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My friend showed his daughter 'Jaws' and Gen Z's reaction to it changes the movie forever

It’s actually very similar to what the book’s author originally intended.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia, Canva, Universal Pictures

A teen girl watches the movie Jaws.

In 1975, oceans got a lot scarier for the average moviegoer. It was the summer Steven Spielberg's groundbreaking blockbuster Jaws was released — forever changing a day at the beach and the contents of our nightmares.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of that Oscar-winning film, and many theaters are re-releasing it just in time for Labor Day. But my friend Kyle, who has a 14-year-old daughter named Alexis, thought he'd get a jump on it and show it to her a bit earlier. "I wanted to take her to see it on the big screen, but she's very sensitive, so I thought in case she gets scared, we will watch it at home."

Snacks in bowls, PJs on, iPhones off — which is a hardcore rule Kyle, who is a screenwriter, has for movie watching - even on the couch.

The film opens with a casual group of friends, drinking and laughing at a beach bonfire in the fictional town of Amity Island, New York. One woman, with long ’70s flowing hair, stands up and begins to run toward the ocean — a man playfully running after her. "What's your name again?" he asks. "Chrissie!" "Where are we going?" "Swimming," she gleefully replies.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Swimming is one way to put it. The tension builds, one of Spielberg's most genius directorial gifts, as she disrobes and frolics into the water. He's a tad too drunk to go in, despite her pleas to join her. Refreshing and beautiful, she's splashing around when…we get an underwater shot of her silhouette swimming above. (We later find out whose point of view that's from, and it's not a human.)

Suddenly, there's cacophonous music, as she seems to be nibbled on the leg. Then, with the most terrifying of screams, we watch as she appears to be carried on the back of a beast to and fro, all the while screeching as though she were wrestling a demon. Oblivious, her suitor remains intoxicated on the beach, while she goes silent, having surrendered to her fate as a big fish's meal.

(Fun fact: There were rumors that Susan Backlinie, who played "first victim Chrissie," accidentally had her ribs broken, as Spielberg yanked her underwater for her last shot. However, Backlinie has debunked the popular myth, though she did say the filming was "grueling.")

sharks, great white, jaws, Spielberg, movies Bruce AKA Jaws the shark attacks a boat. Giphy Universal Pictures

Kyle reports that Alexis was silent. Shocked. And yes, terrified. She grabbed a couch pillow and yelped, "Nope," as the infamous John Williams composition "Duh Nuh. Duh nuh. Duh nuh" begins to play. She is hooked, pun intended.

As the film goes on, however, and she's able to regain her breath — her attitude changes sharply. Kyle shares, "Around the time when marine biologist Matt Hooper (played by Richard Dreyfuss) appeared on screen, Alexis scrunched up her face. I asked her what was up and she said, 'I kinda feel like maybe the shark isn't the bad guy.'"

"You're gonna need a bigger boat" scene from the movie Jaws. www.youtube.com, Universal Pictures

She wouldn't be the first to have expressed this sentiment. Author Peter Benchley, on whose novel of the same name the film was based, had a complicated relationship with the movie. In an article for the Cape Cod Times, Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll recently writes how Benchley expressed remorse. "Benchley wanted to spotlight sharks' endangerment from modern fishing technology and an Asian taste for shark fin soup. What got more international attention, though, was this passage: '... considering the knowledge accumulated about Great Whites in the past 25 years, I couldn't possibly write Jaws today ... not in good conscience, anyway.'"

Benchley, having become an ocean conservationist before his death in 2006, even set the record straight on shark behavior. "They tend to spit people out," the piece reports Benchley claiming. (He had a lot of ideas for casting that clashed with Spielberg as well, including a wish for Paul Newman and Robert Redford to play the roles that wound up going to Roy Scheider and Dreyfuss.)

Alexis continued, "Just seems like they were in HIS house, ya know? Like what is a shark supposed to eat? If anyone is the villain, it's people who hunt sharks for sport. And the people who lie about them for movies." (Gauntlet dropped, Spielberg.)

