A 32-foot killer Great White shark slices through the waves --
opening his jaws wide --
and it looks like you're lunch!
Ride JAWS® at Universal Studios Florida® and go face to jaws
with the horrifying shark immortalized in Steven Spielberg's epic film.
Stare down this menacing monster as three tons of terror attacks your boat
and keeps coming back for more... flames, explosions and high-voltage fear...
Will you make it out alive?
The shark moves at speeds of 20 feet per second
and thrusts with the power equivalent of a 727 jet engine.
There's a reason JAWS® looks so real (some might say too real!).
The 32-foot (the shark in the movie was 26-feet long), three-ton shark
was constructed with steel and fiberglass and outfitted with a realistic latex skin.
Those predator's pearlies? Urethane.
On a scary note, the 32-foot shark used in the ride isn't unrealistically sized.
The largest shark ever caught on a rod was 31-feet long! Mull that over the next time you dive in.
JAWS swims in a five-million-gallon, seven-acre lagoon.
Prepare to be get a bit wet on this ride --
a shark attacking a boat is a messy thing, and you may be doused!
The movie JAWS came out in the summer of '75,
a year after Peter Benchley's novel that the movie is based upon was published.
The first film to inspire the term "blockbuster," it grossed more than $458 million worldwide.
Considering it cost only $8 million to make, it established Spielberg as a big-gun filmmaker.
It was only his second feature film.
During a film shoot, the technicians lost control of a mechanical shark.
It was never recovered and the shark is out at sea to this day.
JAWS® author Peter Benchley was thrown off the set after complaining
about the climax of the film. (He also appears in the film itself, portraying a TV reporter.)
In the movie, the shark is exploded. In the book, he confronts Chief Brody,
looks him in the eye and retreats to the depths of the sea, obviously having met his match in the Chief.
The famous sequence of Hooper's (Richard Dreyfuss) discovery of the mauled head
in the wrecked ship was filmed in a swimming pool. Spielberg reshot the scene after viewing the film
with a test audience and decided he wanted to inspire more screams. You can see a cast of the
actual mauled head from the film in the pre-show area of The Gory Gruesome & Grotesque Horror Make-Up show
at Universal Studios Florida®.
The script took only three weeks to write.
Spielberg was praised for maintaining suspense by showing more and more
of the shark throughout the sequence of attacks (and by filming attacks from the shark's perspective).
It was a completely unintentional film technique; the reason the shark wasn't used as much in the earlier
sequences is because the shark (named Bruce by technicians) didn't work. It was designed in fresh water
and once placed in salt water, the shark sunk. By the end of the shooting, the kinks were worked out,
and JAWS was free to maim and maul in full view.
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