Recap / Film Reroll: Jaws

Well... they do say that two heads are better than one. ^note Picture by Quirderph.

We play through Jaws! Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dumda-dumdadumdadum!

Episodes 9-10 of Film Reroll. Based on the 1975 movie.

When a young woman is found dead after being attacked by a shark, an unlikely alliance is formed between the tough and harsh chief of police Brody, the somewhat unhinged shark hunter/restaurant owner Quint, and the kind-hearted, more reasonable marine-biologist Hooper. Together, they are forced to to face not only a blood-thirsty shark, but also the corruption of Amity Island. It's a dangerous adventure our heroes have set out on, and none of them have a guarantee of getting through it alive...

Starring Jon Miller as Brody, Kara Strait^note  credited as “Pitr Strait” as Hooper, Andy Hoover as Quint (First Appearance), and Paulo Quiros as the Dungeon Master.

Followed by Thelma And Louise.

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Tropes:

• Adaptational Job Change: As a result of Andy trying to voice an angry townsperson during the town meeting scene^note specifically one who owns a pizza stand, which Paulo states he can't as this is Quint's first scene, everyone decides to latch upon the idea that Quint owns a pizza stand on the side.
• Adaptational Villainy: Brody is now a Cowboy Cop who immediately suspects Tom of murder when he wants to file a missing person report, and shows No Sympathy towards Mrs. Kitner when she blames him for the death of her son. The other players comment explicitly that he comes off as a worse villain than the unsympathetic mayor.
• Always Murder: Averted of course, as the antagonist is a shark. However, this attitude does lead to problems In-Universe.
• Ambiguous Situation: Tom is seen riding around with somebody named Chrissie after his one-night partner with the same name was found dead. It is unclear if he just has a thing for people with that name (of either gender), or if he broke into the mortuary and stole her body.
• Artistic License – Biology: Lampshaded. The players admit that the shark in this story is quite different from a real shark. For one thing, it's much harder to kill.
• Behind the Black / Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Variation: After Kara establishes that Tom waited on the other side of a sand dune after Brody and his deputy Jeff discover Chrissie's body, once Jon tries having Tom get arrested, Kara point blank decides Tom had left.
• Bittersweet Ending: Our protagonists defeated Jaws and saved the future of the town, but nobody will ever know it as all three of them died in the process. Also, before leaving to go try and get Jaws, Brody fired his deputy, Jeff.
• Body Horror: How the deaths of Chrissie and Brody are described.
• The Cavalry Arrives Late: Here, Hooper actually manages to call the Coast Guard. However, when they arrive, Jaws has already been killed and so have Brody, Quint and Hooper, leaving only an empty boat for the Coast Guard to find.
• Clear My Name:
  • Tom initially becomes a suspect for the murder of Chrissie, though it becomes clear that it wasn't he — or any other human, for that matter — who did it once her body is discovered.
  • After Hooper phones the Coast Guard, he is suspected of murdering Brody, meaning that he has to catch Jaws to prove his story. It doesn't turn out like that in the end, and the fate of Brody, his crew mates and Jaws becomes a Riddle for the Ages.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Discussed: After Jon (with some prodding from Paulo) decides to close the beaches after Alex Kitner is eaten, Kara points out to Jon how half of the film's plot was to get the beaches closed.
• Cutting the Knot: Right as the group is preparing to leave to go after Jaws, Brody tries to have Jeff come along (as an extra pair of hands would be beneficial), only for Kara to argue that they should just leave him behind. After Brody tries to instead reassign Jeff to watching after the beach^note as Jeff, confused, thinks this means he's getting promoted to Sheriff, he decides to just fire Jeff instead out of impatience.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • Brody made it through the original story alive and well. Here however, he is the first character to die in the climax.
  • Hooper is killed by Jaws while in his diving cage. Incidentally, this is actually closer to his fate in the book.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Both Quint and Hooper die fighting Jaws, the former seriously injuring him and the latter managing to take him down with him.
• Epic Fail: Kara and Andy's attempt to dual-play the coroner runs into some obvious logistical problems as they try to coordinate speaking.
  Andy!The Coroner: (at the same time) Here's the thing. If this were a shark, it would make me stop believing in God!
  Kara!The Coroner: (at the same time) Here's the thing. If this were a shark, it would make me stop believing in sharks!
• Establishing Character Moment: Within moments of meeting with Tom over Chrissie's disappearance, Brody expresses a desire to arrest him.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • When Jon tries to have Brody deny any involvement in the death of Alex Kitner, Paulo points out he gave Brody "Guilt Complex", and that Mrs. Kitner calling him out is triggering it, meaning he does feel guilty for her son's death.
