Jaws

Short Answer: Technologically update the original.

Is Jaws... a franchise?

Well, there was a sequel and a part 3 and a reboot, so... yeah. 

But none of those other three could touch the first one in terms of power and excellence. It's in the Top 250 of imdb, and it was made back in 1975. It won 3 Oscars.

The sequel is considered watchable, and the others, well, no.

The thing is, it started a craze of shark movies-- and Shark Week docs-- than has lasted to today. (It was led to people being so terrified of sharks they have driven them to near extinction, but that's not Spielberg's fault). So it's not just a franchise, it's a subgenre. And it also kicked off the whole "summer blockbuster" concept we still have.

And the thing about those other shark movies? They are also not great. Only 3 shark movies rate 80% or above on the Tomatometer's list of Shark Movies, and two of those are Jaws and its sequel. (If you look at the Tomatometer's list, it looks like more have that rating, but those others are documentaries, not movies.)

Even so, there are 36 movies on its list... and only 13 are "Fresh" altogether, including the docs. Not a great record.

As classic as it is, Jaws had one major downfall-- the shark itself. The mechanical menace, nicknamed Bruce by the crew, was also a menace to the filmmakers. Its innards were not made to withstand saltwater (whoops!) and it had other issues as well. It was clunky and ungainly. 

All told, the shark is in this seminal Shark Movie for maybe 4 minutes of screen time. And to today's eyes, not all that convincing.

But of you watch the versions of the original Stark Trek series available now, you can see what they did-- the "exterior" shots of the Enterprise and the planets they orbit have been redone in CGI. They had used a model, back then, but the digitally retooled space-based shots are now almost too good, and make the shots of the bridge and planet surfaces look dull by comparison.

So... do that. With the shark. Go back to the original Jaws movie, digitally edit out Bruce, and replace him with a very realistic CGI shark. We have the tech to do it now and make it look very smooth.

And sure, people will cry foul at this, the way they did when George Lucas started retroactively futzing with the early Star Wars movies. Only he did more than add this or tweak that-- he added in whole story-changing elements.

We would not do that to Jaws. Nor would we make the original version with Bruce unavailable. We would just replace his scenes with a more realistic, if less real, shark. We know more how about how sharks look and move, and the digital one would be more flexible, muscular and sinuous than any robot could ever be, even now.  

This should be done while Spielberg is alive, so we can know that it looks like he would have wanted it to. On the other hand, he has recently expressed doubts about this kind of thing in his own movies.

See, in ET, the original had the Feds at the end holding guns. Yeah, to shoot at kids! Parents cried foul, so he digitally replaced those with walkie-talkies for some more recent digital releases. Now he is saying he should have left the original alone. 

So it's likely he wouldn't go for the digitally redone Jaws. It's still the best Shark Movie, he would say, so why mess with it? 

Because we need it to stay the best Shark Movie.