Directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Carl Gottlieb, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider (add more)
Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. As such, any aggressive/abusive corrections (and I get quite a few) written as if they're comments I've made myself will be ignored. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click the edit icon under an entry, then choose "correct entry". Some entries have "duplicated entry" after them - these are entries which were already listed on the main page, but were submitted again. I occasionally leave these online for a while, just in case they were moved in error, so don't worry about pointing them out to me.
When the shark first hits Hooper's cage and swims by the camera, watch the cage in the background. The top door is open. This is obviously so if the stunt double got into trouble, he could get out. [Actually, the force which the great white exerted on the cage would be enough to force the top door to open.]
After they hook the shark for the first time, Quint tells Brody and Hooper to put their gloves on. As Hooper puts his gloves on, he says, "Come on Quinn, let it go", mispronouncing Quint's name. [Character mistake, not a movie mistake.]
During their first attempt to attach a barrel to the shark, Hooper makes a point to include an electronic tracking device. Afterwards, Hooper never uses this device to track the shark. [Since the shark doesn't attempt to get away, he wouldn't need to. The tracking device would only be useful if the shark left the immediate area, which it never does.]
When Brody and Hooper see that the shark is chewing it's way through the ropes attached to their boat, they call Quint to come and shoot him. When Quint comes over with the gun, the shark rears out of the water and roars. Sharks cannot roar. [This has already been submitted and corrected. According to National Geographic they can. Also when a large volume of water rushes into the large space of the sharkes mouth and throat, the air being forced out would roar.]
In the whole movie, the shark eats four people, including Quint, and what appears to be at least half a refrigerator full of meat. If a shark did this in real life, no matter how big it was, it would die from gorging itself, since sharks are cold-blooded and, like snakes and lizards, can take up to six months digesting a meal. [Sharks have brains the size of chickpeas, and they have one instinct - EAT. A shark will disgorge a partially eaten meal in order to eat a fresh one. During feeding frenzies sharks are seen to swallow huge lumps of flesh, disgorge them, and start all over again.]
An officer tells Brody that there are Boy Scouts in the water "swimming a mile for their merit badges". Swimming a mile, however, is not a part of any merit badge for the Boy Scouts of America. The only time Boy Scouts need to swim as far as a mile is for an optional patch called the "Mile Swim". [Character mistake, not film mistake.]
In the scene towards the end of the film, when they are trying to outrun the shark back to land (when Quint says something like: we'll get him in the shallows and drown him) you see a shot from the rear of the boat, and in the distance you can clearly see the shore line. But after that point in the movie, you never see the shore, even when they are swimming back at the very end. [In many shots land is visible at the horizon, in the distance, as well as in the shot when Brody and Hooper are using the barrels to assist their swim back to shore.]
Corrected by Rikki
In the middle of the fight with the shark at sea, Quint tells Hooper 'full ahead', then Brody repeats the command but says 'slow ahead' twice. [The only time Brody repeats Quint's command is after Quint says, "Stop playing with yourself Hooper. Slow ahead, if you please." Brody then sarcastically repeats the same command when he says, "You heard him, slow ahead. I can go slow ahead. Come on down and chum some of this sh*t."]
Corrected by Rikki
At the end of the movie when the shark explodes and we see it sinking to the bottom of the ocean, the ropes connecting the dorsal and the tail fins are visible (broken). You can see the same thing in the shot where the shark jumps up onto the Orca. [The lines that are visible, both when the shark leaps onto Orca and then when bits of it sink, are the lines connected to the harpoons on both sides of its dorsal fin.]
Corrected by Rikki
In the scene where Bruce (the Shark) rams the cage, you can see Hooper with blood coming from a small wound (it is his, I've checked). after a bit of this he swims to the bottom of the ocean. His wound may have stopped bleeding, but couldn't have healed so fast and the shark would have caught his blood trail instantly. [Hooper stabs the shark twice in the close-up and again repeatedly in the wideshot, so the blood you see is the shark's blood, not Hooper's.]
