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Jaws #2
Tiburón 2
Basada en el guión cinematográfico de Howard Sackler y Dorothy Tristan, realizado con los personajes creados por Peter Benchley.
269 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
39 people are currently reading
2111 people want to read
About the author
Hank Searls
57 books22 followersBorn Henry Hunt Searls Jr. novelist and screenwriter Hank Searls, author of the best-selling Overboard, Jaws II (based on the movie), and Sounding, is creator of the New Breed TV series and writer for the 1960's classic television series The Fugitive . His novel Pilgrim Project became Robert Altman's film Countdown. He has lived most of his life on, under, or over the ocean, having been a world-cruising yachtsman, underwater photographer, and Navy flier.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 151 reviews
November 7, 2019
Martin Brody hated the ocean. Any sane man would hate it. It was a cold surging hell, and all of its creatures were demons, and the devil had an ebony, blinded eye."
This was an average follow up to the original book. It was, by no means, stellar. I'm in the minority that I enjoyed the second movie a lot - despite its boring parts and some silliness, it was still a good follow-up to the original blockbuster film. The book is much of the same - some boring parts, but mainly interesting enough.
Unlike the movie, there is no implied revenge. The female shark mated with the original Jaws some time ago, and is now acting out of character and with a ferocious appetite because she's pregnant and coming near her birthing date. She doesn't have a personal vendetta, thankfully, and the POV of the shark is educational, kind of like a backseat reaction to the nature channel, which is the same as techniques used in the first novel.
Unlike the movie, the chief doesn't get fired, he stays a man struggling against a corrupt town. You thought the town was fishy before? The small town corruption has spread farther and into more dangerous pockets. I won't spoil it, but let's just say even the mafia is involved. Sounds silly but it was written okay. While the first book had a large side plot of the wife bonking the local shark expert, this one has the big story of a mafia involvement while the chief fights against corruption. I actually enjoyed the twist at the ending of that story where Ms Brody with her kind heart towards kids saves the day.
There are some deaths, of course, nothing shocking - the only deaths I cared about as much were two animals where the sympathy was high. We were in their head and the author made sure to make them as sweet as can be, damn him. I was rooting for their survival, but the jaws of nature are cruel.
This is a slower swimming fish. There's not a big rush of plot story. The finale battle at the end is only mere pages and does not impress with its intensity. No swift pace but still the writing works. Searls whips out a style that is down to earth and casual, easy to digest while you read about starving sharks in a small town that is blessed by a flawed but realistic chief we all love.
The book is only worth seeking out if you're a die hard Jaws fan, for curiosities sake if you like the vintage movie cover and want it displayed on the shelf, or it's a dollar or less in a used bookstore. It's good, but not great. I'm glad I read it, but I don't see myself fishing out the rest of the series.
And now, since the review is dead, the shark metaphors in this review must end too.
This was an average follow up to the original book. It was, by no means, stellar. I'm in the minority that I enjoyed the second movie a lot - despite its boring parts and some silliness, it was still a good follow-up to the original blockbuster film. The book is much of the same - some boring parts, but mainly interesting enough.
Unlike the movie, there is no implied revenge. The female shark mated with the original Jaws some time ago, and is now acting out of character and with a ferocious appetite because she's pregnant and coming near her birthing date. She doesn't have a personal vendetta, thankfully, and the POV of the shark is educational, kind of like a backseat reaction to the nature channel, which is the same as techniques used in the first novel.
Unlike the movie, the chief doesn't get fired, he stays a man struggling against a corrupt town. You thought the town was fishy before? The small town corruption has spread farther and into more dangerous pockets. I won't spoil it, but let's just say even the mafia is involved. Sounds silly but it was written okay. While the first book had a large side plot of the wife bonking the local shark expert, this one has the big story of a mafia involvement while the chief fights against corruption. I actually enjoyed the twist at the ending of that story where Ms Brody with her kind heart towards kids saves the day.
There are some deaths, of course, nothing shocking - the only deaths I cared about as much were two animals where the sympathy was high. We were in their head and the author made sure to make them as sweet as can be, damn him. I was rooting for their survival, but the jaws of nature are cruel.
This is a slower swimming fish. There's not a big rush of plot story. The finale battle at the end is only mere pages and does not impress with its intensity. No swift pace but still the writing works. Searls whips out a style that is down to earth and casual, easy to digest while you read about starving sharks in a small town that is blessed by a flawed but realistic chief we all love.
The book is only worth seeking out if you're a die hard Jaws fan, for curiosities sake if you like the vintage movie cover and want it displayed on the shelf, or it's a dollar or less in a used bookstore. It's good, but not great. I'm glad I read it, but I don't see myself fishing out the rest of the series.
And now, since the review is dead, the shark metaphors in this review must end too.
August 19, 2024
A very slow read that spends a lot of time away from the shark. The writing was also hard to follow at some points. The only reason I understood what was happening half the time was because I recently watched JAWS 2 for the first time, a film I actually really enjoyed. John Williams did the music again too!
Anyway, this was a rather mediocre read, and I hate to say it, but I'm glad it's over. It did not hold my interest for very long.
Personal note for when I look back on this: I started reading during my camping trip with my old man, August of '24.
Anyway, this was a rather mediocre read, and I hate to say it, but I'm glad it's over. It did not hold my interest for very long.
Personal note for when I look back on this: I started reading during my camping trip with my old man, August of '24.
July 25, 2025
Me ha gustado un poco menos que el 1º, y viendo el trailer, he visto que cambiaron algunas cosas...
El final por supuesto es una de ellas, muy distintos.
Ha sido una continuación algo regulera.
Valoración: 5.85/10
SINOPSIS: Han pasado cuatro años desde que el complejo turístico de Amity, en Long Island, fue aterrorizado por el monstruoso tiburón asesino... la historia de pesadilla que emocionó al mundo como JAWS. — En las aguas profundas hay un nuevo y aún más terrible depredador de las profundidades del océano... — La hembra del gran tiburón blanco es incluso más grande que el macho. — Hambriento, el monstruo mortífero atraviesa el agua azul hacia las playas de Amity...
El final por supuesto es una de ellas, muy distintos.
Ha sido una continuación algo regulera.
Valoración: 5.85/10
SINOPSIS: Han pasado cuatro años desde que el complejo turístico de Amity, en Long Island, fue aterrorizado por el monstruoso tiburón asesino... la historia de pesadilla que emocionó al mundo como JAWS. — En las aguas profundas hay un nuevo y aún más terrible depredador de las profundidades del océano... — La hembra del gran tiburón blanco es incluso más grande que el macho. — Hambriento, el monstruo mortífero atraviesa el agua azul hacia las playas de Amity...
August 28, 2017
Better written than the original, featuring hot scenes of shark action guaranteed to put you in the mood.
“There, passive and supine, she had received both of his yard-long, salami-shaped claspers into her twin vents.”
“There, passive and supine, she had received both of his yard-long, salami-shaped claspers into her twin vents.”
October 17, 2016
Surprisingly not as bad as I thought it would be...
April 10, 2023
3.5 Stars
This was good but I felt it retread a lot of the originals best moments. Some characters from the first book were more fleshed out which was a plus though. The tense horror moments still packed a punch which made this still a pretty easy read. Don't think il be reading the final book in the franchise.
This was good but I felt it retread a lot of the originals best moments. Some characters from the first book were more fleshed out which was a plus though. The tense horror moments still packed a punch which made this still a pretty easy read. Don't think il be reading the final book in the franchise.
August 29, 2015
Empecé con ansias el libro ya que me desvivo por los tiburones, y adoro la novela original de Peter Benchley. Fue un gran error creer que iban a ir más o menos por la misma linea, siendo que el segundo de la saga de Tiburón no está escrito por Benchley, sino por Hank Searls. Me resultó un libro tan tedioso y lineal que fue absurdo lo que me costó terminarlo. ¡Y pensar que de más chica solía temerle al tiburón de la portada! Si tan solo hubiera sabido que la novelización de aquella maravillosa película iba a ser tan meh, supongo que en ese caso mi idea hubiera sido otra y el miedo jamás hubiera existido. Para peor, el tiburón pasa por completo a segundo plano, casi rozando el olvido, porque hace aparición en tan pocas veces que deberían llamarlo "La atareada vida del policía que de cuando en cuando se trauma con el tiburón que mató en el libro pasado". Si, bueno, es algo largo el título, pero sería más adecuado que "Tiburón 2" y resume todo.
La verdad es que estoy un poco decepcionada, quizá porque tenía grandes expectativas en lo que respecta al libro. De verdad deseaba amarlo, realmente quería sentir cariño por todos los libros de la saga, pero no ocurrió. Muchas partes que parecían eternas, pocas apariciones del escualo, poca acción, poca sangre, mucho dialogo sin sentido y cuando recién se empezaba a poner gore de verdad, el libro se termina. Unas insignificantes páginas que quedaron a lo último para intentar darle un sentido a la idea de "Tiburón". Aún así, no lo detesté, simplemente no fue lo que esperaba porque la historia en sí es más prolongada y desarrollada que la anterior, lo cual creo que fue el motivo por el que lo retrasé tanto tiempo. Definitivamente me quedaré con Peter Benchley hasta el fin de los tiempos, y "Tiburón" seguirá siendo una de mis novelas favoritas.
La verdad es que estoy un poco decepcionada, quizá porque tenía grandes expectativas en lo que respecta al libro. De verdad deseaba amarlo, realmente quería sentir cariño por todos los libros de la saga, pero no ocurrió. Muchas partes que parecían eternas, pocas apariciones del escualo, poca acción, poca sangre, mucho dialogo sin sentido y cuando recién se empezaba a poner gore de verdad, el libro se termina. Unas insignificantes páginas que quedaron a lo último para intentar darle un sentido a la idea de "Tiburón". Aún así, no lo detesté, simplemente no fue lo que esperaba porque la historia en sí es más prolongada y desarrollada que la anterior, lo cual creo que fue el motivo por el que lo retrasé tanto tiempo. Definitivamente me quedaré con Peter Benchley hasta el fin de los tiempos, y "Tiburón" seguirá siendo una de mis novelas favoritas.
