Factual error: When Hooper sees the hole in the hull of Ben Gardner's boat, he uses his knife to pry out the shark tooth. The tooth is located at the bottom of the hole, with its flat root side stuck deep in the wood and its pointy side facing up. It is completely impossible for the shark's tooth to become wedged in the wood this way, while he takes a nice bite out of the wood hull. (00:49:15)
Jaws (1975)
Plot summary
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Murray Hamilton, Lorraine Gary, Carl Gottlieb
On Amity Island a young woman disappears after a late-night skinny dip. When her partial body washes up on shore the next morning, Police Chief Martin Brody is certain it's a shark attack and orders the beaches closed. Concerned more about the town's economy than public safety, the medical examiner and mayor pass it off as a 'boating accident, ' and the beaches are reopened 24 hours later. The mayor insists they remain open for the busy and lucrative 4th of July weekend. When a young boy becomes the second victim, his grieving mother offers a reward to whoever catches and kills the shark. Pandemonium erupts when everyone with a boat frantically hunts the shark for the reward. Chief Brody calls in oceanographer, Matt Hooper who examines the remains of the first victim and surmises she was killed by a large shark. "This was not a boating accident!" Meanwhile, several bounty hunters catch a tiger shark. Town officials are satisfied this is the killer, but Hooper is skeptical. He and Brody cut it open to look for human remains. Finding none, they realise the killer is still out there. At night, Hooper and Brody go out on Hooper's boat to search for the shark. They find the half-submerged vessel of a local fisherman. Hooper scuba dives to investigate the wreckage and removes a large great white shark tooth embedded in the hull. A severed human head pops out of the wrecked hull, and a startled Hooper drops the tooth. The mayor discredits their story and keeps the beaches open for the 4th of July. At the beach, Brody's son barely escapes being attacked and another man is killed. Quint, an Ahab-type local character, offers to kill the shark for $10,000. The mayor, finally convinced there's a shark problem, agrees to hire him.
More mistakes in Jaws
Hooper: You know those eight guys in the fantail launch out there? Well, none of 'em are gonna make it out of the harbor alive.
Trivia: Actor Robert Shaw took inspiration from and based his performance of Captain Quint on an eccentric, real-life Martha's Vineyard fisherman named Craig Kingsbury. Steven Spielberg was deeply impressed by Kingsbury, also, and actually cast him in the role of fisherman Ben Gardner. Beyond that, Kingsbury's colorful language around the set was often written into the dialogue of Captain Quint and Ben Gardner.
Question: Instead of going under water and trying to poison Jaws in the shark cage, couldn't he have been harpooned with the poison from the boat just as easy?
Chosen answer: As mentioned in the movie, the posion was in the needle and the shark's hide was too tough for the needle to penetrate. Hooper had to go in the water so that he could get the needle into the shark's mouth, where the flesh was less tough.
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Suggested correction: When Hooper uses the knife to pry to tooth out, it took very little effort, suggesting that the tooth wasn't wedged into that spot, but merely just resting in that spot.
The shark tooth was inserted into the wood by the prop crew with its flat root side down, which would have been impossible to have occurred during the attack on the hull. As to the statement that the tooth was "merely just resting in that spot" then Hooper would not have needed to use the blade to remove it from the wood, plus the fact that since it was underwater it would have floated away during the hours after the attack. But it did not float away, so it must have been at the very least snugly fit into the wood hull. Still impossible.
Super Grover ★
The original mistake says that the root of the tooth was embedded In the wood. Not possible since it should be the sharp end in the wood and the root showing on top (as described in the mistake).
Ssiscool ★