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The shark refused to work. The main boat nearly sank. The young director, who insisted on filming on open water, nearly had a nervous breakdown; he’d later admit that the production left him with serious PTSD. Two of the leads hated each other — the British stage actor thought the scruffy newcomer was a snot-nosed punk, and his younger co-star felt the veteran thespian was a drunk with a superiority complex. (The third corner of the main trio was content to play referee and sunbathe in black bikini trunks.) The locals nearly revolted against the Hollywood film crew who’d invaded the insular island community to shoot the picture. The head of the studio personally flew out to survey the damage and was prepared to pull the plug. Industry trade rags wrote headlines about how this over-schedule, over-budget adaptation of a beach read was going to sink everyone involved. Only a friend of the director’s, a bearded peer who was writing a script set in a galaxy far, far away, predicted success. During a set visit, he took one look at the giant animatronic shark that usually didn’t work and declared that the movie would be a massive hit.

Five decades worth of film history later, we can all look back on the backstory of Jaws and laugh knowingly, especially since its disastrous creation myth has become a key part of its legacy. On June 20, 1975, Steven Spielberg‘s tale of three men and a shark finally hit theaters. It would break box-office records, usher in an industry-wide sea change, and become a pop-cultural touchstone and a P.R. bonanza for toothy great whites. John Williams’ two-note theme for the creature that gives the movie its title is as recognizable to most folks as the opening to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and “Happy Birthday.” The film would be partially blamed for hammering an inaugural coffin nail in what was dubbed “New Hollywood” and credited for prying open a Pandora’s box that’d give us 50 summers’ worth of a certain type of blockbuster. Not unlike another movie set on the water 22 years later, Jaws somehow defied a legion of Cassandras liquored up on haterade and pried victory from the you-know-what of defeat. The irony of how a movie shot on the ocean terraformed an art form still feels potent.

The anniversary is being commemorated with the fanfare it deserves, including Laurent Bouzereau’s “definitive inside story” documentary, Jaws@50, an upcoming exhibit at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, and a new recorded intro from Spielberg himself that plays before the film on Peacock. These tributes will join the numerous other odes to what Newsweek dubbed “Jawsmania” that have accumulated over the years, from books (we can’t recommend Carl Gottlieb’s invaluable The Jaws Log enough) to plays to Blu-ray special editions and limited-release retro cans of Quint’s beloved Narragansett Beer. Such brouhaha almost feels unnecessary, however, as the movie has never really left the zeitgeist. It remains as quotable, trivia-question–friendly, and visceral now as it did then. Talking about the opening sequence in the doc, in which a nighttime swimmer becomes a late-night snack, superfan Steven Soderbergh remembers wondering: If they’re going to do this in the first five minutes, what the hell else are they willing to do for the rest of the running time? The answer is: exactly what the shark is doing to its victim, thrashing us back and forth until we’re breathless. The difference is that Jaws is doing it with slightly less frenzy and a lot more finesse.

Go back and check out the scene if you haven’t in a while, and what strikes you on a rewatch is not the violence of the kill itself but how dynamic everything is around it. Spielberg is, much like his antagonist, blessed with patience and willing to wait for a perfect moment before striking. There’s a minimal amount of setup yet a maximum sustaining of tension that speaks to the fact that you’re in good hands, even if the then-28-year-old moviemaker only had one feature under his belt. (Technically, Spielberg had two films to his name, and he points out that both the made-for-TV Duel and his “second” movie are like sibling leviathan stories; it just so happens that one of them takes place on land.) But the cut from the shark’s POV to a campfire scene jars you even as it suggests old-fashioned summer-fling fun, and the silence after that young woman goes under one last time hits that much stronger after the nerve-jangling cacophony. The entire movie follows this blueprint. Just when you thought it was safe to keep watching, Jaws attacks. Then it retreats, and waits. And waits …

That ability to juggle those dynamics is arguably what’s missing from so much of today’s blockbusters, and with 50 years worth of hindsight, it’s easier than ever to recognize Jaws not as just a preview of what was to come but a product of its time. There’s a 1970s funkiness that emanates from Spielberg’s monster-movie adventure thriller, even when it goes into roller-coaster mode. You can see it in the many crowd scenes, whether on the beach or in packed meeting rooms; most of the cast were residents of Martha’s Vineyard, which doubled nicely as the fictional Amity, and the director gives them and the environment the full Norman Rockwell Americana U.S.A. treatment. Yet the faces and the fashions, not to mention the paranoia and the panic, feel very Seventies. Much of the Me Decade moodiness that’s in Peter Benchley’s bestselling source material has been leeched out, and still, that scene in the Brodys’ dining room, where Roy Scheider’s police chief pours wine into a pint glass (!) and Richard Dreyfuss’ skeptical, sarcastic oceanographer suggests some after-hours skulking feels like it capturing something besides thrills and chills. Don’t get us started on Murray Hamilton’s mayor, “Tricky” Larry Vaughn.

Drop Jaws into an overall timeline of film history, and it’s even more apparent how Spielberg’s landmark is truly the missing link between two other movies that helped define (and/or warp — your call) the era and the future: The Exorcist and Star Wars. William Friedkin’s 1973 demonic horror masterpiece also takes its time before grabbing you by the lapels and going for the gag reflex, though it still bends over backwards, spider-walk style, to come off like a prestige project. George Lucas’ 1977 space saga is pure Pavlovian pop rush and knows how to modernize creaky B-movie genre elements for maximum audience reaction. Falling in almost the exact midpoint between these two literal line-around-the-block hits, Jaws is the perfect third bowl of porridge. It retains a sense of character, a hint of cynicism, and some healthy mistrust of the system of Friedkin’s film, while courting the same kineticism that made The Exorcist‘s audiences lose their pea-soup lunch. And it plays audiences like a Wurlitzer organ as efficiently, effectively, and universally as Star Wars.

It also delivered a movie that viewers don’t just watch but experience, which is why people kept flocking back and studio executives started chasing the bounty such repeat customers deliver. We would not be the first people to hear Dreyfuss’ description of the great white shark terrorizing Amity as “a perfect engine … a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim, and eat, and make little sharks,” and note that it doubles as a great description for the film itself. Nor are we the last. The movie’s an expert example of cinema as a narcotic designed for dopamine fixes, made with both precision and predictable beats. And that last bit is often why Jaws gets knocked as the beginning of the end — it’s given birth to so many baby sharks, decades and decades worth, that have eaten their particular ocean dry of other species.

But Spielberg’s amalgam of Friday-night-appointment moviegoing, Saturday-matinee excitement, and Sunday-morning wooziness still feels like an apex predator unto itself. You get a ridiculous amount of filmmaking technique, via a visual and sonic vocabulary its brash twentysomething director and his collaborators are both pilfering from the past and restoring for the next generation. You get a jump scare to end all jump scares, which Spielberg refilmed in his editor’s Los Angeles pool for maximum gotcha. You get a full hour of Seventies character drama spiked with caffeine, and a final 15 or so minutes that are all forward momentum. And you get a Nixon-era Ahab delivering a history lesson on the U.S.S. Indianapolis, a monologue with no less than three authors (it’s complicated) that we’d put up there with the “We’ll always have Paris” speech from Casablanca and the “We’ll get there, Pops” conversation from The Godfather. Most contemporary movies can barely manage one of those elements. Jaws has been giving us all of them, attached to a vehicle with a perfect engine, for 50 years and counting. And you’re gonna need not just a bigger but a better blockbuster culture, Hollywood, if you ever want to match it.