Many marine biologists have spent decades trying to undo the shark myths proposed in Jaws. In the clip below for KATU Lifestyle, Dr. Alexandra McInturf says that not only are sharks not man-eating maniacs, "they are very discerning, thoughtful animals. The presence of sharks in an ecosystem is usually a really good sign that the ecosystem is healthy."

- YouTube www.youtube.com

That said, it was peak ’70s water-cooler talk and a deep bond for many Gen X-ers and Boomers. Gen Z, however, is seemingly not as interested. Natalie O'Neill writes in the New York Post that barely "half of Gen Z-ers" have even seen the film. She shares, "The film was such a hit with young people at the time, a whopping 40% of 18-to-29-year-olds said they’d seen it by the end of summer 1975, according to a Gallup poll taken that year." Adding, "At the time, 18% of viewers called it 'the most frightening movie' they had ever seen and 35% said the movie increased their fear of swimming in the ocean, according to the poll."

As part of the half who can now proudly claim they have seen it, Alexis is a fan. But she's team Benchley all the way when it comes to shark advocating. "Just leave them alone and they will leave you alone," she pleaded. True or not, she vows she will never miss an episode of National Geographic's "Shark Week" content moving forward.


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When a great white shark washed up on a beach, these rescuers put it in a pool.

If you came face to face with the shark from "Jaws," what would you do?

Swim away? Splash the police chief? Find a bigger boat? I imagine it'd be a pretty heart-pounding encounter — one that any sensible person would be eager to escape.

What would make someone not only get close to that shark but actually grab hold of it — then drop it into a public swimming pool?

On Monday, Sept. 11, beachgoers at Australia's Manly Beach, just north of Sydney, were stunned after a nearly six-foot-long great white shark washed up on the sand right next to them.

One man, Dan Korocz, was having lunch with his family when he spotted the great white; though it was a baby, the shark was quite fearsome. "When you see a real-life shark, it's scary," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "I've got a four-year-old and a two-year-old and we went down to the waters' edge and then it came in."

But the shark wasn't a monster — it needed their help.

Onlookers said the shark looked possibly sick or injured. It wasn't trying to menace anyone — it simply couldn't get itself back out to sea. Someone called a nearby aquarium, the Manly Sea Life Sanctuary, which hustled to save the animal. Using a sling, the Sanctuary workers lifted the great white onto a stretcher, then moved it over to a nearby Fairy Bower saltwater swimming pool.

They got the people out of the water first, of course, but the shark's swim in the pool drew quite an audience before "Fluffy," as the shark's been named, was loaded up in a tank in the back of a pickup truck and taken to the aquarium for observation.

Running into any wild animal can be scary, especially when it's as infamous as a great white, but sharks have more to fear from us then we do from them.

Great whites aren't the monsters movies and popular culture paint them to be. While sharks are potentially dangerous predators, they rarely attack humans. In fact, beachgoers have more to fear from random holes in the beach than shark attacks.

Plus, many shark species are disappearing, the victims of overfishing or bycatch. Yes, sharks are predators, but they help keep the ocean ecosystem in balance — the same way wolves help keep forests healthy.

In the end, the Manly Beach shark found it's way back home.

The Manly Sea Life Sanctuary released the shark out over deep water on Tuesday, Sept. 12, and the rescuers are reportedly optimistic about its survival.

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The real reason why this pic of sharks right off the Florida coast is scary.

Thousands of sharks are hanging out near Fort Lauderdale right now.

Right now, there are tens of thousands of sharks chilling off the coast of Florida.

If you ask me — someone who is terribly afraid of sharks — this aerial shot is what nightmares are made of.

Photo by Mark Mohlmann​, used with permission from Stephen Kajiura​.

These marine beasts are on the move. Just like (most) humans, sharks don't like swimming in frigid waters. So every winter, they wander to warmer temperatures. Like the coast of Florida.

