You ever stare into the abyss and see a pair of fiberglass jaws staring back? I did. I was eight. Spielberg’s 'Jaws' had just hit the cultural bloodstream, and like a lot of people, I got bit. Not by the shark, but by the myth.
This year marks half a century since that cinematic leviathan breached the surface of our collective psyche. Fifty years since Bruce, the mechanical shark with a soul of steel and a mouthful of metaphor, first thrashed his way into our dreams. And for me, it wasn’t just a movie. It was a baptism. Saltwater, fear, and storytelling all swirling together in one primal gulp.
So what do you do when a childhood terror refuses to let go? You build it. You sculpt it. You make peace with it by giving it form. Not the polished, pixel-perfect predator of modern CGI. I went old school. I wanted the beast in its original form, bolts, gears, hydraulics and all. The kind of shark that breaks down mid-scene and forces a young Spielberg to invent suspense. That’s the Bruce I built.
Why Bruce?
Sure, you can buy a kit. There’s a company out there, StannArts, that’ll sell you a fine replica. But I wasn’t looking for a souvenir. I was looking for communion. I wanted to understand the architecture of fear. Could I design it myself? Could I print it, paint it, and maybe, just maybe, exorcise it? Turns out, I could. And it was glorious.
My Process
- Designing in 3D: I dove into reference photos like a marine biologist chasing a myth. Behind-the-scenes shots, skeletal diagrams, the whole enchilada. Piece by piece, I sculpted Bruce in digital clay, honoring his asymmetries like sacred scars.
- Printing & Assembly: Over weeks, I printed the parts in batches. Each piece a meditation. The final model? Twenty-two inches of PLA plastic memory. Big enough to command attention, small enough not to eat a cat.
- Painting & Finishing: Airbrush in one hand, childhood in the other. I gave Bruce his weathered skin, his muted menace. The eyes had to strike that balance between lifeless and too alive. That uncanny stare that says, “I’m not real, but I’m not safe either.”
Funny thing, while I was building Bruce, I kept hearing echoes of my day job at Michael Curry Design. The way the parts moved, the internal logic of the beast, it was puppetry. It was spectacle. It was myth-making. Bruce wasn’t just a prop. He was a creature born of necessity and imagination. A mechanical monster with a heartbeat made of hydraulics.
This wasn’t just nostalgia. It was alchemy. I took a fear that once lived in the shadows and gave it shape. Bruce became a symbol, not of sharks, but of the unknown. The uncontrollable. The edge of the map where the sea monsters live. And soon he will sit on my shelf ( as soon as I find the space). He is a trophy, not a warning, but a reminder. That sometimes, the things that haunt us are the very things that shape us.
Maybe you’ve got a Bruce of your own, some childhood specter with teeth and torque. I say, don’t run. Build it. Understand it. And maybe you’ll find that the monster was never in the water. It was in the story.