May 22, 2011
No, this is not a joke. Hank Searls, author of THE BIG X, THE CROWDED SKY, THE PILGRIM PROJECT, BLOOD SONG, and OVERBOARD (my favorite) is one terrific writer. Retired now with an online shop that helps beginning and even veteran writers hone their craft, Searls should get back in the game, especially in light of the ebook boom. He’s simply one hell of a stylist. He puts you in the book!
JAWS 2 is one of those weirder than life scenarios only Hollywood could concoct: a movie tie-in book that’s actually better than the movie on which it’s based which is worse than the movie before it, which is better than the original book. It’s complicated.
As anyone who wasn’t off the planet for the last 30 years knows, author Peter Benchley wrote a novel called JAWS, all about a big, hulking shark dining on the locals of a Long Island resort town in the summer of 1973. Benchley’s book, incredibly, was inspired by the true events of a big hulking shark (or sharks, depending your theory) dining on the locals off the beach and in a creek off Matawan, New Jersey, in the summer of 1916. No one is yet sure of the exact breed of the real-life culprit, but Benchley chose a Great White for his tale because that was the then-presumed offender of the 1916 killings. It’s generally accepted now that the real killer was a Bull Shark owing to its abilities to navigate and survive fresh water estuaries like the brackish Matawan creek. If people were afraid to go into the water after seeing the 70’s movie, a dark fin cruising an innocent-looking 1916 neighborhood creek must have been beyond traumatizing.
JAWS the novel was published in hardcover with success in 1974 by Doubleday. Before that, however, unknown young director Stephen Spielberg got hold of the book’s galleys on the Universal lot and pleaded the producers to let him helm the film. The paperback sales released in tandem with the film helped bolster an already gigantic hit. And you know La-La land: “If they liked it once, they’ll love it twice.” So JAWS 2 was green-lit. Actor Roy Scheider reportedly begged Universal not to make him appear in the sequel, not surprisingly, but a contract is a contract. The plot surrounds the wholly improbable idea of yet another enormous shark snacking on the good folks of Amity Island (read: Martha’s Vineyard), mostly its adolescent population. Directed without an ounce of finesse by Jeannot Szwarc, this is an instance where you’re actually rooting for the shark to eliminate the obnoxious teens. Strangely IMDb lists the writers of this mess as Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb, who also penned the screenplay of the original. But the tie-in novel of JAWS 2 credits Howard Sackler and Dorothy Tristan. Given the dubious distinction between the two, I’d bet on the latter. At any rate, Hank Searls was invited to make sense of the whole thing in novel form.
A move-tie novel assignment is almost always a thankless task. There’s little original glory in it. Published in 1978 as a PB original (tie-ins always are) by Bantam, I can only assume a superb writer like Searls took the job for pocket money; he’d already had a reasonable hit with his own Overboard (Norton) the year before. One can readily see, however, why both H’wood and publishing brass might think Searls the go-to guy for such a venture; he was seasoned screenwriter, a WWII Navy pilot who knew his watery stuff and who even lived on a ketch in the South Pacific at the time. But with such a bad film (or script) to work from, adapting the film must have seemed doggedly tedious. Maybe Searls—who does follow the film’s nothing plot, adding some padding of his own—was simply determined to buck the averages. Whatever the case, his novel is the only good thing that came out of anything surrounding the sequel.
If Searls’ book has any drawbacks it may be in trying to live up to its vivid first chapter. In the movie’s opening, a couple of divers we don’t care about stumble upon the wreckage of the Orca, Quint’s original not-big-enough-ship, now sunk somewhere off Long Island Sound. While taking pictures of each other near the canted icon, they get attacked by--what else? In a virtuoso display of how words can be far more potent than images, Searls turns a predictable prologue into a heart-stopper by taking us into the hearts and minds of the victims as well as the internal workings of the shark itself, wrapping all this in a green world of cold, murky twilight with verisimilitude as vivid as your worst bad dream. It begins the moment the two divers—lawyer and doctor part-owners of a Hatteras powerboat—don their wetsuits and slip into the water to start the final downward journey of their lives:
"Halfway down the anchor-line the doctor paused. His panting, amplified in his regulator, was earsplitting. He was sure his partner, descending in a green flowering of bubbles 10 feet below him, could hear every gasp. Clinging to the half inch rope he tried to relax…he could not understand the apprehension that was making him pant.
"The strobe light flared, turning everything momentarily white. All at once he heard a sound like a subway train, fast approaching from his rear. His partner, dancing on sand as he tried to balance in the current, wound his camera, then stopped. He stared at something approaching from above and behind the doctor. His mouthpiece fell from his face.
"The doctor, startled, began to turn but instinctively hunkered down instead, clinging to a broken plank. His eyes were riveted on his companion. A great bubble soared from his partner’s mouth. The lawyer threw up an arm to protect himself…the green surface light faded. An enormous bulk, descending like a gliding jet, swept by, a foot above the doctor’s head, blotting out the dancing sunlight. It seemed to pass forever. The last of the shape became a tail, towering taller than himself. It swished once, almost sweeping him loose and blotting his view of the partner in a cloud of bottom-silt and mud. There was silence. The barrel clanged. The doctor clung to the plank, peering into the settling murk. He could hear only his own tortured breathing. He was terrified of the loudness of it, beckoning whatever it was back to the spot…One of his partner’s diving fins bounced past, heading to sea on the tidal current…"
The beauty, of course--the deftness--is in revealing no visceral imagery at all, only the imagined horror of it. In his great book THE SILENT WORLD, Jacques Cousteau describes being underwater as so quiet “you couldn’t hear a whale swim up behind you,” so I can’t credit Searl’s subway sound of the attacking shark. But I don’t dispute it either; you can’t write that well about the ocean depths without having experienced them. But it gets better—or worse, if you’re the poor doctor. His partner gone, and something still lurking about, he must return to the surface and the safety of the boat. We feel the terrified rattle of his nerves right down to our fingertips during the course of a few minutes journey that feels to the terrified swimmer like hours…
"He eased his head from the water. The Hatteras slapped at anchor hardly a hundred feet away…carefully, he slithered toward the boat. He hardly broke the water. Once he stopped and glided, gazing straight down. He saw nothing but shafts of emerald light lancing the depths below. He shivered suddenly. Deep in his soul he felt another onrush of terror. He quickened the beat of his fins. One of them plopped loudly, and then the other, but he had less than 30 feet to go. He could no longer stand the dragging pace. With 20 feet to go, he was sprinting, thrashing recklessly, breathing in enormous chest-searing gulps. All at once, 10 feet from the boat, he felt a bump and a firm, decisive grasp on his left femur some three inches above his knee. It was surprising but not at all violent…He dipped his mask, looking down. He was amazed to see half a human leg, swathed in neoprene, tumbling into the depths…"
Brrrrr! Great stuff!
The film features a segment involving a young girl parasailing, being plucked off the ocean surface and set down again like a bit of living catnip to tempt the pursuing shark. Searls wisely dispenses with such gimmickry in his book by foregoing the sky antics and letting water skis and shark alone be tension enough. All this is framed from the POV of the horrified husband driving the speedboat that pulls his hapless skiing wife. With terse prose choppy as the waves around them, Searls milks the scene for every ounce of nail-biting suspense. If the panicked husband can just get that ski boat back to shore in time:
"A hundred yards behind her an enormous, lazy fin was beckoning. She did not see it, and while he stood frozen in horror, he saw it move, in a leisurely manner, up their trail. “Dee!” he screamed. She smiled at him over the water and took her hand off the towbar, waving him ahead. The fin was coming up on her now, weaving across their dying wake. It was simply gigantic. He jammed the throttle forward, way too fast, catching her off balance…in a moment he was afraid she would pitch headfirst into the wake…she was on the ski now and rising. He stood erect, searching their wake for the fin. The thing must have dived, that was it, he had fooled it.
"Now all he had to do was head for the beach: no fish like that would go into shallow water…he scanned the beach for a safe place…gently, his eye on his wife, he began a sweeping curve toward the cottage. She was weaving again, jumping the wake each time, exuberantly. He signaled her to take it easy, simply to ski, finally slowed the boat so that she couldn’t do it at all, and then saw the fin again, coming up fast astern…"
Does Searls have time for deep emotional insights and titanic literary themes? Hey, this is a tie-in novel. You’re on board for the thrills and if you’re not on board, grab that Tolstoy you never got around to. Is there more character weight and revelatory catharsis in his stand alone Overboard?--you bet, and that novel ends with a shockingly poetic punch you won’t soon forget it. What Hank Searls delivers in JAWS 2 is a high speed read with surprising resonance, themes and descriptions that linger in the mind and on into our dreams. He could have tossed it off, sure, but he chose to go the other way: make pulp profound. At times he succeeds well beyond the call of duty.
In truth there are passages in JAWS 2 that are every bit as good as anything I’ve read by the author. I’ve given that considerable deliberation. Is this a case of a really good writer getting out of his own way, going with first-gut instincts and turning a quick paycheck into a mini-masterpiece of suspense? I don’t know. Sadly, his next sojourn in the saga, JAWS 4 (or was it JAWS 4.0?—I can’t keep up) is a less satisfying one. By then, attempting to novelize an idea no longer remotely novel may have proved beyond even Searls’ gifts.
