Jaws (007)

"Well, here's to us."

- Jaws' only spoken words. "His name's Jaws, he kills people..."

- Bond about Jaws.

Jaws is a recurring henchman and one of the most famous villains from the James Bond franchise. He was the secondary antagonist of The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker before becoming a supporting character during the latter film's climax.

Jaws is iconic for being one of Bond's most formidable adversaries due to his hulking stature, durability, inhuman strength and more notably, possessing extremely powerful stainless steel teeth that are capable of biting through any form of durable material.

He is portrayed by the late Richard Kiel.

The Spy who Loved Me
Jaws is a gigantic man with a steel set of teeth, which he can use to bite off anything, but is presumably unable to talk because of this. He is also very strong physically, he can bend hard steel, as well as resistant. He always comes out of big disasters such as falling from a great altitude or a car accident unscathed. He first appeared as a henchman of Karl Stromberg, helping his master in his plan to create an underwater society.

Egypt
Having found out that his assistant stole and sold the plans to his submarine tracking device, the movie's main villain Karl Stromberg sends Jaws to recover the device and tells him to kill everyone who came into contact with it. He sends Sandor with Jaws, to assist him in his task. Jaws and Sandor then head to Egypt, where they intend to kill Fekkesh, a man who came into contact with the device. While Sandor waits at Fekkesh's house and is eventually killed by James Bond, Jaws follows Fekkesh to the pyramids. When Fekkesh sees Jaws he panicks and runs off, pursued by Jaws and James Bond.

Fekkesh managed to enter a cavern and closes the iron gates behind him with a lock. This does not stop Jaws, who uses his steel teeth to bite open the lock. Advancing on the frightened man, Jaws kills Fekkesh by smashing him at a wall and then biting him in the neck. Upon leaving the cave, Jaws is greeted by Bond who aims his gun at him. However, at that moment the light of the lightshow switches, momentarily covering the entire place in darkness. Jaws uses this oppurtunity to escape. Bond then enters the cave and finds a book at Fekkesh's corpse, giving him the information he needed. This book leads Bond, and Russian agent Major Amasova, to the club of Max Kalba, who owns a secret microfilm. While both agents try to buy the microfilm from Kalba, Kalba is told that there's an urgent phone call. While in the phone booth, Kalba is killed by Jaws, who poses as a technician and takes the microfilm. Bond and Amasova follow Jaws, secretly entering the back of his van. However, Jaws has microphones in the back of the van and hears Amasova and Bond talk. He drives the van into the desert, and eventually reaches a site of ruins. Bond and Amasova exit the van, but have lost sight of Jaws, who headed into the ruins and hid on top of one of the giant pillars. Watching the two agents underneath him, he eventually throws a boulder down on them and attacks, briefly fighting Bond until Anya draws a gun and forces him to yield the microfilm. Jaws takes it out of his pocket and throws it on the ground but when Anya bows down to take it, he kicks her gun out of her hand. Having obtained the microchip, Anya falls runs off, leaving Bond to continue his fight with Jaws.

This fight is quickly ended when Jaws accidentally hits a pillar of the construction they are fighting under, causing it to collapse and burying Jaws underneath it. Believing Jaws to be dead, Bond returns to the van, unaware that Jaws in fact survived. As both agents enter the van, Jaws jumps onto the car's hood, ripping off half the roof with his bare hands. While Anya tries to start the car's engines, Jaws uses his unhuman strength to demolish the car, ripping the hull and trying to stop it by grabbing the bumper. However, eventually Anya manages to drive backwars, smashing into Jaws and throwing him into a wall. Bond and Anya then drive off, leaving Jaws at the site. This causes Jaws, furious at his failure, to drop the boulder he was about to throw, accidentally hitting his own foot.

Train fight
While examining the microchip, the MI6 and KGB, having teamed up to find their submarines, trace the microchip back to Strombergs marine research laboratory on Sardinia. Bond and Amasova are sent to investigate together. Traveling by train, Amasova and Bond share different compartments and when Amasova opens her cabinet she is shocked to see that Jaws is inside. Jaws attacks Amasova and easily overpowers her. He knocks her out and tries to bite her neck, but her screams have alerted Bond, who attacks Jaws by smashing a bottle on his head. Unfazed and unimpressed, Jaws attacks Bond, who is merely able to defend himself, as every attack on Jaws seems to be futile. Jaws eventually grabs Bond by the neck and tries to bite him. To evade death, Bond grabs a nearby lamp, smashes the glass and aims the wires at Jaw's steel teeth, electrifying him. This causes Jaws to drop Bond and stumble backwards, giving Bond the oppurtunity to kick Jaws out of the train's window. However, Jaws again survives the encounter.