  • When the prospect of Brody's son getting eaten the shark on the Fourth of July becomes a possibility, Jon decides that Brody is going to kill himself if that happens (and thankfully, it doesn't).
• Evil Chef: This version of Quint apparently runs a pizzeria, and claims to serve human meat.
• Evil Laugh: Jon lets out one after being given control of Jaws following Brody’s demise.
• Exact Words: At one point, Quint says that he is "in the middle of a pancake." Kara points out that he never said that he was eating it, and might be using it as a sleeping bag for all they know.
• Final Girl: The players jokingly claim that the boat is this, treating it as the Sole Survivor of the whole ordeal.
• Fun with Homophones: The players point out how "Jaws" is pronounced very much like "Joz," which is also Jocelyn's nickname. One can only imagine the confusion that would have occured if she had taken part in this campaign.
  • Jocelyn actually mentions this name similarity on her website.
    Jocelyn "Joz" Vammer: Call me Joz, like the shark.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Due to his incompetency as Brody, and how he was given Jaws to play as after Brody dies, Jon technically was the real antagonist of the campaign.
• Harmful to Minors: After dealing with Chrissie's death, Brody goes home and tells his wife and child about his day. After Kara expresses shock that he told a kid about it, Jon says he only mentioned there was a death (which even then is a bit too much).
• I Am Not Shazam: Averted In-Universe. The players do acknowledge that the shark is not actually named "Jaws" in the movie, but they call him that anyway.
• Immediate Self-Contradiction: Brody decides to delegate the task of shutting down all of the beaches in Amity to his lone deputy, Jeff... and then immediately reminds him that "beach" doesn't have an R in it.
  Kara: So, you don't trust him to spell the word "beach" without an R, but you trust him to close all of the beaches in a fucking beach town.
• In Spite of a Nail: In a roundabout manner: In the movie, after the coroner confirms that Chrissie was killed by a shark, Brody immediately decides to shut the beaches down, only for the mayor to talk him into reversing the decision. Here, Brody waits until after Alex Kitner is killed by the shark in order to shut the beaches down, as he felt no reason to be concerned over one shark-related death.
• Kick the Dog: Jon repeatedly tries to have Brody arrest Tom over Chrissie's disappearance/death, even after it's clear a shark was responsible.
• Lethal Klutz:
  • Brody accidentally falls off the boat and into the water, leading to his demise.
  • Hooper has the misfortune of grabbing a harpoon just as Jaws hits the boat. He ends up shooting himself in the leg, causing a serious injury.
• Locked Out of the Loop: A major contributing factor to Jon's less-than-ideal bout as Brody is the fact that Jon never saw Jaws before.
• Moral Event Horizon: After Mrs. Kitner slaps Brody at Alex's funeral, Jon briefly attempts to arrest her on the spot. Not only that, but when she calls him out for being indirectly responsible for her son's death by keeping the beaches open, Brody promptly throws both the coroner and the mayor under the bus by saying he had no choice but keep the beaches open.
• Mutual Kill: Hooper and Jaws — the last two living characters — end up killing each other, leaving the campaign without a clear winner.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Thanks to a severely failed Fright Check roll doing the battle with the shark, Brody becomes convinced that the shark is targeting him specifically for indirectly letting it kill Chrissie and Alex Kitner, and accepts his impending demise.
• Narration Echo: Done a couple of times when Paulo announces the result of a perception or skill check, and the relevant player echoes word-for-word as his character telling the other characters what just happened.
• No Sympathy: Jon's immediate reaction to Mrs. Kitner slapping Brody?
  Jon: Alright, well, too bad, she's going to prison. (Andy and Paulo begin laughing) I'm arresting her for assaulting a police officer.
• Not His Sled: Discussed: When Jon asks about the possibility of the shark missing Chrissie during the prologue, Paulo admits that he rolls for certain critical events prior to the start of the campaigns he DMs before any player involvement occurs to see if they still play out, with the event not happening on a Crit Fail.
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: Variation: After Paulo states that Mrs. Kitner has put up a $3000 bounty for the head of the shark that killed her son, Andy is heard laughing in shock as he had briefly forgotten that is an actual plot point in the film.
• Occam's Razor: Tom is trying to file a missing person report for Chrissie, but the only thing he remembers is that he had a one-night stand with her and that she was gone when he woke up. It is Lampshaded that the most likely scenario is that she wasn't attacked or murdered, but simply went home. Tom is either being paranoid or is just using the police to get her phone number and/or address. Of course, genuine or not, his fears turn out to be well-founded.
• Off the Rails: Downplayed. The campaign follows the movie pretty closely, but it has a very different ending. At the end of their Halloween campaign, Paulo explains that this happened because the plot of this movie is strongly connected to the motivation of its characters. Thus, the only part of it which really could change — and did — was the final confrontation with the shark.
