The terrifying new post from the terrifying No. 1 blog about ‘70s movies and ttrpgs.
We begin a new six-film series at Against the ‘70s called Animal Apocalypses, and we inaugurate it, not with the originally-promised Prophecy, but with a movie I genuinely thought I’d never write about: Steven Spielberg’s legendary, iconic, game-changing Jaws. In order to write about this film, I needed some kind of angle I’d never seen before, and while my researching skills aren’t the best, I think I actually found one.
What is there left to say about Jaws? By my estimation, very little. It’s not hard to find books and documentaries and articles and blog posts and podcasts about how the film was made, the effect it had on the industry, its artistic merit. It’s my favorite movie of all time, full stop. You’d think that would mean I’d have something particularly astute to say about it — you’d think that would mean I can’t shut up about it — but truthfully, I have nothing. It’s a film that’s beyond criticism for me. In fact, I had no intention of ever writing a post about it here, but since it’s part of the Damnation Decade inspiration list, and I want to cover all of those, I felt impelled to weigh on on some aspect of it. But what? After some brainstorming, and some cursory googling, I discovered one part of the movie that’s had little, if anything, written about it.
The end credits.
I really only scratched the surface with this one. I hope someone picks up the thread and runs with it — there’s more to learn there.
On the game side of things, what this section presupposes is what if Cypher System characters had to fight, not the “real” shark from Jaws, but the mechanical shark from the making of Jaws? What if, in fact, it was more like the runaway robot from “The Deepening” episode of Bob’s Burgers?
This is going out Saturday, July 5th, and the Prophecy write-up should be out on Monday. As a famous stage magician once said, bizzy bizzy bizzy!
NEXT TIME, ON AGAINST THE ‘70S:
