Jaws: The Revenge - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray SteelBook

Here we are, Jaws: The Revenge. Depending on how you enjoy your films, this is either one of the worst ever made, or one of the greatest cult classics of all time. It’s either a 2/5 franchise tragedy or a hilarious 5/5 gather your friends and get drunk masterpiece. From its conception, this film wasn’t off to a good start. Seen as an easy box office win for the new studio chief, the film was rushed into production and Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three director Joseph Sargent was given little to no time to get the film together and in front of cameras to meet a summer release date. The rushed script had to make due with an early draft’s concept of a Vudoo shark and wriggle it around into something less stupid but still bank on the idea that this shark is an ancestor shark of the previous movies out for vengeance. Get all that? Good, because the movie really is that dumb. Watching a 35-foot shark navigate the tight hallways of the sunken ship is the best laugh of the film.

Truthfully, the film starts out great. The opening death of Sean Brody is terrifying and well-executed (even if the reshoot inserts are glaringly obvious). Once the film skirts off to the Caribbean, it’s all she wrote. One dumb setup after another sees the fakest shark yet float and flounder about looking more like a concrete turd than the Earth's oldest deadliest killing machine. The late great Joseph Sargent was stuck in the precarious place of trying to salvage a dead project before it was even filmed. And then it had to be refilmed! After the film already hit theaters, a new more explosive (and nonsensical) ending was rushed through to tag onto prints in circulation and for international markets. Poor Michael Caine missed collecting his oscar because he was floating around in a water tank.

Had Jaws: The Revenge been given adequate preproduction time, it might have come out better, but this franchise was always a one-and-done affair. Jaws 2 is something of a miracle as an unnecessary sequel that finds a reason to exist and be entertaining. Jaws 3 and Jaws: The Revenge are just hilarious fillers. I admit to being entertained by this film and every time I watch it I’m compelled to revisit the excessively tedious NES game. So that’s gotta count for something. 

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

We try not to take it personally that Jaws: The Revenge takes a bite out of our 4K collections. A two-disc 4K UHD + Blu-ray + Digital SteelBook release, the film finds itself pressed on a BD-66 disc with the same BD-50 from before. The disc loads to a static image main menu with a basic navigation option as the John Williams Shark Theme plays over. Inside the SteelBook, each disc gets its own tray to rest on, the 1080p disc has updated disc art but is essentially the same as before. The SteelBook artwork almost works to continue that “mirrored” poster art started with Jaws 2, but they reworked the rear-facing flowing hair of Elin Brody in the original poster onto her front so now as she’s about to harpoon the shark she’s now looking behind her? Or she broke her neck? I guess it’s an attractive SteelBook, but to be honest I only bought this edition for franchise shelf consistency. And I had a coupon. Coupons help.

Without a doubt the worst of the franchise, Jaws: The Revenge scores a rather impressive 2160p HDR10 transfer. While it does appear that some slight leftover edge enhancement has been retained, it’s not the weird glassy mess of algorithmic sharpening that permeated the Jaws 3 transfer. On a side-by-side to the previous 1080p Blu-ray, I felt like fine lines were clearer, details a little better managed. The cement-like textures of that fake shark are also more apparent and hilariously appreciable than before for added flavor for this genuinely amazingly terribly awesome movie. You can spot all of the mismatched reshoot inserts better than ever!  

HDR10 grade gives the film a welcome pickup for colors, black levels, and contrast. Those Caribbean blues, bright yellows, and delicious crimson blood reds are excellent. The odd sepia flashbacks look pretty fantastic even if they’re weirdly out of place in the context of continuity. Skin tones are healthy and human without looking peached or pinked. Black levels and shadows pick up some help giving the image a nice sense of depth and dimension - especially when the gigantic shark is chasing Brody through the small sunken ship. 

Also worth noting, the alternate ending has been restored to 4K HDR and it’s pretty damn glorious. Shame it’s only an extra feature and not available via seamless branching.

And like its predecessors, Jaws: The Revenge chomps down on a new and very engaging Dolby Atmos audio mix. And like Jaws 3, no legacy audio options have been included. While the old 5.1 mix was pretty damn good. I can’t deny this new Atmos mix is a winner. Between the rumbling bass notes of Michael Small’s score to the sounds of Michael Caine’s airplane to the pulsing heartbeat of the shark, the Atmos mix delivers. I didn’t pick up on any silly new sound effect additions or anything like that. While a lot of the time the Front/Center track and sides handle the heavy lifting, the height channels certainly hear plenty of action. Early on, the underwater sound of harbor bells dinging gives the overheads some quick attention. Bubbles from scuba tanks drift up nicely. LFE has plenty of rumble, and given the “roar” of the shark it sounds completely ridiculous! Throughout dialog is clean and clear - some of those ADR lines that always sounded a little off still sound odd, but do blend into the soundscape a little better.

Jaws: The Revenge - like its sequel siblings doesn’t pack much of a bonus features package. Just the trailer and the original ending where the shark doesn’t inexplicably explode when pierced by the ship's prow. The best part though is this original ending does see an upgrade to 4K UHD HDR! While we may not get a commentary track or see that ending reinserted into the main feature, at least it looks great! 

4K UHD Disc

• Alternate "Original" Ending (UHD 3:42)
• Theatrical Trailer 

Jaws: The Revenge is just a bad movie. It was poorly conceived and rushed into production without much prep time simply to score an easy box office win. It had no other reason to exist than that. Joseph Sargent was stuck in the position of simply making it all work. He made better movies before and after, so the man paid his dues while enjoying a Caribbean vacation. Laughably wonderful (or terrible), the film was a true franchise killer. Now on 4K UHD, it at least looks and sounds better than ever with a solid HDR10 transfer and a new rousing Atmos audio mix to match. A shame the original ending couldn’t be inserted via seamless branching but we do get it in full 4K HDR in the bonus features - so that counts for something. Ultimately this one is For Fans Only - and I consider myself a fan.