A hint of this future futility comes in JAWS 2 when the author is expected to follow the movie’s preposterous script at its most ludicrous. Fending off the shark from a small craft, Brodie and a gang of adolescents are trying to haul up the anchor when its flutes become hooked on something below. Together they somehow heave the ‘something’ up—which turns out to be part of a length of miles long impossibly heavy power line to the lighthouse on the distant point—what the shark eventually bites into and electrocutes itself with. Even a writer of Searl’s talent must have hung his head in despair at such Herculean incredulity. But he plunges bravely ahead despite the laughable images: “It was black, shiny and as thick as his upper leg. How he and a few teenage kids had got it from the bottom, he had no idea.”
Nor clearly did Searls.
Some genius in Hollywood, maybe?
JAWS 2 is one of those weirder than life scenarios only Hollywood could concoct: a movie tie-in book that’s actually better than the movie on which it’s based which is worse than the movie before it, which is better than the original book. It’s complicated.
As anyone who wasn’t off the planet for the last 30 years knows, author Peter Benchley wrote a novel called JAWS, all about a big, hulking shark dining on the locals of a Long Island resort town in the summer of 1973. Benchley’s book, incredibly, was inspired by the true events of a big hulking shark (or sharks, depending your theory) dining on the locals off the beach and in a creek off Matawan, New Jersey, in the summer of 1916. No one is yet sure of the exact breed of the real-life culprit, but Benchley chose a Great White for his tale because that was the then-presumed offender of the 1916 killings. It’s generally accepted now that the real killer was a Bull Shark owing to its abilities to navigate and survive fresh water estuaries like the brackish Matawan creek. If people were afraid to go into the water after seeing the 70’s movie, a dark fin cruising an innocent-looking 1916 neighborhood creek must have been beyond traumatizing.
JAWS the novel was published in hardcover with success in 1974 by Doubleday. Before that, however, unknown young director Stephen Spielberg got hold of the book’s galleys on the Universal lot and pleaded the producers to let him helm the film. The paperback sales released in tandem with the film helped bolster an already gigantic hit. And you know La-La land: “If they liked it once, they’ll love it twice.” So JAWS 2 was green-lit. Actor Roy Scheider reportedly begged Universal not to make him appear in the sequel, not surprisingly, but a contract is a contract. The plot surrounds the wholly improbable idea of yet another enormous shark snacking on the good folks of Amity Island (read: Martha’s Vineyard), mostly its adolescent population. Directed without an ounce of finesse by Jeannot Szwarc, this is an instance where you’re actually rooting for the shark to eliminate the obnoxious teens. Strangely IMDb lists the writers of this mess as Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb, who also penned the screenplay of the original. But the tie-in novel of JAWS 2 credits Howard Sackler and Dorothy Tristan. Given the dubious distinction between the two, I’d bet on the latter. At any rate, Hank Searls was invited to make sense of the whole thing in novel form.
A move-tie novel assignment is almost always a thankless task. There’s little original glory in it. Published in 1978 as a PB original (tie-ins always are) by Bantam, I can only assume a superb writer like Searls took the job for pocket money; he’d already had a reasonable hit with his own Overboard (Norton) the year before. One can readily see, however, why both H’wood and publishing brass might think Searls the go-to guy for such a venture; he was seasoned screenwriter, a WWII Navy pilot who knew his watery stuff and who even lived on a ketch in the South Pacific at the time. But with such a bad film (or script) to work from, adapting the film must have seemed doggedly tedious. Maybe Searls—who does follow the film’s nothing plot, adding some padding of his own—was simply determined to buck the averages. Whatever the case, his novel is the only good thing that came out of anything surrounding the sequel.
If Searls’ book has any drawbacks it may be in trying to live up to its vivid first chapter. In the movie’s opening, a couple of divers we don’t care about stumble upon the wreckage of the Orca, Quint’s original not-big-enough-ship, now sunk somewhere off Long Island Sound. While taking pictures of each other near the canted icon, they get attacked by--what else? In a virtuoso display of how words can be far more potent than images, Searls turns a predictable prologue into a heart-stopper by taking us into the hearts and minds of the victims as well as the internal workings of the shark itself, wrapping all this in a green world of cold, murky twilight with verisimilitude as vivid as your worst bad dream. It begins the moment the two divers—lawyer and doctor part-owners of a Hatteras powerboat—don their wetsuits and slip into the water to start the final downward journey of their lives:
"Halfway down the anchor-line the doctor paused. His panting, amplified in his regulator, was earsplitting. He was sure his partner, descending in a green flowering of bubbles 10 feet below him, could hear every gasp. Clinging to the half inch rope he tried to relax…he could not understand the apprehension that was making him pant.
"The strobe light flared, turning everything momentarily white. All at once he heard a sound like a subway train, fast approaching from his rear. His partner, dancing on sand as he tried to balance in the current, wound his camera, then stopped. He stared at something approaching from above and behind the doctor. His mouthpiece fell from his face.
"The doctor, startled, began to turn but instinctively hunkered down instead, clinging to a broken plank. His eyes were riveted on his companion. A great bubble soared from his partner’s mouth. The lawyer threw up an arm to protect himself…the green surface light faded. An enormous bulk, descending like a gliding jet, swept by, a foot above the doctor’s head, blotting out the dancing sunlight. It seemed to pass forever. The last of the shape became a tail, towering taller than himself. It swished once, almost sweeping him loose and blotting his view of the partner in a cloud of bottom-silt and mud. There was silence. The barrel clanged. The doctor clung to the plank, peering into the settling murk. He could hear only his own tortured breathing. He was terrified of the loudness of it, beckoning whatever it was back to the spot…One of his partner’s diving fins bounced past, heading to sea on the tidal current…"
The beauty, of course--the deftness--is in revealing no visceral imagery at all, only the imagined horror of it. In his great book THE SILENT WORLD, Jacques Cousteau describes being underwater as so quiet “you couldn’t hear a whale swim up behind you,” so I can’t credit Searl’s subway sound of the attacking shark. But I don’t dispute it either; you can’t write that well about the ocean depths without having experienced them. But it gets better—or worse, if you’re the poor doctor. His partner gone, and something still lurking about, he must return to the surface and the safety of the boat. We feel the terrified rattle of his nerves right down to our fingertips during the course of a few minutes journey that feels to the terrified swimmer like hours…
"He eased his head from the water. The Hatteras slapped at anchor hardly a hundred feet away…carefully, he slithered toward the boat. He hardly broke the water. Once he stopped and glided, gazing straight down. He saw nothing but shafts of emerald light lancing the depths below. He shivered suddenly. Deep in his soul he felt another onrush of terror. He quickened the beat of his fins. One of them plopped loudly, and then the other, but he had less than 30 feet to go. He could no longer stand the dragging pace. With 20 feet to go, he was sprinting, thrashing recklessly, breathing in enormous chest-searing gulps. All at once, 10 feet from the boat, he felt a bump and a firm, decisive grasp on his left femur some three inches above his knee. It was surprising but not at all violent…He dipped his mask, looking down. He was amazed to see half a human leg, swathed in neoprene, tumbling into the depths…"
Brrrrr! Great stuff!
The film features a segment involving a young girl parasailing, being plucked off the ocean surface and set down again like a bit of living catnip to tempt the pursuing shark. Searls wisely dispenses with such gimmickry in his book by foregoing the sky antics and letting water skis and shark alone be tension enough. All this is framed from the POV of the horrified husband driving the speedboat that pulls his hapless skiing wife. With terse prose choppy as the waves around them, Searls milks the scene for every ounce of nail-biting suspense. If the panicked husband can just get that ski boat back to shore in time:
"A hundred yards behind her an enormous, lazy fin was beckoning. She did not see it, and while he stood frozen in horror, he saw it move, in a leisurely manner, up their trail. “Dee!” he screamed. She smiled at him over the water and took her hand off the towbar, waving him ahead. The fin was coming up on her now, weaving across their dying wake. It was simply gigantic. He jammed the throttle forward, way too fast, catching her off balance…in a moment he was afraid she would pitch headfirst into the wake…she was on the ski now and rising. He stood erect, searching their wake for the fin. The thing must have dived, that was it, he had fooled it.
"Now all he had to do was head for the beach: no fish like that would go into shallow water…he scanned the beach for a safe place…gently, his eye on his wife, he began a sweeping curve toward the cottage. She was weaving again, jumping the wake each time, exuberantly. He signaled her to take it easy, simply to ski, finally slowed the boat so that she couldn’t do it at all, and then saw the fin again, coming up fast astern…"
Does Searls have time for deep emotional insights and titanic literary themes? Hey, this is a tie-in novel. You’re on board for the thrills and if you’re not on board, grab that Tolstoy you never got around to. Is there more character weight and revelatory catharsis in his stand alone Overboard?--you bet, and that novel ends with a shockingly poetic punch you won’t soon forget it. What Hank Searls delivers in JAWS 2 is a high speed read with surprising resonance, themes and descriptions that linger in the mind and on into our dreams. He could have tossed it off, sure, but he chose to go the other way: make pulp profound. At times he succeeds well beyond the call of duty.
In truth there are passages in JAWS 2 that are every bit as good as anything I’ve read by the author. I’ve given that considerable deliberation. Is this a case of a really good writer getting out of his own way, going with first-gut instincts and turning a quick paycheck into a mini-masterpiece of suspense? I don’t know. Sadly, his next sojourn in the saga, JAWS 4 (or was it JAWS 4.0?—I can’t keep up) is a less satisfying one. By then, attempting to novelize an idea no longer remotely novel may have proved beyond even Searls’ gifts.
A hint of this future futility comes in JAWS 2 when the author is expected to follow the movie’s preposterous script at its most ludicrous. Fending off the shark from a small craft, Brodie and a gang of adolescents are trying to haul up the anchor when its flutes become hooked on something below. Together they somehow heave the ‘something’ up—which turns out to be part of a length of miles long impossibly heavy power line to the lighthouse on the distant point—what the shark eventually bites into and electrocutes itself with. Even a writer of Searl’s talent must have hung his head in despair at such Herculean incredulity. But he plunges bravely ahead despite the laughable images: “It was black, shiny and as thick as his upper leg. How he and a few teenage kids had got it from the bottom, he had no idea.”
