Hey, how’s the water? Pleasant? Sharks? Any shark trouble?

Fifty years ago, a certain film franchise hadn’t yet asked audiences those questions, in so many words. “Jaws” the first, and by several hundred thousand miles the best, opened in 1975; three years later “Jaws 2” arrived, dangling the marketing tagline “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.” That first sequel wasn’t much, but people went. That’s what moviegoers did then, reliably. They went to the movies, in a time just before sequels clogged an entire popular culture’s plumbing system.

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