Corrected by Rikki
Hooper purposely holds the shark gun outside the cage so he'll lose it when Bruce hits the cage in the next shot. [The fact that Hooper, holds the poison shark dart with his hand between the cage bars is not a film mistake, not even a deliberate one. Within the storyline this occurrence is reasonable and perfectly plausible. Hooper, who is very nervous and extremely anxious, stands ready to strike at the shark, specifically in its mouth, as he watches the shark swim off to his left. After pulling off the cork he readies the dart gun again as he looks around for the shark, but is quickly startled by its sudden thrust on the cage, behind him, causing him to lose his grip of the shark dart as he falls back.]
Corrected by Rikki
Hooper is in his wetsuit waiting to enter the shark cage. As he stands on the deck, notice behind him that the stern of the Orca is now shorter in length, painted white, and well above sea level. [First, Orca's paint color is the very same pale greenish tint as in the rest of the shots, not white. Second, the shot when Hooper puts on the air tank that Quint holds for him, shows the stern through the cabin doorway and because most of the starboard side of the rail can't be seen in this shot, the depth perception of the deck may be deceiving. The deck is not shorter here, nor is it shorter in similar shots. Third, it is impossible to even determine the level of the water directly around Orca's hull in this shot, or even in the next shot as Hooper climbs into the cage.]
Corrected by Rikki
Richard Dreyfus is driving the boat, then playing cards, then driving again. [At no point does Hooper's card playing grate with continuity. Hooper sits beside the wheel and plays solitaire, then Quint says, "Stop playin' with yourself Hooper. Slow ahead if you please." So Hooper gathers his cards and two shots later he is standing at the wheel.]
Corrected by Rikki
When the little boy on the yellow water raft is supposedly eaten by Jaws, you see two boys carrying him out of the water when everyone is clearing out. [When Ellen asks her husband, Chief Brody, "Are you okay?" behind her there are five boys who wear red swimming trunks, that head into the water. Alex Kintner, the boy who will soon be attacked, is also wearing red swimming trunks. After the shark attack, the boy in the red swim trunks being dragged out of the water is not Alex.]
Corrected by Rikki
When Chrissie is being attacked, she has a 5-second pause in being chewed-upon. When it's a hit-and-run attack this is normal (the shark realises it has made a mistake and leaves). Since Chrissie is eaten, we're talking about a bump-and-bite attack, which causes a shark to go into a feeding-frenzy. It is highly unlikely for a shark to let go for even one second in such an event. [It may be unlikely, but it's not impossible, especially since it's eating prey it has probably not encountered before.]
At the point when the Orca breaks down, Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw are stuck out in the ocean with the Shark, Robert Shaw goes back into the boat to get some life jackets, as he comes out he throws the life jackets to the others. If you turn up the sound very loudly at this point you can hear Robert Shaw fart. You can only hear it if you turn up the volume, Robert Shaw then walks off the edge of the boat with a smirk on his face, he shouldn't be doing this when it is clearly now do or die for the three of them. [There's an indistinct rasping sound, at best. It could be Shaw's rubber soled boots on the wet deck. Quint is smirking at the inexperience and lack of skill of Brody.]
In the scene where the guys are sitting on the boat, singing "Show me the way to go home" when one of the guys (can't remember who) shushes the other two. The camera goes to a board where the shark is about to hit. The board is already cracked before the shark hits it. [It's an old, weather-beaten boat, so cracks in the boards are very likely.]
When Bruce has tipped the boat over on the 4th of July, the man in the boat is trying to get out of the water. We see Bruce swimming up to grab him, the shark's body tilted so that one eye is towards the surface and the other towards the bottom. Shouldn't Bruce's fin be sticking out of the water? [The shark (a.k.a Bruce, as you call him) is at least five feet below the surface of the water, at which shark's fins cannot reach up to.]
On the report Chief Brody is typing up while talking to the coroner, the girl's body is listed as being found late at night. It was during the day. [It was late at night, even the time is shown on the report when the death occured: 11:50 PM.]
In the movie you only see the shark's fin in the first half of the movie, not the rest of the fish. This was not originally intended, but rather something they were forced to do. One of the first two shark models sank and the other one blew up. [This was entirely intentional. Steven Spielberg said that he would only direct the movie if the shark wouldn't be revealed for the first hour of the film.]
You may also like: Titanic | Star Wars | Apocalypse Now | The Shining | Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
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