Steven Spielberg Still Regrets Jaws' Negative Impact on Sharks

Steven Spielberg's Jaws is inarguably one of the most beloved films in history, and despite the countless ways in which the movie has left a positive impression on audiences and pop culture in general, Spielberg still regrets the impact the film has had on the natural world and sharks themselves. While there might not be concrete data on the negative impact the film has had on sharks directly, his adaptation of the Peter Benchley novel of the same name took a number of liberties about sharks to tell a riveting story, with decades of viewers misconstruing fiction as fact. 

"I truly and to this day regret the decimation of the shark population because of the book and the film. I really, truly regret that," Spielberg shared with BBC Radio 4, per The Guardian. "That's one of the things I still fear. Not to get eaten by a shark, but that sharks are somehow mad at me for the feeding frenzy of crazy sports fishermen that happened after 1975."

The original story features a great white shark of monstrous and exaggerated proportions targeting a small beach community in New England, killing a number of beachgoers. While great whites have killed swimmers in this part of the world, the size and behavior of the animal in the storyline are entirely fictional, yet through the lens of Spielberg, it feels fully convincing as a reflection of the real world.

Paul Cox, chief executive of the Shark Trust, pointed out that, while there has been an alarming decline in shark populations since the release of the film, this is more due to overfishing than to Jaws manipulating the public perception of the fish.

"The cases of shark population decline are very clearly fisheries overfishing," Cox shared. Additionally, Cox noted that a drawback to the legacy of Jaws is that conversations around sharks are entirely conflicted, as he detailed, "It has led conversations into a bit of a trap in spending too much time talking about all the things that sharks aren't rather than all the great things sharks are."

Still, Spielberg's comments were welcome, as Cox admitted, "For someone with his celebrity to be addressing the challenge of communicating about sharks in a more positive way is very welcome."

Spielberg's Jaws spawned three sequels, though the filmmaker himself was only directly involved in the original film. 

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