Points to Benchley for coming up with an all-time-great premise, but let’s be real — it was Steven Spielberg who made the movie so damn suspenseful and scary. Not showing the shark much, even if it was largely by necessity because the mechanical shark frequently malfunctioned during filming, was genius.
Beyond that, Spielberg cut a bunch of stuff in the book that just slowed things down, like the affair between Matt Hooper and Chief Brody’s wife and the random subplot about the mayor’s connections to organized crime.
