The Big Picture Jaws is known to be a lot of things, but perhaps the most widely agreed upon is it being the first Hollywood Blockbuster. But what many fail to see is that Jaws, albeit a commercial vehicle at first glance, shares a lot of characteristics with New Hollywood films. One of these is its reflections on Vietnam, lurking underneath its surface just like its famous shark.
Jaws is undoubtedly one of the most important movies of all time, as it’s commonly credited as being the first blockbuster. It also proved that sometimes, the less we see, the more terrified we are It was an unprecedented success that became the highest-grossing movie of all time and induced mass hysteria until it was leapfrogged two years later by a little movie called Star Wars.
Spielberg Deconstructs the Idealistic View of America With 'Jaws' The second piece of the puzzle is the destruction of Americana in the form of Amity. Born in 1946, Spielberg is quite literally a Baby Boomer, and as audiences saw in the semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans, he grew up in an idyllic small town.