Trivia / Jaws: The Revenge

• Absurdly Short Production Time: This movie took nine months to make from its greenlighting to its release date. Note that it didn't have a script written at all when it was greenlit.
• Blooper: Hoagie infamously re-emerges from the water with a completely dry shirt in one scene. According to Michael Caine, this was because the shot took so long to set up that his shirt dried.
• Christmas Rushed: The film was rushed into production (and had a very rushed pre-production) to meet the Summer 1987 deadline. This Den of Geek article suggested that the whole reason the film was made was to make up for Universal's disastrous Summer 1986 slate led by Howard the Duck.
• Completely Different Title: The film was released in Japan as Jaws 4.
• Creator's Apathy: Hoagie emerges from the water and is instantly dry. This was because Michael Caine's costume dried between long set ups and no one noticed. He decided not to bring it up so he could remain comfortable in the heat and humidity of the Bahamas.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Michael Caine generally prefers not to acknowledge his involvement in the film. As mentioned above, he's never even watched it, but is well aware of its terrible reputation. Universal became aware of that reputation immediately, and embraced it, allowing Steven Spielberg to launch a Take That! to this movie in Back to the Future Part II.
  • Director Joseph Sargent did an interview with the Television Academy in 2006 when he was questioned about making this film. He even admitted in retrospect that the "shark seeking revenge on the Brodys" idea was ludicrous. In another interview, he described the set as a "ticking time bomb" due to the compressed schedule and studio interference, which he said accounted for much of the film's poor quality.
• Creator Killer: Emmy Award-winning director Joseph Sargent (he made the 1974 version of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three) was nominated for the Razzie for Worst Director for his work on the film; he was mostly relegated to TV movies for the remainder of his career. Screenwriter Michael de Guzman likewise spent the rest of his career in television, with no theatrical movie credits before or after this.
• Dawson Casting: 9-year old Judith Barsi as 5-year old Thea Brody. (She had a growth deformity that made her look much younger than she was.)
• Deleted Scene: Here
• Executive Meddling: The film's original ending made a little more sense, but was changed for overseas prints due to the poor performance in theaters. Yes, the impaled shark ending was used in original theatrical prints.
• Focus Group Ending: The original theatrical ending had Jake be eaten by the shark and the shark killed by impalement on the boat's prow. However, test audiences were very disturbed by Jake's death, so he (somehow) survives. They also changed the shark's death to massively exploding for no reason whatsoever when it's impaled. The former is ridiculous, but Word of God has it that while the studio demanded changes, they didn't give the production enough money to re-shoot. (The original intent was the shark to be impaled, die and sink - taking much of the boat with it.)
• Franchise Killer: One of the most infamous examples, and one of the few films on Rotten Tomatoes to have a 0% approval rating. After this attempt to extend the Jaws series was sent to the bottom of the ocean floor, Universal finally stopped making these movies and have not attempted to make a new film.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: As the script was a work-in-progress, Mario Van Peebles wrote most of his own dialogue.
• Missing Trailer Scene: The trailer has a Murderer P.O.V. shot of the shark approaching Amity in the daytime, rather than at night as seen in the movie.
• Money, Dear Boy: Michael Caine only appeared because of it. In an interview given around the time of the movie's release, Caine said that he enjoyed shooting in the Bahamas and working with his costars, particularly Lorraine Gary, but largely viewed the movie as a working vacation. He did later regret being in the Bahamas shooting it instead of picking up his Academy Award for Hannah and Her Sisters when filming ran over schedule (though he also points out that, due to Orion Pictures' sluggish promotion of Hannah, he had little expectation that he'd actually win, otherwise he might have planned his schedule more carefully). Even today he's never even seen the film — but he assures fans that it paid for a lovely house! ^note Though, if it's any consolation, he was able to pick up his second Oscar for The Cider House Rules.
• Orphaned Reference:
  • An early draft of the script (which formed the basis for the novelisation) explained that shark is acting under the influence of a vodooo witch doctor who has a vendetta against the Brody family. The only reference to it is this line from Michael:
  Come on, sharks don't commit murder. Tell me you don't believe in that voodoo.
  • Hoagie's line about doing his laundry refers to a deleted subplot involving him smuggling drugs onto the island. The scenes were shot, then deleted during post-production, because it took away from the film's main premise involving the shark. It's fully detailed in the film's novelization.
• The Other Darrin: Dennis Quaid was asked to reprise his character as Mike Brody but declined.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends:
  • Despite what you may have heard, the reshot ending where the shark explodes was not filmed on a budget of just $75, as the film stock alone would likely have cost at least a hundred times that amount. The $75 figure actually comes from a sarcastic remark made in Jabootu.com's review of the film — though given that the reshot ending made use of a crude wooden boat and a toy shark to depict the shark's demise, it's somewhat understandable how this became such a widespread belief.
  • Another legend related to the reshot ending is that Michael Caine supposedly forgets his character's name and replies "I'm over here!" in response to Ellen calling out "Michael!" (referring to Michael Brody rather than Caine) after the boat sinks. He's actually saying "Come over here", referring to some debris that Hoagie's using to stay afloat.
• Real-Life Relative: Mario Van Peebles' father Melvin Van Peebles has a cameo in the film as Nassau's mayor.
• Refitted for Sequel: The underwater chase scene between Mike and the shark in Revenge was lifted from an early screenplay draft of Jaws 3-D.
• Role Reprise: Lorraine Gary returns as Ellen Brody 9 years after Jaws 2.
• Science Marches On: It turns out that for the great white shark and some of its relatives like the mako, electroreception is a low-priority sense. The zapper device the shark eats would only have caused it to react if it was strong enough to give the shark actual electrical jolts.
• Star-Derailing Role:
  • Although she had been mostly retired from acting for eight years prior to appearing in the film, and gave it up completely after its release, it was still a sad last effort for actress Lorraine Gary, who got a Worst Actress nomination for her performance.
    • One could also argue that she did it as a favor for her husband, Sidney Sheinberg, who was head of Universal Pictures at the time.
  • It was one of many box-office bombs that helped set back Michael Caine's career for a brief time, until he had a Career Resurrection in the late 1990's.
  • Lance Guest had looked like he might have a promising career after playing the title character in The Last Starfighter. After his performance here was soundly trashed by critics for his Dull Surprise acting, he's appeared in a grand total of two theatrically released films.
• Troubled Production: Surprisingly enough, given the previous three movies were hit with this film almost managed to avert this trope... almost. The biggest problem was that Universal fast-tracked it into production to fix a financial rough patch, giving producer-director Joseph Sargent ten months from pre-production to release date. This resulted in a hastily written, hastily filmed production that Sargent later described as "a ticking time-bomb", that while not going over budget still went over the allotted time due to storms and prevented Michael Caine from accepting an Oscar he won for Hannah and Her Sisters. Then the studio demanded the ending be reshot for international releases and home video due to test audiences having a negative reaction to the original US theatrical ending, allegedly refusing to give the production money to do so properly. This resulted in the infamous and widely mocked exploding shark ending, along with a big case of Not Quite Dead from a character last seen being chewed on by the shark.
• Vacation, Dear Boy: Michael Caine said yes to the film the moment he read in the script, "We cut to the Bahamas".
• What Could Have Been: Takes a bite out of a page here.
• Working Title: Jaws: The Return, Jaws 4, Jaws '87.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: Due to the fast-tracked production, the script was barely finished before principal photography started.

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