Jaws

[Brew]

young and hungry director
young and hungry shark named bruce

your gonna need a bigger boat

[Jason]

Great, great flick. People forget that this was the biggest movie in the world until Star Wars came and ruined it 1 year later.

[Man in Black]

Jaws definitely had a Star Wars type impact. I wish that they had stayed with the raw magic they captured in that first film. Instead they went all wacky with the sequels in 3D and at the aquariums and stuff. They weren't horrible, but compared to the first film they were a letdown.

I don't know if anyone here is a fan of novels, but I enjoy a good horror book even more than the movies. If you like to read I suggest you check out a series called Meg by Steve Alten. It's about a giant ancestor to the great white called the megalodon. The reason I mention it is that horror novel fans like myself have high hopes for this franchise carrying on the shark movie mantle that Jaws started decades ago... they are making a Meg flick right now. And yes that IS a T-Rex in the shark's jaws on the cover!

[Jason]

Whoa... That book looks interesting. Dinosaurs vs. Sharks?

I haven't seen any of the sequels, I've only seen the greatness of the original, but I've heard terrible, terrible things about the sequels.

[Man in Black]

The Meg book is not exactly about dinosaurs. The intro describes a clash between a T-Rex and the megalodon. It's basically to build the shark up to be a badass much like the croc vs grizzly in the movie Lake Placid or a wrestling squash match. The book is set in modern times and is similar to the first Jaws except these sharks are way bigger.

[Jason]

Lordy. So it's more of a fantasy shark tale?

[Man in Black]

Well, I don't want to give too much away, but megalodons are real sharks they are thought to be extinct. A few scientists believe that there is a chance that they may have survived. The book sort of focuses on that theory. There is a scientist diver that believes a meg was the cause of a deadly attack on the sea floor miles below the surface. So yeah there is an element of scifi, but not really anymore than Jaws. I'd classify it as horror, and that's the section I always get the books from. It gets pretty brutal

Here is a picture I took at a rock and fossil show - the guy at this booth showed us part of his exhibit where he had a meg tooth that fit a wound groove in a humpback whale vertebrae.



This is a meg tooth that I bought that day - that size would be a massive great white, but a baby meg!



And finally, a life-size model of a meg at the San Diego Natural History Museum

[Jason]

Holy! Can you imagine getting bitten by teeth that big?
And wow, I never realized just how large some sharks really are. Breath taking.

[Man in Black]

Dec 5, 2010 21:46:35 GMT -8 Jason said:

Holy! Can you imagine getting bitten by teeth that big?
And wow, I never realized just how large some sharks really are. Breath taking.

I try not to imagine such things ;D

The great whites we have today are plenty big enough. And a big enough reason I don't swim in the ocean

[Jason]

My Dad said he saw a huge hammerhead shark swimming near the surface of the beach when he was young. He swore the sucker was 18 feet. I can't swim, so I don't even take baths.