We've Been Getting This One Thing About 'Jaws' Wrong for the Last 50 Years

In 1975, Steven Spielberg created the ultimate monster movie with Jaws, and he did it by accident. Chances are you know the behind-the-scenes story about how, during production, the mechanical shark kept breaking down. The great white was supposed to be in the final film a lot more, but those issues forced Spielberg to find a way to work around it. He did this by making John Williams' score the monster. The iconic theme made Jaws more terrifying because we had to imagine the shark in the early sections of the film, but no matter how effective that technique was, the movie was always going to reach a point where audiences needed to see a big, scary fish. Most people remember the "You're gonna need a bigger boat" scene with Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) as the first time you actually see the shark in Jaws, but that's not correct. The great white actually appears much earlier in the film.