Even though the mechanical sharks that were used in Jaws gave the crew all kinds of trouble, the scene where the shark finally starts dining on Robert Shaw is unforgettable.
It was Jaws himself, an onscreen amalgamation of a couple of different mechanical sharks, that audiences showed up to see.
"Unlike, say, a shark that comes barreling up from the bottom to catch its prey, an archer fish's initial momentum is zero," says Alexandra Techet, associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT.
Hancock blamed his departure on the mechanical shark, telling a newspaper that it still couldn't swim or bite after a year and a half; "You get a couple of shots and [the shark] breaks".
The major special effect is that giant mechanical shark, which gave Mr. Spielberg and his crew all kinds of trouble and which, partly as a result, appears only rarely.
Steven Spielberg's Jaws was retooled as a Hitchcockian suspense thriller, rather than a monster movie exploitation flick, because the director was forced to admit halfway through filming that the mechanical shark doubling for a real great white looked faker than a $3 bill.
And perhaps the restraint he had to employ due to that malfunctioning mechanical shark.
For all Jaws' fame as an action/adventure classic, Spielberg was probably very fortunate that Bruce the mechanical shark, named for his lawyer, didn't work well at all.
Owing to financial constraints, Open Water lacks the electrifying shark footage of Jaws, in that it lacks a 25ft-long mechanical shark.
