I was probably 9 the first time I saw the movie. This was far and away the most upsetting scene in the movie for me. I don't think anything else really scared me in any significant way, but that scene stuck with me for years. I still tighten up a little when I watch it even today.

All this talk about age reminded me of my friend telling me that his dad took him to see it in 1975 when he was only 3. While I have vague memories of the Jaws phenomenon, I didn't see it until much, much later.

In some ways, 50 years later this remains Spielberg's best movie.

That's funny, a teen who was supposed to be two seats down from me was in the wrong seat, I asked about it and got a whimpering gibberish response. (exactly what you'd expect from his appearance) No big deal, I sat in the next seat over, but I kept an eye on him...the Ben Gardner scene got him, he jumped nearly a foot in the air! Very rewarding.

I was 7 and I lived on an island, but this never scared me out of the water. What I did do was get every one of those books, that Brody was reading, from the local library and learn as much about sharks as I could. It's hard to track these books down now. Either they command top dollar or are extremely rare.

Y'all are making me feel a little better. I've been looking forward to watching this for a couple of months now and have been hyping it up to my family. Now that the time has come nobody wants to go with me. My kids (6, 13) are such chicken shits when it comes to anything scary so I really wanted them to go. They can be a little scared in life. But....maybe it's ok if they don't.

So I'm getting up in the middle of the day in the middle of my long stretch of working nights to watch the last showing on IMAX at 3:30. Probably just me maybe with my friend's parents.

My wife had actually never seen the movie and she jumped and yelped at the Ben Gardner scene. Got a small chuckle from the audience

How loud did the volume seem at the IMAX versions of Jaws?

I wanted my wife to go see it with me, but she is worried about the volume. I told her hopefully not as much due to it being an older movie but if they messed with the soundtrack a lot, they could have made it overly aggressive.

My wife asked me this question because she was so uncomfortable when we went to see the recent Superman that she stuffed toilet paper in her ears for the movie just several minutes in. I tolerated the movie toilet paper free, but I will admit that it got uncomfortably loud at times.

F1 was tolerable for me but Alien Romulus was so ear piercing I actually had to cover my ears several times during it.

Maybe a little louder than normal. I'm usually a baby with noise, but I only plugged my ears for the one jump scare I mentioned. I think quieter than Superman. Like 1% of Dune 's sound level haha

I remember seeing Top Gun - Maverick in IMAX... first movie there after the pandemic. My ears hurt for a day and half... F1 was pretty loud too. I saw Alien Romulus in a Dolby Audio theater and that was nuts.

I think it was louder than the usual theaters but nowhere near as loud as the Dolby theater. Next time I go there, I'm bringing my concert ear protection to see how it goes.

Ugh. okay. Guess I will pass then. She was really uncomfortable in Superman and even though I like my shit loud, it seems like IMAX movies keep getting cranked louder and louder each year, even past my tolerance.

My son worked at an AMC several years ago when he was in high school and I asked him about it, and he said that the staff was not allowed to adjust IMAX volumes. Other showings they could but not IMAX which I found interesting.

Aren't IMAX theaters calibrated to exact standards set by the company? Makes sense that volume can't be adjusted to suit specific audiences.

Yeah, I assumed that was the reason, and it seem the IMAX powers that be want the volume high enough to wake the dead and the volume has crept up more and more year after year. And I have hearing loss in my right ear, and I still can tell a difference of it getting louder.

There is absolutely nothing wrong or to feel embarrassed about if you see a movie by yourself. Especially if schedules don’t work or if it’s something you want to see and others don’t care to. I gave up on getting friends to see movies with me years ago and just go when I want.

I usually go with friends but if things don't work out or nobody else wants to see something... I go on my own. I have done that for decades.

Don't pass on it. It's way quieter than most modern movies that just absolutely assault your senses. Many more quiet moments. The jump scare definitely was loud and Bruce ramming into the Orca glass was loud. That's about it though.


Oh I know. Thanks. I've been going by myself for a long time now. I've given up dragging the wife to movies she doesn't care about or will sleep through. Plus there are the kids. So it's just way more easier and freeing to just go by myself. I was just excited to show them Jaws in the theater with them and they just let me down by flat out refusing to go. Today I didn't though. I told my BFF that I was excited to see it and she said Jaws was her mom's favorite movie. So despite two cars going down today (alternator in one and battery in the other) and other schedule issues I did get to take her parents to see it and on her dad's birthday so I took the liberty of treating them. It was great.

Seeing Jaws on the big screen was awesome. We talked about several times that she saw the movie, one time she had the mexican restaurant change the channel so they could watch it (maybe even before a home release). She told me that she made my BFF and her sister watch it when they were 5 right before going to the beach so they wouldn't go too far out in the ocean (smart momma). And how my BFF's sister is still traumatized by the movie today. So again maybe confirmation that it was okay that my kids didn't see it. But then there are lots of kids that love Jaws....I guess they're mostly boys though. We quietly traded trivia during the movie. Like I didn't recognize until today the reporter on the beach is Peter Benchley. And how the tiger shark was actually a real shark caught in FL and brought up for the shoot. And I pointed out how I just now noticed that one of the books that Brody is looking at has a picture of a shark with an oxygen tank in it's mouth and how the score always signifies jaws. No score during the fake beach attack no shark.

