******THREE BARRELS OF SPOILERS!******

From Drive-In to IMAX

For clarity, this will not be a review of “JAWS” (1975), which I reviewed the hell out of five years ago, and revisited again earlier this year for the movie’s official 50th anniversary celebration back in June. This column is about rewatching a movie I’ve seen countless times in multiple theatrical screenings, TV broadcasts and in various physical media formats, but in a different way–on the largest IMAX screen in Southern California.

My lifelong obsession with Steven Spielberg’s “JAWS” began as an eight year-old kid going to a SoCal drive-in theater one night in the summer of 1975 with my family in our green Volkswagen mini-bus. We wanted to see the new movie that inaugurated the summer blockbuster. “JAWS” was the first movie I remember waiting more than two hours in a line to see. Even the drive-in parking lot was filled to capacity, and wouldn’t allow new cars until after the previous screening let out. While we waited to get in, we had parked along the street. My dad, my sister and I then walked over to the fence surrounding the drive-in, where we could see the movie, but without sound. This was before drive-in movie sound was broadcast through car stereos or streamed on portable devices. Sound came through clunky speakers perched onto car windows, so I remember hearing a faint trickle of the movie’s Oscar-winning sound only from the occasional convertible. In the end, my first “JAWS” screening amounted to seeing the final third of the movie over a fence in near silence before falling asleep about halfway through the film after we finally got into the lot. I fell asleep not because I was bored. I fell asleep because I was eight years old, exhausted, and it was super late. So, I first saw “JAWS” in chunks–like the pieces of chopped, bloody fish ladled from Brody’s chum bucket…

Later, my family would return a few weeks later to see “JAWS” properly, in a walk-in theater. This was the first time I saw the movie in its entirety, and in sequence. Lesson learned; drive-ins are great for cheapie exploitation flicks, but not for A-list movies. 24 years later, I’d marry a fellow “JAWS” geek, and we’ve since seen the movie at least twice theatrically in revival screenings and countless more times on laserdisc, DVD and Blu-Ray. Just this year alone, I’ve seen the movie twice on Blu-Ray using my Epson HD digital projector and a 7 ft/2 meter screen, which makes for a decent theatrical approximation (it’s also a nice way to introduce “JAWS” to a first-timer). However, this year marked the movie’s 50th anniversary. It needed something more.

As an avid follower of, and occasional contributor to TheDailyJaws.com, I learned the movie was returning to cinemas in late August, in both IMAX and 3D presentations. My wife and I both wear glasses, so seeing “JAWS” in 3D was a nonstarter for us. I hate wearing clunky 3D glasses over my glasses. While I understand that the 3D up-conversion is excellent for this 50 year-old film, I’m something of a purist when it comes to watching altered movies. I don’t mind minor sound mix changes or color timing issues, which often vary from print to print. What I don’t like is fundamentally altering the experience of the movie and its story. I still cringe whenever I see Luke, Ben and the droids pull into the revamped, cartoonish Mos Eisley in the “Star Wars” Special Edition (let’s not get into that ‘Greedo shooting first’ nonsense, either). Fortunately, there was another option; “JAWS” was also showing in IMAX 2D.

As geographic luck would have it, my wife and I live only about 20 minutes from one of the largest IMAX screens in Southern California, located in the Regal Cinema IMAX Movie Palace, at the Ontario Mills mall in Ontario, California. The Regal Ontario IMAX auditorium screen is massive. Having seen other movies there (“Avatar,” “The Dark Knight Rises,” “Interstellar”) my wife and I knew this would be a true IMAX screening, not the ‘faux-MAX’ in other multiplexes, which only open the tops and bottoms of a standard screen to give additional height. The Ontario Regal’s IMAX is the real deal. With that in mind, we booked a screening of “JAWS” in IMAX 2D last Sunday afternoon.

“JAWS” Synopsis (quoted from an earlier column)

For those living under a rock for the past 50 years, Steven Spielberg’s “JAWS” is the story of the fictional  New England island resort community of “Amity,” whose residents are plagued with the arrival of a massive great white shark. The freakish, 25-foot shark has been sampling the local cuisine (aka random swimmers at the beach), and disrupting the island’s vital tourist trade.  Police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) meets with resistance from Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) and other locals in his efforts to close the beaches (effectively shutting down Amity tourism) and to hire a colorful local fisherman named Quint (Robert Shaw) to kill the shark.  

Bringing in expert ichthyologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) from the mainland to better understand what Amity is dealing with, Martin is ultimately successful in gaining Mayor Vaughn’s cooperation only after a very public fatal shark encounter during the town’s 4th of July beach festivities. The final act sees Brody and Hooper setting out in Quint’s ramshackle fishing boat Orca to kill the shark—effectively transforming the movie from a resort town thriller into a high seas adventure; a 20th century Moby Dick.

Taking quite a few welcome liberties with Peter Benchley’s somewhat depressing 1974 book, the movie ends with the shark literally exploding, after Brody improbably (but very cinematically) fires his rifle into a compressed oxygen tank clenched within the shark’s… JAWS.

The End.

“You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Screen…”

It’d been a while since I’d seen a movie in this particular auditorium, and I’d forgotten just how crazy big this screen was; approximately three stories high, measuring at 67 feet tall (20 meters) by 91 feet wide (27 meters). I had to climb a couple short flights of stairs (with a dodgy right knee) just to get to our row. If I’d remembered the dimensions of this auditorium better, I might’ve booked seats a row or two higher, so I wouldn’t have had to crane my neck up slightly to take in the full height of this screen.