Nor clearly did Searls.
Some genius in Hollywood, maybe?
October 3, 2018
I'm not a fan of 1980s cinema. Too many "PG" films from that time betray their rating, and some of the movies from the decade of excess--specifically Vision Quest and Satisfaction--are among the worst I've ever seen. Still, this was in a Reader's Digest volume, so, I gave it a chance...
...and I still hated it. If you have no interest in seeing the movie, like me, then don't bother with the novelization.
...and I still hated it. If you have no interest in seeing the movie, like me, then don't bother with the novelization.
September 21, 2022
Well written and engaging but massively lacking in people getting eaten by sharks.
August 5, 2021
3.5 stars rounded down for Goodreads. There are a lot of good things about this book, but a few things that I wish were different. I do think it was a compelling story overall, but what it boils down to is...I wanted WAY MORE shark attack scenes!
The book is definitely a nice follow up to the novel Jaws by Benchley and even references some of the first book's plot points, like Ellen's affair with Hooper. From what I remember, I think I like this sequel better than the original Jaws -- although, it is difficult to actually gauge that as I read it over 15 years ago!
My favorite part of this book is that we get to dive into the shark's psyche, and I thought the reasoning behind her attacks made sense -- of course a pregnant shark would be ravenous and go after everything and anything! Plus, there's a great connection between this shark and the shark from Jaws, the original novel.
I would advise readers to expect lots of side story elements -- the mafia, of course, is once again a part of the story as it was in the first book as well. If you can handle all the extra, slower story points and are a Jaws fan, then you may have a good time with this like I did. In my opinion, Jaws 2 is definitely a leisurely yet fun summer read!
The book is definitely a nice follow up to the novel Jaws by Benchley and even references some of the first book's plot points, like Ellen's affair with Hooper. From what I remember, I think I like this sequel better than the original Jaws -- although, it is difficult to actually gauge that as I read it over 15 years ago!
My favorite part of this book is that we get to dive into the shark's psyche, and I thought the reasoning behind her attacks made sense -- of course a pregnant shark would be ravenous and go after everything and anything! Plus, there's a great connection between this shark and the shark from Jaws, the original novel.
I would advise readers to expect lots of side story elements -- the mafia, of course, is once again a part of the story as it was in the first book as well. If you can handle all the extra, slower story points and are a Jaws fan, then you may have a good time with this like I did. In my opinion, Jaws 2 is definitely a leisurely yet fun summer read!
April 5, 2025
Could’ve been worse
June 21, 2018
**1/2
So, what was I really expecting from a novelization of "Jaws 2"? Certainly not a book on the same level as Peter Benchley's classic original--but, perhaps something a little more exciting than this adaptation by Hank Searls.
Searls can't own the blame for this thing, however. The novelization is based on an early draft of what eventually became the blockbuster action-horror hit of 1978. Clearly, some heavy re-writing was done, as the plot of this book only somewhat resembles that of the film.
The novelization is much more about the town of Amity, the relationships of its residents to one another, and less about a killer shark. Which is fine, except that these relationships aren't all that compelling. The Mafia subplot from Benchley's novel is continued here (it's mentioned in neither film), and there are some interesting moments there, but overall the book doesn't invest enough time in that story.
Chief Brody is concerned about the future of his town; business has been OK lately, but no one's quite forgotten "The Trouble" of either two or four years ago (the timeline bounces back and forth between the two, Searls seemingly unable to decide when exactly the original shark attacks occurred).
As in the book, a gun is fired on the beach, resulting in Chief Brody fighting to keep his job. Only, in this version, instead of Brody himself maniacally firing bullets into a school of bluefish he mistakes for a great white shark, we get a vacationing city cop being arrested by the chief for shooting a baby seal. The cop's friends back home make grumblings about disrupting Amity's plans for a new casino. This gets back to the Mafia man who vacations in Amity and who's also putting up money for the casino.
So all that's going on, and at the same time a shark is attacking divers one or two at a time. But no one realizes the shark is here. I mean, no one who isn't eaten. Shark scenes are few and far between; it isn't until the third act that Brody even becomes aware there IS a shark. I feel like some good shark-human tension is missing here.
When folks do suspect a shark, each person's first thought seems to be, "But I thought Brody killed the shark!" That's right, everyone considering the possibility of a marauding shark suspects not that a second killer shark has hit Amity, but that it's the same one from two (or four) years back.
Ridiculous. Not as ridiculous as "Jaws: the Revenge," but still, pretty damn.
So, what was I really expecting from a novelization of "Jaws 2"? Certainly not a book on the same level as Peter Benchley's classic original--but, perhaps something a little more exciting than this adaptation by Hank Searls.
Searls can't own the blame for this thing, however. The novelization is based on an early draft of what eventually became the blockbuster action-horror hit of 1978. Clearly, some heavy re-writing was done, as the plot of this book only somewhat resembles that of the film.
The novelization is much more about the town of Amity, the relationships of its residents to one another, and less about a killer shark. Which is fine, except that these relationships aren't all that compelling. The Mafia subplot from Benchley's novel is continued here (it's mentioned in neither film), and there are some interesting moments there, but overall the book doesn't invest enough time in that story.
Chief Brody is concerned about the future of his town; business has been OK lately, but no one's quite forgotten "The Trouble" of either two or four years ago (the timeline bounces back and forth between the two, Searls seemingly unable to decide when exactly the original shark attacks occurred).
As in the book, a gun is fired on the beach, resulting in Chief Brody fighting to keep his job. Only, in this version, instead of Brody himself maniacally firing bullets into a school of bluefish he mistakes for a great white shark, we get a vacationing city cop being arrested by the chief for shooting a baby seal. The cop's friends back home make grumblings about disrupting Amity's plans for a new casino. This gets back to the Mafia man who vacations in Amity and who's also putting up money for the casino.
So all that's going on, and at the same time a shark is attacking divers one or two at a time. But no one realizes the shark is here. I mean, no one who isn't eaten. Shark scenes are few and far between; it isn't until the third act that Brody even becomes aware there IS a shark. I feel like some good shark-human tension is missing here.
When folks do suspect a shark, each person's first thought seems to be, "But I thought Brody killed the shark!" That's right, everyone considering the possibility of a marauding shark suspects not that a second killer shark has hit Amity, but that it's the same one from two (or four) years back.
Ridiculous. Not as ridiculous as "Jaws: the Revenge," but still, pretty damn.
September 7, 2009
Strangely, this is kinda good. What can I say, I'm a JAWS geek. Only indirectly related to the movie, it's based on a screenplay which wasn't produced (alas). Better even than Benchley's original, with creepy underwater scenes with the shark & the terror it engenders in other sea creatures. Brody's characterization is solid; he's guilt-stricken thinking it's the first shark & that he didn't actually kill it...
July 10, 2017
I'd give this one two-and-a-half stars.
This novelization is actually based on the unproduced Dorothy Tristan draft of Jaws 2 (when her husband John D. Hancock was still attached to direct the project, before he was replaced by Jeannot Szwarc and the script rewritten -- and heavily re-conceptualized -- by Carl Gottlieb), so you're getting a very different story than the one seen in the finished film; I'd go so far to say it really only bears nominal resemblance to the movie. That's both a good thing and a bad thing: good in that at least you're getting an entirely different experience (much like Peter Benchley's Jaws vis-à-vis Steven Spielberg's Jaws were), but bad in that the Gottlieb iteration is a much stronger, more focused treatment of the same basic plot (not perfect, mind you, but better).
I'll say this: Hank Searls does an excellent job with the material he was given to work from. He's a very evocative writer with an expert's grasp on maritime activity, be it boating, diving, and even getting into the POV of the shark itself! I daresay he was a stronger writer at this point than Benchley, who exhibited a bad habit of mixing the perspectives of different characters in the course of a single scene. (Read my review of the original Jaws here.)
Searls also attempts, with surprising success, to reconcile some of the differences in Benchley's Jaws versus Spielberg's Jaws, so that even though this book is based on a script for a sequel to the film, it works in its own right as a direct sequel to the novel (for the most part). Case in point: Many characters who appeared only in Benchley's book (like the postmistress and the hardware-store owner and Mayor Vaughan's secretary) return here in varying degrees of prominence, despite not being included in either movie.
Also, the novel took place in a fictional Long Island township along the South Fork, whereas the movie -- shot on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts -- was set on a small island in an intentionally unidentified state (could be New York, but could be New England, too). Searls establishes his Amity as a Long Island township -- not an island in its own right someplace else -- just as it had been in Benchley's iteration.
Furthermore, incidents from the novel that were omitted from the movie but could've plausibly happened off-screen (like Ellen Brody's affair with Matt Hooper) are referenced in an attempt to further rectify differences between the two versions. And contradictory information that is utterly irreconcilable -- for instance, Brody has a completely distinct backstory in the movie from the source material -- simply goes altogether unaddressed, leaving it up to the reader to decide which incarnation he prefers.
Searls skillfully crafts the novelization to operate as both a sequel to the original novel and the movie, leaving only a few instances of contradiction that couldn't be accommodated; for instance: that Brody has three sons in the novel yet only two in the movies, and that Larry Vaughan skips town at the end of the book, yet remains mayor in Jaws 2 (though it's not completely outside the realm of possibility he could've returned once things cooled down for him -- the trouble he was in with the mafia, that is).
(The book, I should note, is not without its own discrepancies, alternatingly referring to the events of the original story as "two years ago" and "four years ago," depending. And this error doesn't just pop up once, either.)
But despite Searls' deft handling of the descriptive passages, the characterization, and the inconsistencies between the literary and cinematic renditions of Jaws, he was still handcuffed by the flaws of Tristan's screenplay (which were apparently so evident that the producers replaced the screenwriter and restructured the story during preproduction).
The chief issue with this unproduced permutation of Jaws 2 is that there are two different stories being told that have virtually no connection to one another. On the one hand, you have the mafia moving in on Amity (buying up real estate, the market for which has never sufficiently rebounded since the first shark scare, with plans to set up a casino and revitalize the area), with Chief Brody investigating a crooked cop from the NYPD whom he suspects of accidently shooting a pair of water-skiers. (Funny how after wisely jettisoning the mafia subplot from the first Jaws, Tristan and Hancock decided to incorporate it into the sequel! What an inexplicably bizarre creative choice...) Then, on the other hand, you've got the pregnant mama shark moving in on Amity (and Searls gives us lots of scenes from not only her perspective, but the POV of the baby sharks in utero!).
Here's where all that becomes problematic, though: Brody spends the lion's share of the story on an investigation into the mafia in Amity, completely unaware that there's a shark prowling the waters off his beach! In fact, virtually no one is aware of the presence of the great white till the last sixty or seventy pages! And when they do become wise to it, their first assumption is that the shark from the original Jaws either A) somehow survived, or B) Brody lied in the first place about killing it! Huh? Wouldn't the more logical assumption be -- I dunno -- that it's simply another f*cking shark?! But, no -- everyone just assumes it's the same shark, "back from the dead." That's such a weird and illogical choice on the part of the writers. For that reason, I grew impatient with this book in its last hundred pages, .
What happens instead is this: So, much like Benchley's Jaws, far too much page real estate is devoted to things occurring on land that have nothing to do with the problem at hand: that a killer shark has staked a claim in the waters off Amity. And what we're thusly left with is a Nelson DeMille Long Island mob story on the one hand, a Jaws sequel on the other, and never do the twain satisfactorily meet.
Which is why Gottlieb's shooting script, though hardly on par with the primal simplicity of the classic original, wisely did away with all that extraneous nonsense and focused the plot on a single problem: There's another shark in Amity, no one wants to deal with it, and Brody -- stull suffering from PTSD from his experiences the first time around -- alienates everyone in town in his obsessive pursuit of the beast. Simple and focused.
So this novelization, in the end, is a developmental artifact of a Jaws sequel that evolved into something quite different than what was originally envisioned. I assumed Hancock and Tristan approached this project by trying to create a more complex, grounded portrait of Amity, and not have to resort to "bigger and more elaborate shark scares." I certainly understand the thought process there -- the shark in the Jaws 2 movie is just a relentless leviathan that attacks everything (even helicopters!) -- and wouldn't it be more interesting to not take the sensationalistic approach?
Unfortunately, however, this was a monster movie -- a monster sequel -- and "bigger and more elaborate scares" were the reason audiences came back. So, though they may not have created a masterpiece, Szwarc and Gottlieb wisely got this story back on track by stripping it down to its Monster in the House basics. This book merely represents a version of a sequel that probably was best left unproduced under any circumstances, in any incarnation. But, hey -- at least it's better than the third and fourth Jaws films, right?
This novelization is actually based on the unproduced Dorothy Tristan draft of Jaws 2 (when her husband John D. Hancock was still attached to direct the project, before he was replaced by Jeannot Szwarc and the script rewritten -- and heavily re-conceptualized -- by Carl Gottlieb), so you're getting a very different story than the one seen in the finished film; I'd go so far to say it really only bears nominal resemblance to the movie. That's both a good thing and a bad thing: good in that at least you're getting an entirely different experience (much like Peter Benchley's Jaws vis-à-vis Steven Spielberg's Jaws were), but bad in that the Gottlieb iteration is a much stronger, more focused treatment of the same basic plot (not perfect, mind you, but better).
I'll say this: Hank Searls does an excellent job with the material he was given to work from. He's a very evocative writer with an expert's grasp on maritime activity, be it boating, diving, and even getting into the POV of the shark itself! I daresay he was a stronger writer at this point than Benchley, who exhibited a bad habit of mixing the perspectives of different characters in the course of a single scene. (Read my review of the original Jaws here.)
Searls also attempts, with surprising success, to reconcile some of the differences in Benchley's Jaws versus Spielberg's Jaws, so that even though this book is based on a script for a sequel to the film, it works in its own right as a direct sequel to the novel (for the most part). Case in point: Many characters who appeared only in Benchley's book (like the postmistress and the hardware-store owner and Mayor Vaughan's secretary) return here in varying degrees of prominence, despite not being included in either movie.
Also, the novel took place in a fictional Long Island township along the South Fork, whereas the movie -- shot on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts -- was set on a small island in an intentionally unidentified state (could be New York, but could be New England, too). Searls establishes his Amity as a Long Island township -- not an island in its own right someplace else -- just as it had been in Benchley's iteration.
Furthermore, incidents from the novel that were omitted from the movie but could've plausibly happened off-screen (like Ellen Brody's affair with Matt Hooper) are referenced in an attempt to further rectify differences between the two versions. And contradictory information that is utterly irreconcilable -- for instance, Brody has a completely distinct backstory in the movie from the source material -- simply goes altogether unaddressed, leaving it up to the reader to decide which incarnation he prefers.
Searls skillfully crafts the novelization to operate as both a sequel to the original novel and the movie, leaving only a few instances of contradiction that couldn't be accommodated; for instance: that Brody has three sons in the novel yet only two in the movies, and that Larry Vaughan skips town at the end of the book, yet remains mayor in Jaws 2 (though it's not completely outside the realm of possibility he could've returned once things cooled down for him -- the trouble he was in with the mafia, that is).
(The book, I should note, is not without its own discrepancies, alternatingly referring to the events of the original story as "two years ago" and "four years ago," depending. And this error doesn't just pop up once, either.)
But despite Searls' deft handling of the descriptive passages, the characterization, and the inconsistencies between the literary and cinematic renditions of Jaws, he was still handcuffed by the flaws of Tristan's screenplay (which were apparently so evident that the producers replaced the screenwriter and restructured the story during preproduction).
The chief issue with this unproduced permutation of Jaws 2 is that there are two different stories being told that have virtually no connection to one another. On the one hand, you have the mafia moving in on Amity (buying up real estate, the market for which has never sufficiently rebounded since the first shark scare, with plans to set up a casino and revitalize the area), with Chief Brody investigating a crooked cop from the NYPD whom he suspects of accidently shooting a pair of water-skiers. (Funny how after wisely jettisoning the mafia subplot from the first Jaws, Tristan and Hancock decided to incorporate it into the sequel! What an inexplicably bizarre creative choice...) Then, on the other hand, you've got the pregnant mama shark moving in on Amity (and Searls gives us lots of scenes from not only her perspective, but the POV of the baby sharks in utero!).
Here's where all that becomes problematic, though: Brody spends the lion's share of the story on an investigation into the mafia in Amity, completely unaware that there's a shark prowling the waters off his beach! In fact, virtually no one is aware of the presence of the great white till the last sixty or seventy pages! And when they do become wise to it, their first assumption is that the shark from the original Jaws either A) somehow survived, or B) Brody lied in the first place about killing it! Huh? Wouldn't the more logical assumption be -- I dunno -- that it's simply another f*cking shark?! But, no -- everyone just assumes it's the same shark, "back from the dead." That's such a weird and illogical choice on the part of the writers. For that reason, I grew impatient with this book in its last hundred pages, .
What happens instead is this: So, much like Benchley's Jaws, far too much page real estate is devoted to things occurring on land that have nothing to do with the problem at hand: that a killer shark has staked a claim in the waters off Amity. And what we're thusly left with is a Nelson DeMille Long Island mob story on the one hand, a Jaws sequel on the other, and never do the twain satisfactorily meet.
Which is why Gottlieb's shooting script, though hardly on par with the primal simplicity of the classic original, wisely did away with all that extraneous nonsense and focused the plot on a single problem: There's another shark in Amity, no one wants to deal with it, and Brody -- stull suffering from PTSD from his experiences the first time around -- alienates everyone in town in his obsessive pursuit of the beast. Simple and focused.
So this novelization, in the end, is a developmental artifact of a Jaws sequel that evolved into something quite different than what was originally envisioned. I assumed Hancock and Tristan approached this project by trying to create a more complex, grounded portrait of Amity, and not have to resort to "bigger and more elaborate shark scares." I certainly understand the thought process there -- the shark in the Jaws 2 movie is just a relentless leviathan that attacks everything (even helicopters!) -- and wouldn't it be more interesting to not take the sensationalistic approach?
Unfortunately, however, this was a monster movie -- a monster sequel -- and "bigger and more elaborate scares" were the reason audiences came back. So, though they may not have created a masterpiece, Szwarc and Gottlieb wisely got this story back on track by stripping it down to its Monster in the House basics. This book merely represents a version of a sequel that probably was best left unproduced under any circumstances, in any incarnation. But, hey -- at least it's better than the third and fourth Jaws films, right?
March 3, 2020
3 and a half stars actually. The book is really, really different then the movie. I knew that as I have read this book a long time ago, but dont remember anything about it except it dealt with the mafia somehow.
What I've read so far, It deals with Brody investigating 2 divers that disappeared, a boat explosion, (both of these are in the book and movie). However, while Brody is cruising slowly on the beach looking for any kind of sign of the divers, he catches a visitor shooting at a baby seal. Brody does his cop thing and tells the visitor to drop it and arrests the guy. Brody then gets the news that there was a boat explosion and gets the feeling that maybe guy with gun had caused some other things besides shoot at seals.
The visitor, Charlie Jepps, being a cop himself tries to explain himself but Brody isn't buying it. This gets complicated however as Jepps knows some higher ups and he may bring problems to legislation to try to legalize gambling and of a casino being built to bring back business back to Amity because of "The Trouble" they had 4 years ago.
There's also a side that 2 years ago Mayor Vaughn wanted a local mafia guy to buy property for the casino to be built, but Brody shot the mayor down on that by threatening to resign. Another guy did buy the property but Brody finds out later that guy, Peterson borrowed money from the same local mafia guy, Moscotti.
There are also side stories as with the movie but not with the teens as the movie decided to go. A camera was found by the diver's site that might prove different of what happened to the divers. Brody takes the film in to be developed as with the movie, but the developer sees what is on the film thinks Brody actually lied about killing the shark 4 years ago decides to cover it up by giving a ruined film to Brody and wants out of Amity.
Ah, we finally get a side of the teens, Mike Brody and Larry Vaughn Jr. Mike is making out with a local girl and Vaughn Jr is spying on them with another teen. Mike finds out and chases Jr in the water unaware there's something is lurking in the water. At the same time, a navy rescue helicopter is still looking for any sign of the divers, sees the ruckus in the water as Mike is practically drowning Jr for spying. Mike stops because the helicopter gets closer to investigate what is going on. Mike waves as if nothing is wrong and the helicopter continues. After Mike and Jr leave that same helicopter has a little trouble with the sonar ball in the water and crashes. There's also a little side of the survivor and the ship that is out searching for him but we know what happens next (burp).
The last I've read, the navy is investigating what happened to the helicopter, finds out Mike might have witnessed the helicopter before the crash, and Sean Brody catches a ride from Moscotti, the mafia guy. Oh oh, Chief Brody, better forget about pursuing Jepps everyone tells him including Vaughn mainly.
Oh boy, really different then the movie as the movie became more of a teen slasher movie with the shark as the slasher, not with a knife but with teeth. If they were going to remake Jaws use the Jaws 2 book story, that would be very different. Just forget it Universal Pictures leave it alone.
Now that I am finished, there were 2 shootings, one with a shotgun literately blowing someone's head off. Another one near the end of the book. I know, has nothing to do with a shark in the water. On page 266, Brody finally sees the shark and the ending of the book is like the movie but Brody does not coax it to the wire. It literally attacks the sail boats and snags the wire while attacking and end of story. That's where I liked the movie better.
What I've read so far, It deals with Brody investigating 2 divers that disappeared, a boat explosion, (both of these are in the book and movie). However, while Brody is cruising slowly on the beach looking for any kind of sign of the divers, he catches a visitor shooting at a baby seal. Brody does his cop thing and tells the visitor to drop it and arrests the guy. Brody then gets the news that there was a boat explosion and gets the feeling that maybe guy with gun had caused some other things besides shoot at seals.
The visitor, Charlie Jepps, being a cop himself tries to explain himself but Brody isn't buying it. This gets complicated however as Jepps knows some higher ups and he may bring problems to legislation to try to legalize gambling and of a casino being built to bring back business back to Amity because of "The Trouble" they had 4 years ago.
There's also a side that 2 years ago Mayor Vaughn wanted a local mafia guy to buy property for the casino to be built, but Brody shot the mayor down on that by threatening to resign. Another guy did buy the property but Brody finds out later that guy, Peterson borrowed money from the same local mafia guy, Moscotti.
There are also side stories as with the movie but not with the teens as the movie decided to go. A camera was found by the diver's site that might prove different of what happened to the divers. Brody takes the film in to be developed as with the movie, but the developer sees what is on the film thinks Brody actually lied about killing the shark 4 years ago decides to cover it up by giving a ruined film to Brody and wants out of Amity.
Ah, we finally get a side of the teens, Mike Brody and Larry Vaughn Jr. Mike is making out with a local girl and Vaughn Jr is spying on them with another teen. Mike finds out and chases Jr in the water unaware there's something is lurking in the water. At the same time, a navy rescue helicopter is still looking for any sign of the divers, sees the ruckus in the water as Mike is practically drowning Jr for spying. Mike stops because the helicopter gets closer to investigate what is going on. Mike waves as if nothing is wrong and the helicopter continues. After Mike and Jr leave that same helicopter has a little trouble with the sonar ball in the water and crashes. There's also a little side of the survivor and the ship that is out searching for him but we know what happens next (burp).
The last I've read, the navy is investigating what happened to the helicopter, finds out Mike might have witnessed the helicopter before the crash, and Sean Brody catches a ride from Moscotti, the mafia guy. Oh oh, Chief Brody, better forget about pursuing Jepps everyone tells him including Vaughn mainly.
Oh boy, really different then the movie as the movie became more of a teen slasher movie with the shark as the slasher, not with a knife but with teeth. If they were going to remake Jaws use the Jaws 2 book story, that would be very different. Just forget it Universal Pictures leave it alone.
Now that I am finished, there were 2 shootings, one with a shotgun literately blowing someone's head off. Another one near the end of the book. I know, has nothing to do with a shark in the water. On page 266, Brody finally sees the shark and the ending of the book is like the movie but Brody does not coax it to the wire. It literally attacks the sail boats and snags the wire while attacking and end of story. That's where I liked the movie better.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 2, 2024
Jaws 2 is a novel written by Hank Searls based off the screenplay by Howard Sacklet and Dorothy Tristan. The book was originally released in 1978.
Set four years after “The Trouble”, a new Shark has arrived off the coast of Amity. This new shark is pregnant and ravenous with hunger and is one of the largest Great Whites to have ever swam in the oceans. The shark’s presence largely goes unnoticed as all the attacks and incidents look like other maritime accidents: drunken divers go missing, a speedboat pilot accidentally shoots a flare into his engine, a military helicopter conducting sonar experiments snags its payload underwater. By the time the people of Amity realize a shark has returned, will it be too late?
I wasn’t expecting much from this screenplay adaptation but I enjoyed it just as much, if not more, than the original book. I have not yet watched the movie Jaws 2 yet (that will be quickly taken care of) but I expect it will follow the original’s course in cutting out a lot of the town storylines in favor of more shark action. The two books flesh out the town and its inhabitants, especially Police Chief Brody. I have especially like the mafia ties in both books. I did find it weird that there is no mention of the characters Quint or Hooper by name and even when the characters are brought up, it’s offhand remarks that don’t recognize their heroic actions.
My one complaint is that the climax feels rushed. By the time people realize there is a new shark threat, there is only about 50 pages left in the book, and the shark is taken out pretty easily. I still found it to be a very enjoyable book that held up well in the 50ish years since its release.
Set four years after “The Trouble”, a new Shark has arrived off the coast of Amity. This new shark is pregnant and ravenous with hunger and is one of the largest Great Whites to have ever swam in the oceans. The shark’s presence largely goes unnoticed as all the attacks and incidents look like other maritime accidents: drunken divers go missing, a speedboat pilot accidentally shoots a flare into his engine, a military helicopter conducting sonar experiments snags its payload underwater. By the time the people of Amity realize a shark has returned, will it be too late?
I wasn’t expecting much from this screenplay adaptation but I enjoyed it just as much, if not more, than the original book. I have not yet watched the movie Jaws 2 yet (that will be quickly taken care of) but I expect it will follow the original’s course in cutting out a lot of the town storylines in favor of more shark action. The two books flesh out the town and its inhabitants, especially Police Chief Brody. I have especially like the mafia ties in both books. I did find it weird that there is no mention of the characters Quint or Hooper by name and even when the characters are brought up, it’s offhand remarks that don’t recognize their heroic actions.
My one complaint is that the climax feels rushed. By the time people realize there is a new shark threat, there is only about 50 pages left in the book, and the shark is taken out pretty easily. I still found it to be a very enjoyable book that held up well in the 50ish years since its release.
July 13, 2022
Overall, I would give this a 3.2. Good read, but not great. It is vastly different than the movie (as the 1st book was). I did enjoy the fact that the story lines were not just based on the shark and the kids. Also, fun to get chapters from the sharks POV as well as other wildlife and characters. The mob ties were a bit of a stretch for me though lol. I also found that the shark was almost the second story though to the rest of the people in the town. The 1st Jaws book was really good; however I found this one lacking overall though. Just doesn't pull you in the same way.
May 10, 2016
Great suspense thriller. The movie was good but the book is much better. Recommended
September 2, 2019
Not enough shark.
July 21, 2020
Being tasked with the burden of writing a follow up to one of the most successful horror novels of all time can be no easy feat to pull off but Hank Searls does a fairly decent job at continuing Peter Benchley's seminal shark tale. JAWS 2 (based on a discarded screenplay) picks up four years after the original and focuses on the financial death of Amity (an ironically named town considering that everyone in it except Martin Brody is an asshole) and how plans made to entice tourists back to the once popular vacation getaway are thwarted by a bigger, meaner and hungrier shark.
Searls manages to maintain the dark, seedy tone of the 1974 predecessor and the death scenes are just as gruesome and terrifying. The characters are very well fleshed out and even seals and porpoises are given personalities and minds of their own. What works a lot less for me this time around is a bunch of unnecessary subplot filler (loaded with confusing dialogue) which slows the story down to a grinding halt at times. Hell, even the cover of the book is bogged down in exposition....
JAWS 2
A COMPLETELY NEW NOVEL BY HANK SEARLS
BASED ON THE SCREENPLAY BY HOWARD SACKLER AND DOROTHY TRISTAN
INSPIRED BY PETER BENCHLEY'S "JAWS"
Guys, you had me at JAWS 2. Sure, it's not safe to go back in the water but don't worry because you're going to fall asleep before you get there anyway. Oh and this is the way the book ends, not with a bang but with a meh.
Admittedly, I am a much bigger fan of what Carl Gottlieb did with the material but this cheaply cranked out forty two year old beach read does have its moments of fun and at the very least offers an interesting "What if?" take on the franchise's history.
September 26, 2023
This, for me, is a 3 star book. I enjoyed it however, there is NOT enough Jaws-ing going on in this one.
