Cage goes in the water, you go in the water. Shark's in the water. Our shark.
-Quint

The unquestionable prototype of what would become the summer blockbuster that changed cinema forever for good and bad. The bad is of course not the film's fault, but the ridiculous need of having each weekend of the summer headlined by a blockbuster after Hollywood has clearly demonstrated that "blockbuster" is in no way linked to quality. At least not anymore, but in 1975 it surely was.

The troubled production of the film is almost as famous as the film itself and is but one of a multitude of examples of a truly great film being created organically out of adversity. Everything from not being able to have the original actors he wanted to the problems with Bruce, the mechanical shark, added to the enormous task at hand for director Steven Spielberg.

It isn't a fluke that all these problems came together to form, dare I say, a perfect film. Spielberg was able to craft a film out of setbacks and craft one the greatest thrillers of all time with unexpected limitations set upon him. If everything would have gone the way he had originally wanted, the film would have turned out differently, but I'm confident it would still have been a great film even if different. I'm also confident that very few directors of the time would have been able to pull together such a film under the same circumstances. For further proof you need only look at Spielberg's output for the following 10 years (please look away from 1941).