Pursuit by Car
After Bond has met with Stromberg, Stromberg calls Jaws into his office, who confirms that Bond and Amasova were the ones he fought on the train. Stromberg then orders Jaws to kill both once they get ashore. Jaws and other henchmen then follow Bond in a car, shooting at him. To defeat them, Bond uses the car's special equipment to shoot a muddy liquid at the car, spraying the entire windshield and causing the driver to drive off the road, as he lost sight. The car drives off a cliff, eventually crashing into a hut. While the hut owner, who sat outside, shocked watches the damage, the huts door opens and a dirty Jaws leaves the hut, angrily glancing at the owner while walking off.

Fight at Atlantis
After returning to Atlantis and killing Stromberg, Bond heads to the place's prison tract to find and free Amasova. Arriving there, he is surprised to see that Jaws is there as well. Bond shoots at Jaws but only hits Jaws' teeth, causing no damage. When Jaws realises that this was Bond's last bullet, he runs towards Bond, swiftly diving to cover when Bond's gun is reloaded. He then grabs Bond and shoves him into an elevator, which brings Bond to the room where Stromberg kept his shark tank. Following Bond, Jaws arrives there as well but Bond activates a magnetic crane and steers it into Jaw's way while the latter tries to get to Bond. The magnet gets hold of Jaws' teeth, lifting him into the air. Bond then steers the magnet over the shark tank and deactivates it, dropping Jaws into the water. Bond then leaves the room to find Amasova, thus not witnessing Jaws biting the shark to death. When Atlantis is torpedoed, Jaws dives out of the facility and escapes.

Revenge on Bond
When Bond, returning from a job in Africa, is on the plane back home, he is held at gunpoint by the pilot, who takes a parachute and intends to leave Bond to die in the plane. Bond fights the pilot, but the man jumps out of the plane. Moreso, Bond is grabbed behind from Jaws, who snuck onto the plane and wants revenge, and thrown out of the plane without a parachute. In order to survive, Bond dives after the pilot, battling him mid-air and taking his parachute. He is then in turn attacked by Jaws, who jumped after him. Jaws grabs Bond's leg and is about to bite it, when Bond activates his parachute and is thus separated from Jaws who keeps falling. When trying to activate his own parachute, Jaws rips the trigger with such force that it is ripped out, rendering his parachute useless. Helpless, he tries to save himself somehow but keeps falling. He eventually crashes into a circus tent, which cushions his fall despite collapsing in the process.

Fighting Bond in Rio
Jaws is employed by Hugo Drax after the death of Drax' henchman Chang. While entering the United States by plane, he walks through a metal detector which rings. When a security man wants to take Jaws aside, Jaws smiles at the man, horrifying him. Jaws then continues his travel.

When Bond, now at Rio, investigates a warehouse at night, he does so during a parade. While Bond is inside the warehouse, his accomplice Manuela is approached by a giant figure disguised as a clown. The man removes his mask and reveals himself as Jaws. He advances onto Manuela, about to kill her but is stopped when a door opens and multiple citizens walk through the alley, celebrating. Grabbing Manuela, Jaws acts like they belong together and waits until the people are gone. Again he tries to bite her, this time to be interrupted by Bond, who jumps onto him, causing Jaws to drop the girl. Before they can fight, the alley is once again flooded with celebrating people and Jaws, though trying to prevent it, is swarmed away with the crowd. The next day, Bond travels to a mountain outside the city, observing an island near the city owned by Drax. While watching one of Drax' planes fly off, he sees Dr. Goodhead nearby, who in truth is a CIA agent. Both decide to work together and leave the station via cable cart. In the station underneath, Jaws grabs one of the giant wheels, thereby stopping the mechanism and trapping Bond's cable cart midway. He then bites one of the cables and climbs the line onto another cable cart on the line next to Bond's.