Like the first classic novel, this is not as good as the movie adaptation. Also, this novelization was based off an early draft of the script, so it is VERY different from the book.
It is kind of a sequel to the first novel and the first movie all in 1. For instance, Brody still internally deals with thoughts of Ellen maybe cheating on him, which was a Key sub plot in the first novel but never in the movie. There is no mention of hooper being alive either, unlike the movie version and sequel movie. The ending of the movie is a classic (copied on the old Universal Jaws ride) and this novel did bring back that same ending, although it was accidental and not because of Brody's quick thinking.
The Kids in the book are not 18 year olds in a slasher fest. They are 14 and 14 young teens and some elements of the sailing and the Shark attacking the small sail boats are featured at the end.
The shark doesn't really get to Sharking until the end of the book. We open up with the divers by the Orca wreck like the movie and we end almost the same with the sail boats carnage, but the middle of this novelization takes the route of the first novel and DIVES heavily into a mafia subplot and tainted money, opening a casino to save the town and Larry Vaughn having reasons to proceed and Real estate reasons and crooked Flushing cops and Albany politicians and stupid townies hiding Shark evidence etc.
I wish it was more like the movie with more Jaws action but still a solid read.
Like the first classic novel, this is not as good as the movie adaptation. Also, this novelization was based off an early draft of the script, so it is VERY different from the book.
It is kind of a sequel to the first novel and the first movie all in 1. For instance, Brody still internally deals with thoughts of Ellen maybe cheating on him, which was a Key sub plot in the first novel but never in the movie. There is no mention of hooper being alive either, unlike the movie version and sequel movie. The ending of the movie is a classic (copied on the old Universal Jaws ride) and this novel did bring back that same ending, although it was accidental and not because of Brody's quick thinking.
The Kids in the book are not 18 year olds in a slasher fest. They are 14 and 14 young teens and some elements of the sailing and the Shark attacking the small sail boats are featured at the end.
The shark doesn't really get to Sharking until the end of the book. We open up with the divers by the Orca wreck like the movie and we end almost the same with the sail boats carnage, but the middle of this novelization takes the route of the first novel and DIVES heavily into a mafia subplot and tainted money, opening a casino to save the town and Larry Vaughn having reasons to proceed and Real estate reasons and crooked Flushing cops and Albany politicians and stupid townies hiding Shark evidence etc.
I wish it was more like the movie with more Jaws action but still a solid read.
January 31, 2022
This book was better than I was expecting, the movie (which I thought was just OK) was all about another shark haunting the little town of Amity.
But the book has a lot more layers to the story, there is of course the shark, which is much bigger that the first, but there is also the mob trying to get a foot hold into the small town, and all the complex relationships between the towns people, it also had sections of the story from the point of view of the shark, which I liked a lot.
This book was more drama that horror, but it was still excellent.
But the book has a lot more layers to the story, there is of course the shark, which is much bigger that the first, but there is also the mob trying to get a foot hold into the small town, and all the complex relationships between the towns people, it also had sections of the story from the point of view of the shark, which I liked a lot.
This book was more drama that horror, but it was still excellent.
April 20, 2018
En odottanut tältä kirjalta mitään muuta kuin jonkinlaista aivopuudutusta ja kenties toivottuja merifiiliksiä, joten yllätyin positiivisesti kun tämä olikin varsin luettava. Ihmisten pikkumaisuus ja poliittiset kähminnät tuntuivat varsin realistisilta.
Joitain kielellisiä kökköyksiä tuli vastaan, mutta yllättävän vähän. Mitä niihin tulee, "kultainen kultahammas" oli kieltämättä melkoinen kultakimpale.
Joitain kielellisiä kökköyksiä tuli vastaan, mutta yllättävän vähän. Mitä niihin tulee, "kultainen kultahammas" oli kieltämättä melkoinen kultakimpale.
September 9, 2024
While this has more to do with Brody trying to solve a series of possible murders and missing persons incidents and less to do with the shark, it’s nevertheless a fantastic character study of both the chief and Amity itself. The few scenes with the shark, however, are intense and the ending was nail-biting. While I’m glad they didn’t use this screenplay for the movie, it works really well as a novel. And it’s a much better book, in my opinion, than Benchley’s original Jaws novel.
July 20, 2025
Too much of the B and C plots take up the vast majority of what is supposed to be a shark story. Though this is a nice improvement over the last book because at least the other plots are story builders that lead to something.
That being said I quite like how it all comes together for the shark filled finale. I just wish it had gotten there quicker because it felt like too much padding in the book to get us to what the purpose was. Still a quick and enjoyable enough read though.
That being said I quite like how it all comes together for the shark filled finale. I just wish it had gotten there quicker because it felt like too much padding in the book to get us to what the purpose was. Still a quick and enjoyable enough read though.
May 8, 2020
Something of an anomaly, the novelization of Jaws 2 is better than the film it's based on AND the original Benchley novel.
It's based off an unused draft of the script, and reads more like a sequel to the first novel than the original film due to it referencing moments from that book and not the Spielberg adaptation.
This is a cut above most film novelizations.
It's based off an unused draft of the script, and reads more like a sequel to the first novel than the original film due to it referencing moments from that book and not the Spielberg adaptation.
This is a cut above most film novelizations.
November 7, 2024
Had 10% more racism and 45% more shark than the first one.
Want to read
November 6, 2023In this sequel to Jaws that still makes you afraid to go back in the water, Michael Brody, his brother Sean, and his friends go on a sailing hangout until they were terrorized by another Great White Shark, and Micheal's friends must protect themselves from getting killed before Brody arrives.
The plot is this: four years after Chief Brody killed the Great White Shark, the two scuba divers went to the deep ocean and they discover the wreckage of the Orca from the first movie, suddenly a great white shark appears and the two divers are both killed leaving their camera feel into the ocean floor, and the camera's whereabouts remain unknown. On Amity Island, Brody goes to the grand opening at the brand new Holiday Inn hotel with over $15,000 dollars during the opening. That night, a shark swims through the shore of Amity Island. The next day, a group of sailors are having a great time, until the incident happens where a skier named Terry is caught by a shark, killing her, and the boater attempts to burn the shark, the creature using a gas tank and flare gun, but the boat explodes, killing her and severely burning the right side of the shark's face. Shortly afterward Brody, his family, and their officers had no idea what causes the explosion. And they investigate the site where the boat exploded earlier.
The next day, the locals find a dead Orca whale lying on the shore, and they report it to the Police Department. Brody starts to realize that there is another shark. At the Town Hall, Brody confirms that there is another shark, but the Mayor doesn't believe what he is saying. In response to the Mayor's disbelief, Brody leaves the Town Hall in a fuss. At the beach, he investigates a piece of the destroyed boat that contains a dead driver from a fatal boat explosion caused by a shark, a day earlier. That night, Brody puts poison in their bullets so he could possibly kill the shark, but the next day he shoots the ocean, which turns out to be just a school of bluefish, the visitors are mad at Chief Brody for sounding a false alarm. That night, Brody looks over the shopper's pics that the camera was found, and he goes to the Town Hall, but many of the officials and locals still don't believe that there is a shark.
Early the next day, Michael Brody disobeys his job and father's orders, and he takes Sean Brody to sneak out from their home silently so they can go sailing with their friends, along with Marge, and they headed out to six boats into the middle of the ocean passing through a boat with scuba divers, where they go through underwater, but was caught by a shark, nearly killing the scuba diver as they went up to the same boat and they recover and injury man, who witness a shark. Meanwhile, a group of friends were enjoying themselves in the middle of the ocean, not knowing that the shark is heading toward the six boats. Chief Brody eventually wakes up and he mistakenly thought that Michael Brody took his orders, and we cut back to Eddie and, where he encounters a shark, and he tries to get back into the boat, but he was dragged down into the sea, killing him instantly.
Chief Brody witnesses an ambiance with an injured scuba diver, and reports that his two sons were on their boats, along with his friends, Brody realized this, and they quickly moved out to find his sons, along the way, they came across a boat with Tina, looking very scared and she tells them that there's a shark in the ocean. Meanwhile, Mike's friends were still having a fun time, until a shark starts to attack the whole group of friends, capsizing most of the boats, and the shark nearly eats Mike alive. The Coast Guard marine helicopter that Brody contacted arrives to tow them to shore, unfortunately, the shark comes back again and the shark kills the pilot alive, and the shark spins around the boats, and Sean falls to another boat, along with Marge, and they attempted to get back onto another capsizing boat, but the shark suddenly appears one last time and eats Marge alive while she saves Sean from getting killed.
Meanwhile, on Amity Island, they already took Tina from the sea, and Chief Brody is still at the ocean sea as the storm approaches, Michael friends were still lost, as they hang Sean's capsized boat to safety. They witness a rocky island as Brody arrives, and they found Michael at their boat, meanwhile, Mike's friends attempt to move, they witness wires in the sea, as they founded Chief Brody, who is searching for Mike's friends throws the rope to the boats until a shark suddenly comes back. and destroys the rope, and they throw the rope again, but they caught a wire and the shark suddenly comes back and a group of friends managed to get to the island as Chief Brody has an idea to distract the shark by banging on the electrical wires. He succeeds at distracting the shark. As a result of the banging, the shark comes back and Chief Brody and the shark have a final confrontation when Brody makes the shark bite the wires causing it to get electrocuted and burned to a crisp. After being burned to a crisp, the shark dies and sinks into the water. After Chief Brody finally kills the shark, he and the other people celebrate the killing of the shark and they swim back to the shark.
While most sequels is not as good as the first, this one still has suspenseful scenes that are still faithful to the first film, though less than the original film. What's more, it still brings back a majority of things from the original film, like the returning characters (except for Hooper).
Most of the characters from the first movie return, while the newer character gave some decent performances.
The quotes are still memorable such as "Alright, you big bastard, I've got something for ya' now! Come on, open wide! SAY "AHH"!"
