Jaws 2 poster art

It’s no exaggeration to say that Jaws is one of the greatest films of all time. The Steven Spielberg masterpiece about a great white shark that terrorizes a New England island community was the first true summer blockbuster. A triumph in movie-making that made a whole generation swear off going to the beach. Unsurprisingly, Jaws spawned a number of sequels, none of which came close to recreating the magic of the original — with one notable exception. Jaws 2, the sequel closest to its predecessor in terms of quality, featured a tagline that actually surpassed any of the original film’s advertising.

Jaws 2 often gets unfairly lumped in with the other two barely watchable Jaws sequels, but the film’s tagline, “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…” is considered one of the best ever written. It’s a slogan so iconic that even people who have never seen Jaws 2 still recognize it. One could even go as far as to say that the tagline transcends its source material and belongs more to the greater pop culture consciousness than it does to any one film.

Jaws 2 repeats the same basic beats of Jaws — a shark starts eating beachgoers, police chief tries to warn everyone, gets ignored, ends up hunting the shark on his own — while throwing in just enough to differentiate it from the original. The exploration of Chief Brody’s PTSD stemming from the events of the first movie, along with a third act that unfolds like a teen slasher movie, are just a few of the ways Jaws 2 deviates from its predecessor. Those differences, along with a returning cast that included Roy Scheider reprising his role as Amity’s no-nonsense police chief, helped to make Jaws 2 a bigger success than Universal could have ever hoped for.

Jaws 2 Was a Success Thanks to the Greatest Tagline Ever Written

Jaws 2 teaser poster

If a tagline’s job is to sell the movie it’s attached to, then Jaws 2‘s tagline performed its job spectacularly. In 1978, Jaws 2 — thanks in no small part to its killer marketing — grossed over ten times its $20-million budget at the box office. The movie was so successful that it became the highest-grossing sequel of all time until Rocky II knocked it out of the top spot the following year.

Jaws 2‘s legendary tagline was created by Andrew J. Kuehn, a film producer famous for revolutionizing how movie trailers are made. Like other classic taglines, Alien‘s “In space, no one can hear you scream,” and Superman: The Movie‘s “You will believe a man can fly,” Jaws 2‘s tagline is simple and gives just enough of a hint about the film to sell tickets. In the case of Jaws 2, the tagline plays upon the aquaphobia many viewers developed after the first Jaws.

“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…” makes the right choice by not highlighting the absurdity of another great white shark attacking the same New England beach community, but instead spreading a general uneasiness about a vague threat lurking beneath the ocean waves. It’s the unspoken part of the statement that carries the real threat. “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…it’s not.”

It might seem obvious, but by leaving out why it’s not safe to go swimming, the Jaws 2 tagline allows the reader to imagine horrors infinitely more disturbing than the ones in the film. Somehow, “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, here comes another shark,” doesn’t have the same ring to it.

The Taglines (and Movies) Go Downhill After Jaws 2

Jaws 3-D movie poster

The sequel’s follow-up, the abysmal Jaws 3-D, would prove to be a step down, not just in quality, but in its attempt to match Jaws 2‘s near-perfect tagline. “The third dimension is terror,” relies too much on the film’s gimmicky 3-D and feels like a generic horror movie tagline.

The fourth movie in the franchise, Jaws: The Revenge, would have its own tagline problems. While “This time it’s personal,” is slightly better than “The third dimension is terror,” it also invites criticism and ridicule over the concept of a shark having a personal vendetta against a single family. Unlike the Jaws 2 tagline, The Revenge purposely draws attention to the fact that another great white has found its way to Amity, much to its detriment. That’s not to say that a better tagline would have done anything significant to help one of the worst sequels ever made, but it certainly wouldn’t have hurt.

Jaws 2 will never be looked on as fondly as the original Jaws — nor should it be — but thanks to one of the greatest taglines of all time, we’re still afraid to go back in the water.

The post The Jaws Franchise Gave Us One of the Greatest Movie Taglines of All Time appeared first on ComicBook.com.

​ 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *