This time it's personal
Released: July 1987
Christmas comes to Amity, and so does another shark. Sean Brody, son of the late Chief Brody, goes out in a police boat and gets himself eaten. His mother Ellen decides the shark ate Sean because Roy Scheider killed one of its relatives in Part 1. She doesn't want her family in the water ever again. Her son Mike is a marine biologist (and about ten years younger than he was in Jaws 3). He claims there's no danger because he lives in the Bahamas and sharks don't like the warm water there. Ellen decides to go stay with Mike and his family in the tropics. Guess who follows.
Little known fact: sharks can swim from Long
Island to Nassau in 3 days
Ellen meets a pilot who looks just like Michael Caine and he tries to convince her that sharks don't hold grudges. The shark attacks Mike's fishing boat, and gets tagged by Mike and his Jamaican mon pal Jake so they can study it. The fish comes after Mike while he's scuba diving, but Mike gets away. He doesn't tell his mother or his wife.
Is it the big
attack scene or the Universal Studios tour?
Mike's wife Carla is a sculptress, and the day of her new statue's dedication arrives. It is of course held on the beach, and Carla lets daughter Thea ride on a banana boat. The shark chases the boat and goes for the tot, but gets a nameless blonde woman instead. Ellen gets pissed and steal Mike's fishing boat to go kill the shark, which almost kills her. The pilot, Mike, and Jake come to the rescue, but the shark eats the plane. He also eats Jake, and starts roaring like Godzilla. The shark ends up getting stabbed by the bow of the boat.
This was filmed in a big swimming pool
on a backlot
At this point, the
plot depends on which cut you're watching. In the U.S. theatrical
one, Ellen simply flies back to Amity. In the foreign release and
video release, the boat sinks after the shark dies. Jake appears,
wounded but alive. Then Ellen flies back to Amity.
Extremely anticlimactic.