It also stars Joseph Mascolo, Jeffrey Kramer, Collin Wilcox, Ann Dusenberry, Mark Gruner, Susan French, Barry Coe, Donna Wilkes, Gary Springer, and Keith Gordon in his first feature film role.

[3] The plot concerns Chief Brody suspecting another great white shark is terrorizing the fictional seaside resort community of Amity Island, following a series of incidents and disappearances, and his suspicions are eventually proven true.

[6] While the performances of Scheider, Gary and Hamilton, the special effects, and John Williams' musical score were praised, it received criticism for essentially duplicating the formula of the first film.

The following day, Brody watches the beach from an observation tower and causes a panic after mistaking a school of bluefish for a shark and shooting at it.

A Harbor Patrol helicopter that Brody contacted earlier arrives to tow them to Cable Junction, a small island nearby which houses an electrical relay station that supplies power to Amity.

[8] In October 1975, Steven Spielberg told the San Francisco Film Festival that "making a sequel to anything is just a cheap carny trick" and that he did not even respond to the producers when they asked him to direct Jaws 2.

[4][10] The director later added that his decision was influenced by the problems the Jaws production faced – "I would have done the sequel if I hadn't had such a horrible time at sea on the first film.

[20] Production designer Joe Alves (who would direct Jaws 3-D) and Verna Fields (who had been promoted to vice-president at Universal after her acclaimed editing on the first film) proposed that they co-direct it.

The reins were eventually handed to Jeannot Szwarc, best known for the film Bug and whom Alves knew from working on the TV series Night Gallery.

[4] The production had planned to refurbish and utilize the sharks from the original film, but it was discovered they had rusted and rotted away after having been stored behind sheds on the lower lot of Universal Studios in the intervening years.

[28] Shortly after the production arrived in June 1977, local newspaper the Grapevine wrote: The Jaws people are back among us, more efficient, more organized and more moneyed.

Universal brought in actors, directors, producers and their wives, camera and crew people who needed housing, food and clothing for the movie.

Navarre's Holiday Inn "Holidome" was used as the film's headquarters, with the ground floor converted into production offices, and some of the Gulf-front suites remodeled for David Brown and Roy Scheider.

[33] The interior shots of the teen hang-out where they play pinball were filmed in the original location of the Hog's Breath Saloon on Okaloosa Island.

[31] The production company had to seek dredge and fill permits from Florida's Department of Environmental Regulation to sink the revised platform that controlled the shark on the sea bottom.

[34] Scheider was contracted to Universal at the time for a three-picture deal, but the studio offered to forgive his failure to fulfill his contractual obligation if he agreed to appear in Jaws 2.

[35] Scheider is quoted in Ray Loynd's book The Jaws 2 Log, saying, "When Conan Doyle wrote the first Sherlock Holmes and everyone screamed for more, I don’t think he felt like a professional hack.

[39] Several other GBHS students were hired as stand-ins or doubles for the teenage actors to appear in the water scenes and to maintain and sail the boats.

"[45] According to the liner notes on the soundtrack album, Williams' "sense of the dramatic, coupled with his exquisite musical taste and knowledge of the orchestra definitely stamp this score as truly one of his best."

"[6] In 2015, Intrada Records issued a two-disc edition with Williams' complete score in chronological order on the first disc and the original 1978 soundtrack album on the second.

Although the audio was presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 mono, a reviewer for Film Freak Central comments that "Williams' score often sounds deceptively stereophonic".

Products included sets of trading cards from Topps and Baker's bread, paper cups from Coca-Cola, beach towels, a souvenir program, shark tooth necklaces, coloring and activity books, and a model kit of Brody's truck.

"[51] One review says: "it's obviously not a patch on Spielberg's classic, but it's about as good as could be hoped for, with some excellent sequences, almost worthy of the original, several genuine shocks, a different enough story and some pretty decent characters.

[76] Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote, "Some of the action sequences have been well staged, but they've been dropped into the film so indiscriminately that Jaws 2 never builds to a particular climax.

Even worse, since the events of the first film are acknowledged in this one, the refusal of the mayor and council to act on Brody's warning a second time round makes them appear idiotic to a degree that effectively sabotages any halfway serious dramatic interest.

He would have preferred the shark to have been seen less, positing "producers and audiences alike seem to have forgotten that the greatest suspense derives from the unseen and the unknown, and that the imagination is capable of conceiving far worse than the materialization of a mere mechanical monster.

"[80] Similarly, John Simon felt that the "shark's waning is caused by a decline in direction: Jeannot Szwarc has none of Steven Spielberg's manipulative cleverness.

[81] David Parkinson of Radio Times awarded it two stars out of five, calling it a "pale imitation of the classic original" and stating that "the suspense comes unglued because the film floats in all-too-familiar waters.

"[82] Although many critics identify some flaws, often comparing Szwarc negatively to Spielberg, DVD.net states that "this sequel does have some redeeming qualities going for it that make it a good movie in its own right".

[83] Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw are missed, especially since the teenage characters are labeled "largely annoying 'Afterschool Special' archetypes"[50] who are "irritating and incessantly screaming" and "don't make for very sympathetic victims".