While cold-blooded shark-phobic Chicagoans like me would be running in the opposite direction, Floridans haven't let this swarm of migrating toothy killers complicate their beach plans. You can still spot them swimming, boating, and paddle boarding near the Palm Beach County coastline doing their thing — as if there aren't fanged, blood-thirsty sea savages just hundreds of feet away. (Officials haven't stopped them from their fun in the sun, either! How irresponsible.)

...OK, I get it — they're not that bad. My irrational fear of sharks is completely distorting the situation. But still ... you wouldn't judge me for postponing my Florida vacay right about now, right?

Photo by Mark Mohlmann​, used with permission from Stephen Kajiura​.

These sharks aren't actually all that scary when you get your facts straight.

Despite the images that look like they were snapped during the filming of some twisted version of "Jaws 5," (they're on #5, right?) these creatures aren't so bad.

These are blacktip sharks. They average about six feet in length, and — despite the swarms of black dots you see on these photos — are actually on the "near-threatened" list by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, as The Washington Post noted. For the most part, they stay clear of people.

Photo by Mark Mohlmann​, used with permission from Stephen Kajiura​.

“These sharks are pretty skittish,” Stephen Kajiura, an associate professor at Florida Atlantic University who's tagging the animals to better understand how they migrate across open waters, told ABC News. “So when they see a human, they swim away.”

Although blacktip sharks have the largest number of bites than any other shark in Florida (in large part because they're the most common), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that they've never killed anyone there. For the most part, they do their thing, and we do ours.

While the sharks themselves aren't all that scary, their migration patterns hint at something a bit more terrifying.

Yep. It's climate change: the ultimate party pooper. 

Usually, the sharks would migrate a bit farther south, toward Miami, according to Kajiura. But it seems as though they've found just the right temperatures near neighboring Fort Lauderdale this year. And a warming ocean may play a role in the sharks' decision to stay put up the coast.

“It looks like there’s a correlation between global warming and [the blacktip sharks'] expanding range,” Kajiura told The Christian Science Monitor. “They’re moving further north to find their ideal temperature.”

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

While this doesn't pose an increased safety risk to any people (again, these sharks aren't nearly as villainous or terrifying as my shark-phobia suggests), this "expanding range" Kajiura speaks of should raise some eyebrows.

Climate change is drastically changing our oceans and the life in them, and the effects are (and will continue to be) costly.

Increasingly higher temperatures could make our oceans unrecognizable by the end of this century unless carbon emissions are slashed big time (and soon), research suggests.

Photo by Torsten Blackwood - Pool/Getty Images.

A study released last summer found that by 2100, climate change could be the culprit of the most dramatic re-arrangement of marine life in at least 3 million years, as Mashable reported. 

Oceans near the poles (where not a whole lot of people live) will see a big rise in sea life as its waters heat up, while biodiversity in waters near the equator (where lots of people live) will plummet. This could have huge ramifications on industries like fishing, and mean major (and expensive) economic shifts.

“It’s really worrying, because this is the whole ocean that will change,” Grégory Beaugrand, who co-authored the study published in the journal, "Nature Climate Change," told Mashable.

This re-arrangement "will have a devastating impact on fisherman and from a socioeconomic point of view."

There's reason to hope the world is finally taking climate change more seriously, though. And that's good news for sharks (and people).

Last year was historic in the fight against global warming. A United Nations summit in Paris brought together countries from all over the world — including the major carbon offenders (yeah, I'm looking at you, America and China) — to set ambitious goals to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Environmentalists are cautiously optimistic the agreed upon carbon targets could be a turning point.

Photo by Francois Guillot/AFP/Getty Images.

And, hey, get this: Due to increased use of renewable energies and China slowly kicking its dirty coal habit, 2015 is expected to be the very first year the world's carbon emissions stalled — or even declined — during a year of global economic growth, the BBC reported. That's pretty huge.

