Quentin Tarantino’s recently been making the rounds promoting his excellent new Video Archives Podcast with pal Roger Avary (his co-writer on Pulp Fiction and the director of The Rules of Attraction), and along the way, he’s been dropping some impressive hot takes. Yesterday, we wrote up his glowing review of Top Gun: Maverick, and in the same Reel Blend podcast, he gave his pick for the greatest movie ever made – Steven Spielberg’s Jaws.
Now, that comes with a caveat. When Tarantino says, Jaws is the “greatest movie,” he doesn’t mean it’s the greatest film or his favourite film. He explains:
“I think Jaws is the greatest movie ever made. Maybe not the greatest film. But it’s the greatest movie ever made. And then there are other movies that can get in its rarefied air. But as far as a movie, there’s no making it better than Jaws. There’s no ‘better’ than Jaws. It is the best movie ever made. And it shows how badly timed most movies made before Jaws were.”
He goes on to explain that Spielberg grew up watching movies like Fantastic Voyage, Them or Journey to the Center of the Earth in theaters, but noted that while they were fun, they weren’t necessarily directed to perfection.
“Now… most of them weren’t directed that well. They were assignments given to journeyman directors who did their best with them. That was how we were used to seeing comic book — that kind of movie experience. As opposed to a Spielberg, who was like, ‘No, this is exactly the kind of movie he likes. This is exactly the kind of movies he was put on earth to make. And he’s going to make it, within an inch of his life, as effective as it possibly can be. And, you know, Michael Anderson, isn’t putting that kind of work in Logan’s Run.”
It’s hard to argue with Tarantino in this regard, as when you think of the serious auteurs of the generation before Jaws, they weren’t rushing out to make movies like this. You never had someone like Orson Welles or John Ford direct a movie like Jaws.
Do you agree with Tarantino’s Jaws take? Is it the greatest “movie” ever made? Let us know in the comments!