Jaws (James Bond)

Jaws (James Bond)
Gender:	Male
Portrayed By:	Richard Kiel
First Appearance:	The Spy Who Loved Me

Jaws is a fictional character in the James Bond films The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, played in both films by Richard Kiel. Jaws is one of the most popular James Bond henchmen and a recurring character in the James Bond video games. His primary role in Ian Fleming's novels is an assassin. He is a highly skilled killer relying on his brute strength and improvising any situation to quickly dispatch his victims.

In films

Jaws first appeared in the 1977 film The Spy Who Loved Me as a henchman to the villain, Karl Stromberg. In the next film, Moonraker, Jaws is employed by both Bond's unspecified enemy in the pre-credits sequence, and the main villain Hugo Drax. Jaws is evidently well known amongst criminals, as Drax is pleased to learn that Jaws is available to hire.

In his second appearance Jaws changed from a ruthless and unstoppable killing machine to more of a comedic figure and he eventually turns against Drax and helps Bond to defeat him. In addition to having steel teeth, Jaws was also gigantic and extremely strong, which forced Bond to be especially inventive while fighting him. In combat during The Spy Who Loved Me, Bond found himself caught in an unbreakable death grip by Jaws, who was about to fatally bite him; Bond only escaped by using a broken electric lamp to send an electric shock through the assassin's teeth to stun him. In Moonraker he gains a girlfriend, Dolly, who like Jaws seems to almost never speak (she says nothing audible in the film) and who is the primary reason for his reformation.

Jaws also has an uncanny ability to survive any misfortune seemingly unscathed and come back to challenge Bond again. In The Spy Who Loved Me, Jaws survives an Egyptian structure's collapse on top of him, being hit by a van, being thrown from a rapidly moving train, sitting in the passenger seat of a car which veers off a cliff in Sardinia and lands in a hut below (to the owner's dismay), a battle underwater with a shark, and the destruction of Stromberg's lair. In Moonraker, he survives falling several thousand feet after accidentally disabling his own parachute (he falls through a circus tent and lands in the trapeze net), a crash through a building inside a runaway cable car (where he meets Dolly), and going over Iguazu Falls. After each of these incidents (except the last), he always picks himself up, dusts off his jacket, straightens his tie and nonchalantly walks away. At the end of the film, Jaws escapes from Drax's disintegrating space station in an escape pod with his girlfriend; they open a bottle of champagne, and Jaws speaks his only line in the entire franchise: "Well, here's to us."

In 1979 there were plans to bring Jaws back for a third film. In For Your Eyes Only, Jaws would marry Dolly. However, due to a change in production personnel and a desire to make the films more down-to-earth, the producers chose not to bring Kiel or Jaws back.

Images

Jaws as he appears in the 2010 version of the GoldenEye videogame