made it when he was around the age that I am now, which, of course, did not prompt any amount of personal existentialism when I worked this out).

The late Roy Scheider stars as Martin Brody, the police chief of Amity Island, a coastal town in New England. When the seaside community is rocked by a murder in the ocean, Brody is keen to close the beaches to prevent any further harm, but the money-minded mayor (Murray Hamilton) doesn't want to lose out on tourist dollars in the peak summer season. Predictably, more lives are lost, and an anti-shark frenzy grips the town… which means it's up to Brody to save the day, with help of eccentric shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw) and oceanographer Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss).

Blockbuster blueprint

All in all, the movie made almost $500 million worldwide when it was first released, against a budget of just $9 million. For a short time, it was the highest-grossing movie ever, before Star Wars: A New Hope took the crown in 1977. In short, Jaws was the original summer blockbuster.

This was partly down to the movie's unprecedented advertising campaign, which included spending record amounts of money on TV advertising, a long press circuit, and the release of movie merchandise – still a relatively new concept in the '70s.

But it wasn't all down to marketing. Jaws' continuing success (the most recent re-release has already made over $10 million at the box office in the US alone) can mostly be credited to something much simpler: good ol' movie magic.

"Get out of the water!"

Spielberg didn't need a big budget to create one of the most suspenseful movies of all time. In fact, a lot of the movie's fear factor was a product of its limitations: the reason the shark has so little screen time was due to malfunctioning models that were meant to represent the deadly sea creature. And it's a much scarier movie for it – what's more frightening than something we can't see or, therefore, know? Of course, John Williams' iconic score also plays a huge part in setting the mood, with the film's theme becoming one of the most recognizable pieces of music of all time.

And then there's the dolly zoom. The camera technique (which involves the lens zooming in on its subject while the camera itself moves backwards, away from them) may have been used for the first time almost 20 years earlier in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, but Jaws may well feature the most famous dolly zoom of all time (although the one shot through a "webcam" in Amazon's new War of the Worlds might end up being a close second, for very different reasons). Spielberg wields this dolly zoom to hone in on Brody's face, emphasizing his shock when he realizes the shark has made its way to the busy Amity beach, and the dread when he realizes he was right all along.

Above all, Jaws is a cautionary tale about two things: mass hysteria, and a disregard for the needs of the people by those in power, both of which are universal themes that become increasingly relevant in any time of widespread crisis (Mayor Vaughn's call to keep the beaches open came back into public discourse and was frequently memed during the pandemic, for example, when some believed lockdown restrictions were lifted too soon).

It's not a didactic movie, however, and not one that overtly feels like it has a capital-M message. As with all good movies, you come for one thing and leave with something much deeper and more interesting – and it's always better to see that on the big screen.

Jaws is currently back in US theaters and UK cinemas for a limited time. For more on what to watch, check out the rest of our Big Screen Spotlight series.