Board Thread:General Discussions/@comment-31524712-20170319210335/@comment-31669899-20170404203243

Interesting question, I've never even considered Bruce (the shark) as a kaiju before.

It seems the main point of contention in the thread is that if we consider 05' Kong a kaiju, then why not Bruce?

In considering the literal definition of 'kaiju' I'm going to say no for the following reasons:

1) 05' Kong may have been designed after a Silverback, but he's not supposed to be a Silverback in that film.  He's his own unique fictional giant ape species (a google search turned up Megaprimitus Kong).  Also, the largest Silverback gorilla ever record would be dwarfed by 05' Kong by a wide margin.

While Bruce is certainly larger than even real life big great whites, his size is not completely out of the realm of our reality and there's nothing to suggest that he isn't actually a great white shark.

2)  While Bruce does exhibit behaviour atypical of great white sharks, I think we need to consider the context of that film.

"Jaws" is a masterwork of entertainment made by Spielberg who looks to excite the audience before presenting accurate behaviour and anatomy of great white sharks. Recall the untold number of real life shark deaths by humans because of misplaced fear of sharks that stemmed from the film and book. The book's author (Peter Benchley) was very vocal about regretting writing the book because of the resulting unnecessary shark deaths.

Anyway, the point I'm getting to is that while Bruce is smarter, and presents atypical shark behaviour, I feel that was done to heighten the tension in the film rather than turning the shark into a monster in the 'kaiju' sense.