Unlike the posh, motorized recliners in most higher-end multiplex theaters today, this IMAX auditorium seats are a bit smaller, and they don’t recline as fully, since the rows between seats in this auditorium are narrower. All the same, they’re comfortable enough. The Ontario Mills mall first opened back in 1996, and this was the first IMAX theater in the area. So except for a few cosmetic flourishes added for Regal’s RPX rebranding, this is the original IMAX auditorium, and still the largest IMAX screen in SoCal.

As I hobbled up to our seats, my wife got into the spirit of this “JAWS” anniversary screening. She returned from the snack bar with a couple of “JAWS” collectibles; an ingenious metal popcorn bucket (which features a map of the fictional Amity Island lining its interior) as well as my diet soda, which came in a plastic cup shaped (and aged) to look like one of the yellow barrels from Quint’s fishing vessel Orca. These surprise accessories really got me into the spirit of this event. Just when I swore to myself that my collecting days were over…

After we got comfy, the lights dimmed, and the ads and previews began at 4 pm sharp. I have to admit, the pandemic really spoiled my wife and I. We got so used to screening movies at home, that our rare trips to the theater feel lacking in a few creature comforts, such as random restroom breaks, or skipping ads/previews to get on with the show. Luckily, there wasn’t as much preamble for this screening. So after about 10 minutes, we saw the familiar 1970s Universal Pictures logo, complete with hazy, Van Allen radiation belts circling a cloudless Earth…

The sound of whales underwater (just before composer John Williams’ pulse-pounding tempo) during the opening credits of “JAWS” was very immersive. Sound pumped clearly and cleanly from the massive IMAX speakers. Best of all, the movie was kept in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio, with no cropping at the sides to give it artificial height for IMAX. The IMAX screen’s slight concaving shape already gave the movie an illusion of added height–making the screen’s massive dimensions feel properly utilized. It was also nice to see genuine film grain in a movie again. Granted, the IMAX projection itself used a digital intermediary, but that digital copy was faithfully struck from honest-to-goodness film. Film grain creates a warmer aesthetic that I personally enjoy (and miss) seeing in movies.

Note: Ryan Coogler’s recent “Sinners” (2025) was also shot on genuine film stock; a rarity these days. The last time we saw a movie projected in authentic, 65mm IMAX film stock (with no digital intermediary) was back in November of 2014, when the IMAX in Ontario Mills screened Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar.” There’s something oddly nostalgic and comforting about seeing fine grain texture and even occasional streaks and reel-change pops from projected film. The detail in IMAX film stock is something digital video hasn’t quite superseded, at least in traditional movie theaters.

“JAWS” is also filled with deliberately cacophonous, overlapping dialogue (like a Robert Altman movie), which gives it an almost documentary feel when compared to most blockbusters these days. The town hall scene, for example, is a virtual cyclone of voices talking over each other, yet the sound mix remained clean enough so that it didn’t degenerate into so much noise. I was also surprised how Quint’s scratching of the town hall chalkboard gave me genuine grima during this screening (there’s no adequate English word for the sensation). As much as I enjoyed the scale of seeing “JAWS” in IMAX, the sound of “JAWS” in IMAX was deeply impressive as well. This was fitting for a movie that won Oscars for Best Sound and Best Musical Score (John Williams).

While dialogue dominates the movie’s soundtrack, the final act offered a few surprises as well. For example, the floors and seats shook as the shark rammed the Orca during its nocturnal attack. The final, wildly cinematic explosion of the shark (“Smile, you son of a bitch!”) had a booming resonance as well. For clarity, this was not a 4D presentation, either; our non-motorized seats weren’t designed to shake, or some other ridiculous distraction–they rumbled from the movie itself. “JAWS” has enough innate power and filmmaking expertise to not require gimmicks like mechanically-rocking seats, fog, or 3D glasses. It’s a movie, not a rollercoaster. The ‘accidentally perfect’ craftsmanship poured into every frame of “JAWS” is plenty.

As we left the theater, my brain kept replaying that contrastingly serene John Williams music that plays over the end credits, as we see an exhausted Brody and Hooper off in the distance; washing ashore on the beaches of Martha’s Vineyard. It makes for a perfect cooldown after that rousing finale. Rewatching “JAWS” in IMAX 2D, it’s so clear how it ushered in the era of the summer blockbuster; “JAWS” epitomizes solid, crowd-pleasing filmmaking to the point where it transcends the medium to become lasting pop art. Even 50 years later, its impact on our culture is permanent, like Quint and Hooper’s scars.

On a personal note, this Regal Theater (formerly Edwards) was also where my wife and I first met 28 years earlier–amongst a group of mutual friends–to see “Batman & Robin” on its opening weekend in the summer of 1997. I won’t lie; “Batman & Robin” was one of the worst movies I’ve ever paid money to see, yet it also yielded the best thing to ever happen to my life. Now, 28 years later, my wife and I (both passionate “JAWS” fans) finally saw “JAWS” together in the best possible way that we could. This past weekend finally closed a loop with that misfired drive-in screening over 50 years ago.

For this 50th anniversary of “JAWS,” you might want to consider seeing it in IMAX 2D, if possible. A more authentic and immersive “JAWS” viewing experience would be hard to find. To quote Robert Shaw’s Quint: “This shark? Swallow you whole!”

Where to Watch

As of this writing, “JAWS” is currently on multiple streaming platforms, including Peacock and Netflix. The movie is also still in theaters (again, at the time of this writing) in both IMAX 2D and the up-converted Real 3D versions. Of course, for older geeks like myself who still collect physical media, the movie is also available in DVD, Blu-Ray and 4KBlu-Ray. However you choose to enjoy this timeless classic? Good hunting!