‘Jaws’ changed movies forever, but Hollywood could still learn from it

By Jake Coyle

Fifty years after “Jaws” sunk its teeth into us, we’re still admiring the bite mark.

Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film, his second feature, left such a imprint on culture and Hollywood that barely any trip to the movies, let alone to the beach, has been the same since.

Few films have been more perfectly suited to their time and place than “Jaws,” which half a century ago unspooled across the country in a then-novel wide release accompanied by Universal Pictures’ opening-weekend publicity blitz. “Jaws” wasn’t quite the first movie to try to gobble up moviegoers whole, in one mouthful (a few years earlier, “The Godfather” more or less tried it), but “Jaws” established — and still in many ways defines — the summer movie.

That puts “Jaws” at the birth of a trend that has since consumed Hollywood: the blockbuster era. When it launched in 409 theaters on June