The new LEGO Jaws set, available exclusively at the LEGO Store, is an homage to the 1975 horror classic. The original "summer blockbuster," Jaws changed how Hollywood made and marketed movies. It put director Steven Spielberg on the map, and it is a master class in the power of suggestion and good editing; Spielberg, like Hitchcock before him, understood how to "make the audience suffer." The smallest splash of water, along with the perfect sound cue, was enough to spike the audience's anxiety. We don't get a clear look at the shark until halfway through the movie, but its presence dominates the entire film.
LEGO Jaws depicts the moment after the massive reveal, which Chief Brody commemorates with a deadpanned, iconic understatement: "You're gonna need a bigger boat." The set even has the quote printed on the model's black base, along with the movie's title.
This is a LEGO set designed for display, first and foremost, rather than roleplay. You can explore the ship quarters by removing the topmost level, and you can fuss with tiny details on the boat's deck. But the point of the build is to capture that signature Hollywood moment. And it does so, in a manner that breaks the fourth wall.
The LEGO Jaws set is three builds in one. First you build the Orca, Quint's dilapidated, battle-tested boat. Its color scheme, dark maroon and black, is the same as that of the LEGO Titanic – an inauspicious homage to doomed sea vessels that challenged nature and lost.
Several details stand out in a build that's full of them. We see Quint's chair mounted on the deck, where he straps himself in before trying to catch the shark. In the ship quarters, we see the Amity Gazette, with a headline that warns about shark attacks. We see a map of the area, to show us where the Orca has yet to explore. We see a set of shark teeth mounted on the wall – evidence of Quint's hard-won experience.
The riggings are tied down to the base of the boat, and they loop up and around a pulley system. The model's mast is disproportionately tall. It makes the boat appear unbalanced – as though it could tip over if, say, a hulking predator were to charge it.
Like a lot of LEGO's adult builds, the ship is fairly fragile, with single connection points joining accessories to their bases. But in this case, intentionally or not, that serves to reinforce the visual language of the film. These humans, with their manmade trappings, are underdogs in this fight against a monolithic force of nature.
Then you build the shark, which is appropriately massive when placed side-by-side with the boat. In LEGO form, the shark is decidedly more cute than menacing; it has small beady eyes and multiple rows of teeth, which you build separately as individual 'dentures' and then insert into the model's mouth, piece by piece.
Lastly, you build the ocean water – a long, rectangular black base lined with blue bricks and accented with white, curved pieces. The curves create the impression of ocean waves and sea foam. Once this is complete, you place the Orca in the 'water.'
You have two options to display the shark. The first is to display it separately on a mounted, black stand. Beneath it, you can display the three minifigures that come with the set: Sheriff Brody (who comes with a sidearm), Richard Hooper (who comes with binoculars) and Quint (who comes with a speargun).
All three minifigures are wonderfully detailed and instantly recognizable by their clothes, accessories and facial expressions. If you mount the minifigures on the stand and view them at eye level, you view the shark from a low-angled perspective. It looks exactly like the famous movie poster.
Your second option for displaying the shark is to place it in the tableau. The shark is separable at its midpoint, and you can connect the front half of it to the top of the water, to give the impression that it is rising from the ocean depths. Of your two options, this is clearly the more preferable and menacing.
It's when I joined the three build elements – the boat, the shark, and the ocean – that I noticed my favorite detail. When you position the ship on the rectangular ocean base, it does not 'fit.' Instead, it juts far out over the boundary of the display, as if the shark is chasing the Orca out of the frame.
Or perhaps, it's making a figurative point – that the scene is too exciting to be contained? Either way, this model breaks convention. And that's a fitting sentiment for a film as terrifying as Jaws, which inspired an entire generation of moviegoers to get out of the water.
LEGO Jaws, Set #21350, retails for $149.99, and it is composed of 1497 pieces. It is available exclusively at the LEGO Store.
Kevin Wong is a contributing freelancer for IGN, specializing in LEGO. He's also been published in Complex, Engadget, Gamespot, Kotaku, and more. Follow him on Twitter at @kevinjameswong.