One of Drax' henchmen then drives Jaws' cable cart until it is directly next to Bond's. Jaws then jumps over onto Bond's cart and attacks him and Goodhead, who try to escape him in the small place they have. Eventually, they manage to throw Jaws down into the cable cart and close it. They escape the cart by using a chain and sliding down the line. The henchman in the control room then activates Jaws' cable cart to run them over while they are sliding. Boosting Jaw's car more and more to get the escaping agents in time, the henchman is unable to stop the cart in time to prevent it from crashing. Bond and Goodhead drop from the line when they are close enough to the ground and Jaws' cart crashes into the control room with such force that it brings down the entire building. Regaining consciousness under one of the wheels of the mechanism, Jaws heaves the wheel to escape and is aided by Dolly, one of the civilians around. The two of them fall in love immediately.

Jungle pursuit
After Drax' nerve gas has been analyzed, Bond is sent to the Brazilian jungle, where the plant from which the toxin is made grows. While cruising the river, Bond is attacked by Drax' henchmen in speedboats, led by Jaws. Though defeating most of them with the special equipment built into his boat, Bond is eventually forced to drive his boat over the edge of a waterfall, escaping via paraglider. Not having a glider, Jaws tries to grab the wheel but, again owed to his strength, rips it out, causing his boat to drive over the edge. Again Jaws manages to survive this fall.

However, while following a women in the forest, Bond is lured into Drax' hidden base, where he is captured by Jaws, still wet from his fall. Bond is brought before Drax, who allows Bond to watch via screen how four Moonraker shuttles lift off. Claiming that Bond has distracted him enough, Drax tells Jaws to place Bond somewhere where he can get warm after his swim. Jaws brings Bond into the chamber underneath the last Moonraker shuttle, where Dr. Goodhead already awaits him. Jaws then enters the shuttle Moonraker 5 and travels into space, safely arriving at Drax' space base with his girlfriend Dolly.

Space base
At the space base, Drax holds a speech, explaining that he intends to destroy the entire human race except for a small group of carefully selected humans, both male and female, which he views as physically perfected specimen to create a super race with. After a period of time, when the chemical agent has become harmless, Drax plans for his master race to return to earth to reinhabit the planet. This plan disgusts Jaws, who looks at Drax in contempt. After Bond and Goodhead have destroyed the base's radar jammer, Jaws finds the two of them and sneaks up on them. When Bond turns and sees Jaws, more henchmen arrive. They take Goodhead away while Jaws takes Bond. Bond tries to escape Jaws by hitting him in the face, but only hurts himself due to Jaws' steel teeth. Jaws then brings Goodhead and Bond to Drax. Drax orders Jaws to expel both of them into space but Bond, knowing that Jaws is listening, asks Drax whether anyone not matching his ideals of physical perfection will be killed. Drax confirms this. Realising that he and his girlfriend hardly meet Drax' standard, Jaws turns against Drax and attacks his henchmen. However despite his strength  he and Bond are overwhelmed by Drax' men. To evade the destruction of the approaching shuttle and their own death, Bond quickly moves and pushes the bases emergency stop button, causing the entire facility to violently shake. As the base is no longer rotating, it also has no gravity. Bond, Goodhead and Jaws use this advantage to escape from the main room. After the US soldiers have battled Drax' henchmen, the station has taken too much damage and is falling apart. The US soldiers abandon the station, leaving Bond and Goodhead to head to Moonraker 5. However. the docking release system is jammed, preventing them from leaving the station. . Meanwhile, Jaws has reunited with his girlfriend. In the ruins, they find a bottle of champagne and sit down. Jaws fetches two glasses and says his only words in the series: "Well, here's to us!" . After drinking, Jaws and Dolly roam the station. Bond sees the two and talks to Jaws via PA, asking for help. Jaws indeed manages to free the shuttle and Bond and Goodhead lift off, with Jaws and Dolly staying behind. The part of the station containing Jaws and Dolly then breaks off, falling towards earth, while the rest of the station explodes. Bond, knowing Jaws, comments that they will be alright.

At the US base, the commander is told that two survivors were picked up, a tall man and a small blonde woman, confirming that Jaws and Dolly indeed survived.

Trivia

 * Jaws, aside from the James Bond franchise's main villain, Blofeld, and Mr. White is the only villain to be in more than one James Bond film.
 * Jaws, May Day and Mr. White are the only villains in the series to switch sides and redeem themselves.
 * Jaws also appears in the non-canon James Bond game, Everything or Nothing. He once again works for the main villain in the game and acts as one of the main bosses in the game.
 * Richard Kiel reprised his role as Jaws in a cameo during the ending credits of Inspector Gadget, depicting him as part of a Minion Recovery Group, alongside Oddjob and Nick Nack (though the latter two are portrayed by different actors, as the original ones were dead at that point).

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