It's a good thing humanity is finally waking up to the dangers of climate change, because it's not just sharks whose home hangs in the balance.

Let's keep this earth as green (and blue) as long as we can.

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Sharks. Living inside a volcano. If this was a movie, it'd be 'Shark-cano.' But it's real.

There comes a time in all of our lives when we must admit the tragic truth: Sharknados are not real.

Sharks rain from the sky like teardrops from my eyes. GIF from "Sharknado 2."

Neither are Sharktopuses or Mega Shark and Mecha Shark or any other such fantastical creatures of SyFy Original Movie fame — except for two-headed sharks (which could arguably occur as natural mutations) and avalanche sharks (which, with climate change, you never know).

It's OK. It can be difficult accept the harrowing reality of our CGI-monster-less lives.

But dry your eyes, brave soldier! For hope has risen like a phoenix from the fiery depths of the South Pacific....

GIF from "Sharknado 2."

Scientists recently discovered a certain sharp-toothed surprise while exploring an active underwater volcano.

That's right. Underwater volcano.

Oceanographer (and National Geographic Society/Waitts Grant recipient) Brennan Phillips led an expedition into the South Pacific to learn more about Kavachi, a submarine volcano near the Solomon Islands that was actively spewing as recently as 2014.

Phillips and his team knew that the summit was somewhere around 100 feet below sea level and that it was capable of shooting plumes of magma nearly a quarter-mile into the air, forming temporary islands on the ocean's surface.

But no one had ever explored Kavachi up close before. They wanted to learn more.

A submarine volcano erupting. GIF via Smithsonian Ocean Portal.

Unfortunately, it's hard to study underwater volcanos. 'Cause, ya know. Underwater. And also volcano.

They sent underwater cameras to look inside the crater and discovered that Kavachi wasn't the only thing that was active.

There were vol-crab-nos...

GIF via National Geographic/YouTube.

...and lava-rays...

They were calling it a "sixgill stingray." But we all know the truth. GIF via National Geographic/YouTube.

And f---ing SHARK-CANOS!

THE RARE MAGMATIC HAMMERHEAD. GIF via National Geographic/YouTube.

That's right, I said shark-canos. As in plural, baby.

This one's called a "silky shark," and frankly, I don't blame him for hanging out in a submarine volcano because shark-cano is waaaaaaaaaay more badass than "silky shark." GIF via National Geographic/YouTube.

Yes, these hyper-evolved geo-aquatic mutant hybrids are real. But that's ... about the only thing we know about them.

"These large animals are living in what you have to assume is much hotter and much more acidic water, and they’re just hanging out,” Phillips said. "What sort of changes have they undergone? Are there only certain animals that can withstand it? [...] Do they get an early warning and escape the caldera before it gets explosive, or do they get trapped and perish in steam and lava?”

While we have yet to witness any shark-canos riding like rockets out of the ocean on geysers made of molten rock, we have discovered their one major weakness:

It's us.

Shark attacks against humans are incredibly rare — we're talking maybe 30 a year, 40 tops. You've got about a 1 in 11.5 million chance of experiencing your very own "Jaws" encounter.

That's not at all. There has not been a single record instance of a shark-cano attack in the entirety of human history. This is likely due to the fact that it's hard for living people to make it 200 feet underwater into the belly of a volcano, but still.

For the most part, sharks are all like:

GIF from "Super Bowl XLIX Halftime Show."

and then us humans are all like:

GIF from "Snakes on a Plane," which isn't technically a SyFy Original Movie, but still counts in terms of absurd animal-based B-movies.

Humans kill more than 100 million sharks every year. It's gotten to the point where 1 in 4 shark species are endangered.

If the tables were turned, you'd be hiding in a volcano too.

There's a much better chance of survival down there, which when you think about it, is really saying something.

To enjoy these magnificent creatures in all their glory, check out National Geographic's full video of the real-life shark-cano discovery:

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