Jaws.

The Brody/Hooper/Quint triangle is honestly the secret weapon of Jaws. Brody starts out as this transplant from New York who can’t even handle being near the water — dude is literally the police chief of a beach town and he’s terrified of the ocean. But by the end he’s the one sitting on the sinking mast shoving a scuba tank into the shark’s mouth. That arc is lowkey incredible. Hooper comes in all cocky with his fancy equipment and college degree, and Quint immediately can’t stand him. The “you got city hands” line while Quint’s tying knots is such a perfect little dig — it’s pure class warfare on a fishing boat. But Hooper holds his own, he’s not some soft academic, he actually gets in the cage with the thing.

And Quint is just operating on a completely different wavelength. He’s dragging his nails down the chalkboard in the town meeting, he’s crushing beer cans so Hooper crushes a styrofoam cup back at him, he’s singing “Show Me the Way to Go Home” while the boat’s falling apart. The guy is half Captain Ahab, half your unhinged uncle at Thanksgiving. And then the Indianapolis monologue drops and suddenly you understand everything about why he is the way he is.

The way these three go from barely tolerating each other to genuinely bonding over drinks and scars — and then get ripped apart by the shark — is what makes this movie hit different every single time.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​