Reply #9: I would think the fact that I can remember the names of the three leads

[FunBobbyMucha]

is a pretty good testament to the characterizations in that movie. We actually gave a shit about them, whereas the Bruce Willis character in Armageddon, for instance, has less weight than the POV character in most video games. Brody is fleshed out pretty well, his Northerner-ness, his fear of water, his love for his wife, sense of duty, etc.

And the restraint (thru necessity) of limiting the shark's on-screen time--let's see Emmerich, etc do that.

Jaws was certainly not the first film to bastardize aspects of a book (though I always thought Lorraine Gary played Brody's wife as being smitten with Hooper anyway), but an affair didn't fit the action film SS wanted to make, I guess.

Jaws and Star Wars you can cite for their influence on the marketing of movies, but the Raiders influence is felt more in the film-making itself. The nearest comparison, I guess, is the wealth of bad hipster movies made in the wake of QT's success with Pulp Fiction, where they got the references to Cocoa-Puffs but blew the dialogue, characters, and surprise.