That's awesome! I just noticed on the big screen today that in that scene Brody comes across a picture of a shark with a scuba tank in it's mouth, foreshadowing the end. Is that picture in any of the books? I'd love to know if it was actually in the book or not and what the context would be for a picture like this.

Sound on the IMAX -- The sound was recorded at a different period in time. Though remixed, it is still a bit on the tinny side, and can seem overcranked during some of the hectic crowd scenes. Typically, it is the heart pounding bass that is overwhelming on IMAX, and Jaws does not have that issue. (Ever since John Wick 4, I have taken my earbuds in with me. Only popped them in a few times, but I take them just in case.)

Generations and Jaws -- I think the key is having seen it "back then" and on a big screen, versus seeing it now on TV (quite possibly with commercials). Until you see it on the big screen, you don't realize or appreciate how immersive the cinematography is. That also opens up "more access" to being immersed in the story. The same can be said with Jurassic Park -- on the big screen it is more of a horror film; at home the kids love the dinosaurs.

Meaningless update for me: Not sure if I will get to catch a 3D showing . . . been home with the flu since Tuesday, Hoping they hold a few into the weekend.

For anyone who has really sensitive ears or suffers from hearing loss, that's a major bummer that you won't be able to/can't enjoy this or other premium theatrical content and it's audio.

Just got back a bit ago from seeing the re-release in IMAX and it was an excellent presentation. It looked great and I didn’t think it was nearly as loud as modern IMAX movies I’ve seen in the same theater, for what it’s worth.

For those with sensitive ears, there are ear plugs that are designed for concert-goers that attenuate the volume, but don’t filter the frequency content (much). I think those would be helpful for the sometimes ear-piercing IMAX volumes and would still allow you to enjoy the movie.

Cool. I will look into those. If you have ones that you know for sure work well, please post a link.

Loop is consistently among the top rated brands in the earplug space. This is their model specifically designed for concerts:
https://us.loopearplugs.com/products/experience-plus

I don’t have those but I do have a pair of their earplugs for a different purpose and they’re great.

Used them for Bruce Springsteen last year in the pit. They worked great!

My partner and I have multiple pairs. One for concerts, one for casual crowd noise. Both are amazing. I also have a pair of their sleep plugs and they are great.

When Jaws first came out, I was twelve, and my mom decided that I wasn't ready to see it yet--I guess that she thought that it'd scar me for life. (What she didn't know was that Dad had taken me to see The Exorcist a few months earlier.) I felt that it was grossly unjust that I couldn't go see Jaws, and that feeling was amplified once I got back to school in the fall and all the other kids were talking about how great it was. I finally got to see it when it hit network TV.

I was pretty excited to finally get to see Jaws in the theater after fifty years of being denied the privilege. I went with a friend to see it Tuesday night in my town's only theater, an eleven-screen complex that's badly in need of some refreshing. Counting us, there were probably a dozen people in attendance. The movie started, and I settle down into the film, enjoying being able to see all my favorite shots (like the combination zoom in/track out shot of Roy Scheider on the beach right before the second shark attack), and even though I've seen the film probably a dozen times over the years, the shot of Ben Gardner's head popping out of the boat STILL made me jump.

All was good...until, right after the "You're gonna need a bigger boat" line, the power went out in the theater. It came back up after only a second or two, but of course it had turned off all of the projection equipment. We sat there for a few minutes, waiting for an employee to restart the movie, but after about five minutes with no one appearing, a guy near the front row went to report it. A minute or two later the lights came on in the projection booth, the projector came back on, and the employee asked where were were in the movie when the power went out. Several people yelled that Scheider had just said the "bigger boat" line, and he got the movie back to where we'd left off.

Apparently, he JETTED out of the projection booth, because he didn't stick around long enough to notice that the movie was playing silently--no audio at all. I guess we all thought that he'd notice in a second, but we watched from the "bigger boat" line to the preparations for lowering the shark cage in complete silence. The entire Indianapolis story that Robert Shaw tells was inaudible, which pissed my friend off to no end. Eventually, and after two people going to get help, the sound came back on (but at a decidedly lower volume, which was way too low for theater audio), and we were back into the story again. We were hoping that they'd go back and pick up where we'd started the second time, but, again, whoever turned the audio back on had left the booth. So, we kept watching, and right after Bruce chomps on Robert Shaw and Roy Scheider gets the compressed air tank into his mouth, the power went out again. This time, the emergency lights came on, but the house lights didn't. After a minute or so, two employees came to the front row and said that they weren't sure what was going on with the power, and that we could wait it out if we wanted to, but the theater manager was coming to look into it, and he was at least twenty minutes from getting there. They said that if we wanted, we could get comp passes instead, and they apologized. We got the comp passes and left. On the way out of the theater, the entire building was dark, lit only by the occasional emergency light, which was pretty creepy. When we got to the parking lot, we noticed that the entire part of town where the theater's located was dark, so it was a bigger problem than we'd known.

So that's MY Jaws story; they're keeping it around another week for a 4:00 daily matinee, so I may go try my luck again next week.