Here's the letter that Steven Speilberg penned for Jaws: The Revenge director Joseph Sargent before production commenced on the maligned entry. Despite Jaws making Spielberg's career and being a groundbreaking movie, the production was also a famously nightmarish experience for its younger helmer. It went wildly over budget and schedule, and Spielberg feared it would end his career. Of course, the exact opposite happened, but he swore off returning to the franchise. He passed on Jaws 2, and while he briefly considered a return when the original director was fired a month into filming, he decided better of it.
He also rejected an offer to return for the third movie and is said to have personally torpedoed the studio's original spoof concept Jaws 3, People 0. There are also unconfirmed reports that Spielberg holds such a dislike for the follow-ups that he has refused to let the original Jaws be packaged in a boxset with the sequels. Publicly, Spielberg has only stated he didn't like Jaws 2, but given that particular entry is easily considered the best sequel, it's a reasonable assumption he's not a fan of the critically reviled Jaws 3D or The Revenge either.
The latter movie often features on lists of the worst movies ever made, and while it's a little better than its reputation suggests, it doesn't even come close to the quality of Jaws. In the sequel's defense, its rushed schedule and production saw it being written, filmed and edited in nine months, during an era where blockbusters typically took at least two years to put together. Veteran filmmaker Joseph Sargent (The Taking Of Pelham 123) took on directing duties on Jaws: The Revenge - which has two different endings - and before filming began, Spielberg himself wrote a letter (via Los Angeles Times) offering thoughts on the script and wishing Sargent luck.
Like the Vietnam vet, I came home too and managed never to think about the year 1974, until I started reading ‘Jaws: The Revenge.’ Got to Page 18 and found myself holding that service revolver and discharging it until empty into the Atlantic Ocean. I just couldn’t go on reading because it brought back so many memories.
Good luck, Joseph Sargent. Bring a lot of Joseph Conrad to read while you’re waiting for the next shoot.
Call home often to talk to people you love.
With tremendous sympathy and two winks of my right eye,
(signed) Steve.
Speilberg's classy letter is essentially one filmmaker who is - having himself survived a nightmarish Jaws production - expressing his sympathies to another for what will undoubtedly be a stressful shoot. He also admits not being able to finish Jaws: The Revenge's screenplay, and references a deleted scene where a grief-stricken Ellen Brody (Lorraine Gary) empties her late husband Martin Brody's police revolver into the sea following the death of their son. This passage did feature in the Jaws: The Revenge's novelization, however, with Ellen unknowingly avoiding a near miss from the titular shark.
Despite Steven Spielberg's letter, Jaws: The Revenge - which has one of the series' best setpieces - was released to terrible reviews and disappointing box office. It also killed the series, which has yet to produce a new entry. The Spielberg produced Back To The Future Part II also featured a pointed jab towards Universal's milking of the franchise with Jaws 19, with Marty McFly briefly being terrorized by a holographic shark that "... still looks fake."