Better than the Book

I don’t know if I should give you a spoiler alert here, but hey, maybe some of the young kids haven’t seen the movie or read the book Jaws, so go ahead and do that if you want before reading this.

Because I’m going to tell you a lot…but I’m not going to give you context.

You know, usually people talk about how much better a book is than the movie of that book (or books). And quite often that’s true.  And maybe it’s because I’m a fan of the movie and I saw the movie before I read the book. But seriously – and there’s no competition – the movie Jaws is so much better than the book Jaws. It’s not even close.

I wrote earlier about how well Spielberg told the story. Well, he rewrote major portions of it too…much to the movie’s gain. Benchley is a decent pulp novelist – in the sense that you can rip through his books and usually follow along quite happily. But he has some hang-ups too. Like sex. He’s obsessed with it. And I suppose it spices up the story a little, but if you watched the movie, there was certainly enough there that the sex wasn’t necessary in the slightest.

But there were plenty of notable differences between the book and the movie. Differences that made the movie better. Here are some of them:

1. Brody hated Hooper in the book. They got along quite well in the movie. In the movie, the villain was the shark. The hero was Brody. The relationship with Hooper helped all-around.

2. Benchley really played up the spoiled summer-rich in the book. Brody’s wife, Ellen, was one of them who married down with Brody. In the movie, they were a great couple. Again, because the hero was Brody, the villain was the shark. Simple.

3. Hooper was a rich kid in both the book and the movie, but Brody didn’t hate and resent the summer-rich in the movie, so he didn’t harbor that hatred for Hooper.

4. But Brody also hated Hooper in the book in part because he suspected Hooper had sex with his wife.

5. And in the book, Hooper did. So yeah, that didn’t add to the story at all really.

6. Benchley spends forever on a stupid dinner party that served very little other than to set up Brody’s hatred of the summer-rich and the affair between Hooper and Ellen. Which was all unnecessary. The movie kind of abbreviated all of this with the scene where Hooper goes over to the Brodys’ to eat and from there they decide to go cut open a shark that had been caught earlier that day to confirm whether it was the killer. The villain was the shark. Simple.

7. Hooper dies a pretty gruesome death in the book. In the movie, he survives. And you’re rooting for him, cuz he’s not the villain. The villain is the shark.

8. Quint drowns in the book because he gets tangled in the ropes and pulled down by the shark after the shark had jumped on the back of the boat. Well, if you’re going to have the shark do that, then why not have Quint slide down into the shark’s mouth? Like in the movie. Very efficient.

9. The shark makes its final run at Brody in the book but comes up just short because it’s tangled up with the Orca (Quint’s boat) as the Orca is sinking, so the whole lot – the Orca, Quint’s body, and the shark get pulled down. The end. Yawn. How about have the hero (Brody) kill the villain (the shark). Do it in a pretty cool way. That works.

Go ahead and read the book and watch the movie. See if any of this makes a difference. But in the end you’ll admit, the movie was so much better.