A thread that begs for your participation...
(Just kidding!!)
This is a very old hat argument. The highest grossing film of 1974 (the year before Jaws) was ‘The Towering Infero’. It wasn’t some Golden Age where people only went to see films like Chinatown. If there’s anyy genre Spielberg killed off it was Irwin Allen style diaster films. And JAws is very much a cynical 1970s film with its grimy beach resort and Goverment Coverup subplot. Rocky and Star Wars did much more damage.