Fifty-one years on, Spielberg still says he fears the sharks are angry at him for what Jaws did to them
Half a century on, one Jaws decision still nags at Steven Spielberg — and yes, there’s a specific choice he’d take back.
Let’s get straight to it: Jaws didn’t just scare swimmers — it blew the doors off the way Hollywood releases films. Before that 1975 shark turned up, studios would let films tick along at the cinema for months, banking on word of mouth. Then Jaws rolled in, chewed up the rulebook, and became the movie that convinced execs blockbusters could make their fortune in a single, massive summer push. That opening weekend arms race you see today? You can thank Spielberg and his big rubber shark.
Jaws came out in 1975 and its opening changed Hollywood’s approach to release strategies, ushering in the modern blockbuster era.
Its cultural profile’s still huge. AFI stuck it on their top 100 list for American films — #48 at first, sliding to #56 the next time around. The shark itself even made it into their best screen villains, and John Williams’ score? Everyone hums those two notes whether they’ve seen the film or not. That 'You’re gonna need a bigger boat' line ranked high on their movie quotes too — honestly, there’s no shortage of accolades.
Spielberg? By all accounts, Jaws launched his career into the stratosphere and he’s never really landed. But — and this is important — the legacy of the film leaves him with one very particular regret. And weirdly, it’s not the string of terrible sequels.
Why Spielberg Still Feels Guilty About 'Jaws'
Turns out, Spielberg’s biggest lingering worry is how Jaws changed public perception of sharks. By showing the great white as a single-minded, man-eating monster, he didn’t just frighten anyone holidaying in the British seaside; even people nowhere near a beach started worrying about what was lurking under the surface. And he’s not alone in that — loads of us spent our childhoods convinced a shark could be lurking at the local swimming pool, of all places.
People who’ve never even set eyes on a real shark have developed lifelong fears, and it’s not just anecdotal. Phobia specialists like Christopher Paul Jones point out that, for many, their fear traces right back to Jaws. Spielberg’s brilliant direction and Williams’ music did the trick: the unseen terror, the music, the 'what’s under the water?' ambiguity — textbook scare tactics, apparently tapping into our deep human hardwiring toward predators. Harvard zoologist Edward Wilson reckons our fascination with monsters is all about survival instinct — we love our stories about monsters because it makes us feel prepared, in a roundabout way.
But with Jaws, that monster myth had bloody real-world consequences. The public fascination turned to a burst of fishing expeditions, with thousands hitting the water after the film to try and bag themselves a trophy shark, especially in the States. That had a tangible effect on shark populations as people gleefully hunted them with little remorse — it was seen as knocking off a dangerous animal, not killing an ancient and fragile species.
Spielberg told BBC Radio in 2022: "That’s one of the things I still fear—not to get eaten by a shark, but that sharks are somehow mad at me for the feeding frenzy of crazy sport fishermen that happened after 1975. I truly, and to this day, regret the decimation of the shark population because of the book and the film."
Just to give you some numbers: George Burgess, who knows a thing or two as the director of Florida’s shark research programme, estimates nearly half the sharks along the East Coast disappeared in the years just after Jaws. Hammerhead populations dropped by nearly 90%, great whites by almost 80%, and tiger sharks by two-thirds. Obviously, commercial fishing played a part, but you can’t ignore the surge in shark-killing that followed the film’s wave of panic and macho bravado. Since the seventies, global shark numbers have plummeted by more than 70% — grim reading for any ocean lover.
From Monster Maker to Conservationist
Peter Benchley wrote the original Jaws novel, and Spielberg’s not the only one with regrets. Benchley spent the rest of his life trying to undo the damage, working with his wife Wendy on shark protection campaigns, penning books to explain sharks were not villains, and helping launch awards for ocean advocates. In his later years, he admitted he would never, ever write Jaws again, knowing what he knows now about how delicate (and misunderstood) these creatures are.
The 30th anniversary edition of Jaws includes Benchley’s candid reflection: “With knowledge accumulated from dozens of expeditions and hundreds of dives and countless encounters with sharks of many kinds came the realization that I could never write Jaws today. I could never demonize an animal, especially not an animal that is much older and much more successful in its habitat than man is, has been, or ever will be, an animal that is vitally necessary for the balance of nature in the sea, and an animal that we may—if we don’t change our destructive behaviors—extinguish from the face of the earth.”
There are some who reckon blaming Jaws for shark declines gives the film too much credit. Paul Cox at the Shark Trust says it’s mostly about massive overfishing, which is fair. But it’s hard to deny that Spielberg and Benchley’s tale poured fuel on already smouldering fears, imprinting the image of the shark as a remorseless killer on the public imagination for decades.
People are still obsessed with killer shark films — just look at how well The Meg did for itself at the box office. But thanks to conservationists and a steady stream of myth-busting, there’s hope the story might finally be shifting, even if the shadow of Jaws still lingers over the genre — and the world’s oceans.