Jaws 2 and the Strange Art of the Novelization
Words: Phil Heeks
I have not read a great deal of novelizations as I have always had a somewhat snobby attitude towards them. They are a strange beast -
At worst – they are like having a hack writer spend a couple of hundred pages telling you every last detail in a film they’ve seen. If your friends did that, you’d punch them! Legend has it that Michael Avallone knocked out (no more apt choice of words) the Beneath the Planet of the Apes novelization in a single weekend!!!
At best – the writer (Alan Dean Foster is a good example) will flesh out the material, creating his own scenes and moments and the book may also include scenes that didn’t make it to the final cut or which were dropped from earlier drafts, making it an interesting research curiosity for big fans of its filmed counterpart.
Rarest of all is the novelization that is BETTER than its source material! Robert Thurston’s Battlestar Galactica and Battlestar Galactica 2: The Cylon Death Machine are infinitely superior to the film/TV show. They read like “proper†science-fiction novels and contain masses of material not included in their filmed counterparts, much of which is clearly created by Thurston himself.
Which brings us on to the one novelization I have read which is a law unto itself – Hank Searls’ JAWS 2, quite the most fascinating novelization I have ever read.
Why?….. Because it isn’t a novelization of Jaws 2! I will clarify…..
It is actually based on an earlier draft by Howard Sackler and Dorothy Tristan from when original director John Hancock was onboard (he was fired after two weeks).
The “novelization†is 231 pages long. Yet, the only incidents it shares with the film are:
1. Two divers finding the wreck of the Orca and being eaten by the shark (which is heavily embellished and takes up 9 pages).
2. The water-skiing scene (also embellished and taking up just over 5 pages. The driver of the boat is the skier’s husband in the book).
3. The diving class (although the class consists of Mike Brody and friends in this instance and it’s Mike’s close friend who suffers the embolism when surfacing too fast – this scene lasts about 7 pages).
4. The teenagers out on the boats ending in the shark biting the electric cable (although in the book it’s an official race that doesn’t begin until 45 pages from the end of this 231 page book. Also, Brody doesn’t place the cable into the shark’s mouth, the shark bites it as it is suspended on a boat anchor).
The real story in the novelization is Brody struggling to hold onto his job and protect his family in a town about to be infiltrated by the Mafia (with the council’s blessing! The Mafia will bring money to the town, you see.)
In this respect, it’s more a sequel to Benchley’s novel then Spielberg’s film. There’s even a very small reference to the affair between Ellen Brody and Hooper. Also, Ellen always addresses her husband as “Brody†rather than Martin.
I’d argue that it’s a better story than the filmed version and would have made a better film but I can also see why Universal didn’t want to make it. Universal had a huge hit on their hands about a shark terrorising a small town. For the sequel they wanted to play safe and have more of the same and, for a story about a shark attacking a town, the Jaws 2 novelization doesn’t have much shark in it!!!!
In fact, the shark (a female this time, and much bigger than Bruce!) hangs around in the background as some kind of metaphor for what’s really eating the town!
So, all in all, a fascinating read. A Jaws story you’ve never heard before but which contains some familiar elements, aswell as a whole load of unfamiliar ones. But would it have made an authentically “Jawsy†film? I think not.