• Only Sane Man: Hooper, compared to the corrupt Mayor Vaughn, the unreasonable Brody, the semi-psychotic Quint, the paid-off Coroner and the possibly necrophiliac Tom. He is actually willing to call Brody out on his bad behavior, and he is the only member of the crew of the Orca smart enough to realise that the situation has gotten out of control and call the Coast Guard for back-up.
• Point of Divergence: Because Brody spent too long dealing with the coroner and the mayor, we miss out on Alex Kitner's death scene as Brody only learns about it after the fact.
• Retcon: Downplayed: When Brody confronts a would-be shark hunter, he winds up confiscating some dynamite and an automatic weapon. Paulo only allows the dynamite part to be canon.
• Sanity Slippage: Brody suffers from this during the climax, where he starts believing that Jaws is actually hunting him down to avenge the lives of the people he failed to save from the shark. Then again, if you take Jaws: The Revenge into consideration, he may actually have been partially right.
• Schrödinger's Gun: When Hooper loads his equipment onto Quint's boat, Paulo explicitly allows Kara an unspecified gizmo to be identified later at a plot-appropriate moment. After the expedition's weapons are lost overboard along with the people carrying them, Kara resolves that the gizmo is a spare harpoon gun, which she uses to finish Jaws off.
• Shout-Out:
  • Hooper is sometimes referred to as "Mr. Hooper."
  • When the topic of what the worst thing that could possibly happen comes up, one of the suggestions is to accidentally freeze the kingdom of Arendelle. It also serves as a Call-Back to their earlier campaign.
  • When the players jokingly consider making Tom the Big Bad rather than Jaws, they suggest using "Tom's Diner" as his Leitmotif in place of the iconic Jaws Theme.
• Sore Loser: Kara describes herself as such after the campaign ends, even though it ended on a draw.
  Kara: I feel like the mark of a true sore loser is that they feel like a draw is a lose, and that's how I feel right now.
• Stating the Simple Solution: After Brody learns of Alex Kitner's death, Jon rolls IQ to find out what to do. Paulo then plainly states "You should close the beach."
• Take That!: After tuning into a Captain & Tennille marathon, both Hooper and Brody state Amity's radio station sucks.
• Taking You with Me: Explicitly stated by Jon himself: When the shark reawakens after Hooper manages to fire the poison-tipped spear down its throat, he decides (as a dying action) to bite Hooper as to invoke a Mutual Kill.
• Technology Marches On: Lampshaded: Jon briefly forgot cellphones didn't exist in 1975 when questioning Tom:
  Tom: Look, man, I was, you know, going swimming with my friends, and, you know, Chrissie ran off, I lost track of her, and she never came back!
  Brody: Have you tried- How close are you with Chrissie?
  Kara: Were you about to say "Have you tried calling her cellphone?"
  Jon: Y-yeah.
• This Is Gonna Suck: In response to Brody's aggressive/less-than-professional approach to interrogating Tom, all Kara can say in response is a mortified "You are the worst policeman..."
• Too Dumb to Live: Brody decides to keep the beaches open after confirming Chrissie's cause-of-death, since shark attacks aren't likely to repeat.
  Jon: Well, there was no reason to close the beach earlier.
  Kara: SOMEONE GOT EATEN BY A SHARK!
  Jon: We didn't know that.
  Kara: You knew that!
  Jon: Now we know that.
  Kara: You're the worst cop!
• Took a Level in Badass: Downplayed: While the shark was already a major threat in Paulo's hands as an NPC, once Jon is given the character sheet, Hooper and Quint can't help but notice the shark somehow became smarter.
• Total Party Kill: Unique in that there were four characters — one of them being the antagonist — played by three players, and every single one died.
• Unexpected Character: After Brody dies, Paulo gives Jon Miller a new character to use. It's none other than Jaws himself.
• Voice of the Legion: The Coroner randomly gets this, as Andy and Kara both want to play him.
• Wham Line: Shortly after Brody fails his last death check and dies to Jaws:
  Paulo: So, at this point I will reveal there is a backup character. (hands Jon the character sheet for Jaws)
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Kara is arguably the most upset over Jon Miller's take on Brody, outright calling him "the worst cop" more than once, and even states he's worse than the mayor.
    • It reaches its peak when Brody decides to shift the blame for Alex Kitner's death onto both the mayor and the coroner and claim he was forced to leave the beaches open.
      Kara: (horrified) You are reprehensible...
      Andy: What was the cause of death of the coroner, being thrown under a bus?!
  • Kara is less than pleased when Andy snatches defeat from the jaws of victory and accidentally advocates that Quint was close to the edge of the boat when the shark rammed it, causing Paulo to declare that Quint fell overboard.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: After Jon decides against closing down the beaches after confirming Chrissie was killed by a shark, Kara bluntly asks if he changed characters mid-campaign.
  Jon: Well, you know, shark attacks... It's unlikely to repeat, it's probably a one time thing... Uh, I think... You know, there's no reason to cause a panic.
  Paulo: (bemused) Sure.
  Kara: Did you switch characters to the mayor?

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