Jaws (James Bond)
From Free net encyclopedia
| James Bond character | |
|---|---|
| Image:007Jaws.jpg | |
| Jaws | |
| Gender | Male |
| Age | Mid 30s |
| Affiliation | For hire |
| Current status | Retired |
| Portrayed by | Richard Kiel |
Jaws is a fictional assassin in the James Bond media franchise with stainless steel teeth. Jaws got his nickname due to his unique strong metal teeth that could bite through virtually anything. The character was played by actor Richard Kiel. During filming, Kiel would only wear the metal teeth for a few minutes because they hurt his mouth.
Contents |
Appearances
Jaws first appeared in the 1977 film The Spy Who Loved Me as a henchman to the villain, Karl Stromberg. He would later appear in the sequel Moonraker as a henchman to the villain Hugo Drax. However, in this second appearance, his character was changed from that of a ruthless and unstoppable killing machine to more of a comedy figure. He eventually turns against Drax and helps Bond to defeat him, and also gains a girlfriend.
In addition to having steel teeth, Jaws was also 7 feet, 2 inches (2.18 m) tall and extremely strong, which forced Bond to be especially inventive while fighting him. In combat, Bond found himself caught in an unbreakable death grip by Jaws, who was about to fatally bite him; Bond only escaped by using a broken electric lamp to send an electric shock through the assassin's teeth to stun him. Jaws also has an uncanny ability to survive any misfortune seemingly completely unscathed and come back to challenge Bond again. In The Spy Who Loved Me, Jaws survives an Egyptian structure's collapse on top of him, being thrown from a rapidly-moving train, sitting in the passenger seat of a car which drives off a cliff (landing in a hut below, to the owner's dismay, though the height of the cliff is not established), a battle underwater with a shark and the destruction of Stromberg's lair. Most notably, in Moonraker he survives falling several thousand feet without a parachute (granted, he falls through a circus tent and lands in the trapeze net), a crash through a building on top of a runaway cable car, and falling off a waterfall, as well as the destruction of most of Drax's space station.
James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me
Image:SpyWhoLovedMeMovieNovel.jpg Most of the background information on Jaws comes from Christopher Wood's novelisation of the film The Spy Who Loved Me, called James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me so as to differentiate from Ian Fleming's novel of the same name. In Wood's novel, Jaws's real name is Zbigniew Krycsiwiki and he was born in Kraków, Poland. Krycsiwiki was arrested by the secret police for his part in the "1972 bread riots". While imprisoned the police "beat him with hollow steel clubs encased in thick leather" until they thought he was dead leaving his jaw broken beyond repair. Krycsiwiki later escaped and stowed aboard one of Stromberg's vessels. Eventually he was caught; however, instead of turning him in Stromberg hired a prestigious doctor to create an artificial jaw. After 14 operations Krycsiwiki's jaw was restored using steel components that created two rows of terrifying razor-sharp teeth. The result of the artificial jaw left Jaws a mute.
Since none of the above is actually mentioned in either movie, this is not necessarily considered canon. Wood contradicts his own continuity when one compares his scripts and his novelisations; in the novelisation of The Spy Who Loved Me Wood specifically states that Jaws is a mute. Yet, in the film Moonraker he speaks, although in the novelisation James Bond and Moonraker, Jaws remains a mute. For the films, it is possible Jaws might have somehow regained the ability to speak between the two adventures, but there is nothing on screen or in literary form to suggest how this might have occurred.
The death of Jaws?
One thing to also note is that Jaws may have been killed in the finale of James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me, when Jaws encounters Stromberg's shark. The scene in the novelisation is ambiguous in that the blood mentioned could have been interpreted as either Jaws' or the shark's. Jaws at the time was technically attached to a magnet and dipped into the tank, unlike the film in which Bond releases Jaws from the magnet into the tank.
- Now both hands were tearing at the magnet, and Jaws twisted furiously like a fish on the hook. As Bond watched in fascinated horror, a relentless triangle streaked up behind the stricken giant. A huge gray force launched itself through the wild water, and two rows of white teeth closed around the threshing flesh. — Christopher WoodTemplate:Ref
It has been stated that in the initial script, the film concluded with Jaws being killed by the shark; however, after a rough test screening including Lewis Gilbert's grandson, Jaws was so well liked that the scene was changed to have Jaws live. Jaws was later brought back in Christopher Wood's follow up novelisation of Moonraker, entitled James Bond and Moonraker.
Video games
Jaws, likely being the most popular of the henchmen and characters in the James Bond franchise, has appeared in three video games since his last cinematic appearance in Moonraker. His first appearance was in the 1993 Sega Megadrive game James Bond: The Duel, where he appears multiple times, and also as the final opponent of the game. His second appearance would be in 1997, in the Nintendo 64 game GoldenEye 007, in which Jaws — for unknown reasons — is working for Drax Corporation once again.
In 2004, Jaws appeared again in the video game Everything or Nothing, working for the game's villain, Diavolo. Richard Kiel is credited, because his face and body was used to create the 3D game model. He recorded no dialogue for the game.
Trivia
- In The Spy Who Loved Me, Jaws battled a shark and won, had an entire construction scaffold collapse on top of him, drove a car off a cliff into someone's roof, and fell off a moving train and survived. Furthermore, in Moonraker, Jaws survives a fall from an airplane without a parachute in the opening credits; later in the movie, he survives a high-speed crash of a tramway car in Rio de Janeiro and a fall from a Brazilian waterfall (shot at Iguassu Falls). There is a throwaway line at the end of the movie about the American space shuttle rescuing a man and a woman in a fragment of space station, implying that Jaws survived yet again. After every accident, a signature move by Jaws is to get up, dust himself off, and walk away.
- Unlike most henchmen and villains, Jaws appeared in two movies and survived both.
- While Jaws was in two James Bond movies, he actually only had one short line of dialogue. In Moonraker, towards the end of the film, he turns to his girlfriend Dolly (Blanche Ravalec) and says "Well, here's to us".
- Although no character on the scale of Jaws appears in Fleming's books, a villain with steel teeth does appear in the original novel of The Spy Who Loved Me, though in the book he is a simple thug.
- Richael Kiel played a very similar character -- complete with strange teeth -- in the 1976 comedy Silver Streak.
- In the final credits sequence of the Inspector Gadget movie, Dr. Claws assistant is shown attending a "Henchman's Anonymous" meetings. Richard Kiel is one of the participants (along with Oddjob and Nick Nack) and is billed in the credits as 'Famous Guy with Metal Teeth'.