The shark in the second film is pretty decent, as it almost doesn't have any effects around the shark.
Roy Scheider and as well their performances from the first movie, despite the fact that Scheider doesn't want to appear in this film, are still the most highlighted characters in the first film, and they still a good job in their acting roles.
Lorraine Gary also still did a good job portraying as Ellen Brody.
Murray Hamilton is still great as Mayor Larry Vaughn.
This is one of few good films of director Jeannot Szwarc.
The new characters in this film, while some can be very annoying, the teenage characters are somewhat fun and interesting.
There are some good suspenseful action sequences during the climax, especially the final electric wire feed to the shark, which was pretty awesome.
Amazing cinematography.
John Williams still delivers an excellent score, just like he did in the first movie, and Star Wars, as he still retained the Jaws theme from the first movie.
There are tons of good references that it managed to connect to the first film, such as a scene where you can see a wrecked Orca boat from the first film after Brody stopped the Shark during the final battle in the first movie.
The main poster shows a shark opens her wide mouth as the shark jumps toward a surfing female looks very creepy, and it was well designed by Lou Feck.
At least the storyline can be a lot of sense, and the sequel did at least try to have something new, there are some new things that are not in the original film, unlike the last two Jaws movies.
You still don't get to see the shark that often, due to the mechanical shark still not working like during the first film.
The story itself is can be pretty similar to the original, as is the case with most sequels.
The pacing can be a bit sluggish at times, as is the case with most sequels.
Some of the new characters weren't their best, and not as memorable from the first film, as is the case with most sequels.
There's an infamous scene where the shark's mouth has a machine inside. Yes, really.
There were several scenes where female characters scream in bloody murder, and it gets really annoying. It annoys the hell out of me the worst, come to think of it.
Roy Scheider didn't want to star in the film, but was contractually obligated to do so.
The plot is this: four years after Chief Brody killed the Great White Shark, the two scuba divers went to the deep ocean and they discover the wreckage of the Orca from the first movie, suddenly a great white shark appears and the two divers are both killed leaving their camera feel into the ocean floor, and the camera's whereabouts remain unknown. On Amity Island, Brody goes to the grand opening at the brand new Holiday Inn hotel with over $15,000 dollars during the opening. That night, a shark swims through the shore of Amity Island. The next day, a group of sailors are having a great time, until the incident happens where a skier named Terry is caught by a shark, killing her, and the boater attempts to burn the shark, the creature using a gas tank and flare gun, but the boat explodes, killing her and severely burning the right side of the shark's face. Shortly afterward Brody, his family, and their officers had no idea what causes the explosion. And they investigate the site where the boat exploded earlier.
The next day, the locals find a dead Orca whale lying on the shore, and they report it to the Police Department. Brody starts to realize that there is another shark. At the Town Hall, Brody confirms that there is another shark, but the Mayor doesn't believe what he is saying. In response to the Mayor's disbelief, Brody leaves the Town Hall in a fuss. At the beach, he investigates a piece of the destroyed boat that contains a dead driver from a fatal boat explosion caused by a shark, a day earlier. That night, Brody puts poison in their bullets so he could possibly kill the shark, but the next day he shoots the ocean, which turns out to be just a school of bluefish, the visitors are mad at Chief Brody for sounding a false alarm. That night, Brody looks over the shopper's pics that the camera was found, and he goes to the Town Hall, but many of the officials and locals still don't believe that there is a shark.
Early the next day, Michael Brody disobeys his job and father's orders, and he takes Sean Brody to sneak out from their home silently so they can go sailing with their friends, along with Marge, and they headed out to six boats into the middle of the ocean passing through a boat with scuba divers, where they go through underwater, but was caught by a shark, nearly killing the scuba diver as they went up to the same boat and they recover and injury man, who witness a shark. Meanwhile, a group of friends were enjoying themselves in the middle of the ocean, not knowing that the shark is heading toward the six boats. Chief Brody eventually wakes up and he mistakenly thought that Michael Brody took his orders, and we cut back to Eddie and, where he encounters a shark, and he tries to get back into the boat, but he was dragged down into the sea, killing him instantly.
Chief Brody witnesses an ambiance with an injured scuba diver, and reports that his two sons were on their boats, along with his friends, Brody realized this, and they quickly moved out to find his sons, along the way, they came across a boat with Tina, looking very scared and she tells them that there's a shark in the ocean. Meanwhile, Mike's friends were still having a fun time, until a shark starts to attack the whole group of friends, capsizing most of the boats, and the shark nearly eats Mike alive. The Coast Guard marine helicopter that Brody contacted arrives to tow them to shore, unfortunately, the shark comes back again and the shark kills the pilot alive, and the shark spins around the boats, and Sean falls to another boat, along with Marge, and they attempted to get back onto another capsizing boat, but the shark suddenly appears one last time and eats Marge alive while she saves Sean from getting killed.
Meanwhile, on Amity Island, they already took Tina from the sea, and Chief Brody is still at the ocean sea as the storm approaches, Michael friends were still lost, as they hang Sean's capsized boat to safety. They witness a rocky island as Brody arrives, and they found Michael at their boat, meanwhile, Mike's friends attempt to move, they witness wires in the sea, as they founded Chief Brody, who is searching for Mike's friends throws the rope to the boats until a shark suddenly comes back. and destroys the rope, and they throw the rope again, but they caught a wire and the shark suddenly comes back and a group of friends managed to get to the island as Chief Brody has an idea to distract the shark by banging on the electrical wires. He succeeds at distracting the shark. As a result of the banging, the shark comes back and Chief Brody and the shark have a final confrontation when Brody makes the shark bite the wires causing it to get electrocuted and burned to a crisp. After being burned to a crisp, the shark dies and sinks into the water. After Chief Brody finally kills the shark, he and the other people celebrate the killing of the shark and they swim back to the shark.
While most sequels is not as good as the first, this one still has suspenseful scenes that are still faithful to the first film, though less than the original film. What's more, it still brings back a majority of things from the original film, like the returning characters (except for Hooper).
Most of the characters from the first movie return, while the newer character gave some decent performances.
The quotes are still memorable such as "Alright, you big bastard, I've got something for ya' now! Come on, open wide! SAY "AHH"!"
The shark in the second film is pretty decent, as it almost doesn't have any effects around the shark.
Roy Scheider and as well their performances from the first movie, despite the fact that Scheider doesn't want to appear in this film, are still the most highlighted characters in the first film, and they still a good job in their acting roles.
Lorraine Gary also still did a good job portraying as Ellen Brody.
Murray Hamilton is still great as Mayor Larry Vaughn.
This is one of few good films of director Jeannot Szwarc.
The new characters in this film, while some can be very annoying, the teenage characters are somewhat fun and interesting.
There are some good suspenseful action sequences during the climax, especially the final electric wire feed to the shark, which was pretty awesome.
Amazing cinematography.
John Williams still delivers an excellent score, just like he did in the first movie, and Star Wars, as he still retained the Jaws theme from the first movie.
There are tons of good references that it managed to connect to the first film, such as a scene where you can see a wrecked Orca boat from the first film after Brody stopped the Shark during the final battle in the first movie.
The main poster shows a shark opens her wide mouth as the shark jumps toward a surfing female looks very creepy, and it was well designed by Lou Feck.
At least the storyline can be a lot of sense, and the sequel did at least try to have something new, there are some new things that are not in the original film, unlike the last two Jaws movies.
You still don't get to see the shark that often, due to the mechanical shark still not working like during the first film.
The story itself is can be pretty similar to the original, as is the case with most sequels.
The pacing can be a bit sluggish at times, as is the case with most sequels.
Some of the new characters weren't their best, and not as memorable from the first film, as is the case with most sequels.
There's an infamous scene where the shark's mouth has a machine inside. Yes, really.
There were several scenes where female characters scream in bloody murder, and it gets really annoying. It annoys the hell out of me the worst, come to think of it.
Roy Scheider didn't want to star in the film, but was contractually obligated to do so.
September 5, 2025
Jaws 2 picks up several years after the events of the original Jaws. Amity Island has recovered from the first shark attacks, and Chief Martin Brody is once again trying to keep peace in a community that depends heavily on tourism. With summer approaching, developers and local officials are eager to promote Amity as a safe, family-friendly destination, brushing off Brody’s lingering anxieties about the possibility of another shark.
Those fears prove justified when a series of strange incidents occur offshore—missing divers, wrecked boats, and unexplained injuries. Brody suspects another great white has taken up residence near the island, but his warnings are ignored by both the town council and developers, who don’t want another panic.
The shark’s presence escalates into a direct threat against Amity’s teenagers, who spend their days sailing and water skiing just off the coast. When the predator strikes at sea, Brody is forced back into a fight he never wanted to face again.
The story has the same mix of suspense and small-town politics, and I thought Hank Searls did a good job expanding on the characters and giving more depth to Amity Island.
The beginning takes its time, but I liked the extra detail about the town and the build-up before the shark attacks really take over. When the action picks up, it delivers that classic tension I was hoping for. I also thought the side plots and character moments made it feel richer than the movie version.
Those fears prove justified when a series of strange incidents occur offshore—missing divers, wrecked boats, and unexplained injuries. Brody suspects another great white has taken up residence near the island, but his warnings are ignored by both the town council and developers, who don’t want another panic.
The shark’s presence escalates into a direct threat against Amity’s teenagers, who spend their days sailing and water skiing just off the coast. When the predator strikes at sea, Brody is forced back into a fight he never wanted to face again.
The story has the same mix of suspense and small-town politics, and I thought Hank Searls did a good job expanding on the characters and giving more depth to Amity Island.
The beginning takes its time, but I liked the extra detail about the town and the build-up before the shark attacks really take over. When the action picks up, it delivers that classic tension I was hoping for. I also thought the side plots and character moments made it feel richer than the movie version.
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