If I was Steven Spielberg I would immediately commission JW to write dozens upon dozens of varying themes & suites to be used when, well, ya know…

[JTN 2,048]

I wonder what a Jaws 2 directed by Spielberg would’ve been like. I’m sure that after the huge success of the first film he would’ve made sure that the mechanical shark worked perfectly, and he would’ve used it a lot more than in the original film, and that would’ve killed pretty much all the suspense and thrill that made the hitchcockian fear factor combined with JW’s fear-inducing score of Jaws so good. In other words, I believe that Spielberg would’ve made a far inferior sequel that would still have made money because of the success of the first movie and Spielberg’s name. But I don’t think it would’ve been a much better film than what we got. 

[Mr. Hooper 1,806]

The director of 'Jaws 2', Jeannot Szwarc, understood that he couldn't just duplicate 'Jaws' by holding off on showing the shark and then doing a big reveal. It had been done to perfection, and that element of surprise couldn't be replicated. So his approach became "show a lot more shark".

 

The sequel under Spielberg's direction might've been more polished, but overall, I don't think he could've added much more unless he'd pushed for changes in the script.

[GerateWohl 4,381]

Szwarc major flaws in direction were:

• As a viewer you don't care for any of the teenage characters.
• The movie got much less gore than the first one. Not a good idea for a movie like this.
• But the biggest flaw was: If you use a mechanical shark it shouldn't look like one. You have to stage it in a way, that it looks real. Spielberg had less shark scenes, but he took care, that the shark looked moving as real as possible. Szwarc seems to have thought, I have a working mechanical shark, so let's use it and show it, not considering that it does not move naturally.