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Chief Martin Brody is the protagonist of the film Jaws and it's sequel, Jaws 2. He was the Chief of Police on Amity Island during Jaws, but was fired in Jaws 2, and killed two great white sharks terrorizing Amity waters.

Background[]

Little is known of Chief Brody's past, but he met a woman named Ellen, at Jershey Shores and fell in love with her. They married and had two sons, Michael and Sean. He apparently had a near-drowning accident as a child and hated water for most of his life, becoming okay with it in the end of Jaws.

Jaws[]

Martin Brody was the Police Chief of fictional Amity Island and was working his first summer when, after he woke up and was getting ready for work, he was called and informed someone went missing at the beach. He drove out there and met with a young man who was with his friend, Chrissie "Christine" Watkins, went she disappeared after she started skinny dipping. As they talked, Brody's deputy, Jeff Hendricks, called them over to Chrissie's mangled corpse on the beach. The medical inspector at first attributed her death to a shark attack, and Brody moved to close the beaches, but was overruled by Mayor Larry Vaughan, who was backed by the medical inspector's change of mind to thinking a boat propeller killed Chrissie Watkins. Brody reluctantly went along with the explanation. Later, at the beach, a young boy named Alexander Kitner was killed in cold blood by a shark, so Brody and Vaughan, along with the rest of the town council hold a public conference to inform the public as to how they would proceed to deal with the shark. With Alex Kitner's mother Mrs. Kitner having offered a $3,000 reward for the shark, Quint, a local professional shark hunter, drew the attention of Brody, the council, and the townsfolk present and offered to use his own considerable prowess to kill the shark for $10,000, as he valued his own life at no less, and told them the shark's capability before bidding Brody, Vaughan, and the rest of his audience good day.

In the break-out of a major, amateur shark-hunting freenzy, Brody and Hendricks had a hard time keeping things under control at the beach. Matt Hooper, a shark expert, arrived to help with the shark at the request of Brody and he showed him Chrissie Watkin's remains, where the latter confirmed she was killed by a shark. Hooper and Brody arrived back at the beach after a large tiger shark was caught and killed by the group of fishermen, and Hooper told Brody that the shark's bite radius was not the same as the wounds on Chrissie's body. The men request to cut open the stomach of the shark, but Vaughan refused at that time since too many people were present. Brody and Hooper returned that night, confirmed that it wasn't the shark that killed the victims, and looked for it on Hooper's boat. They found the boat of Ben Gardner, a local fisherman, and discovered the tooth of a Great White shark stuck in its underbelly. Hooper dropped it on seeing Gardner's remains and Vaughan refused to close the beaches on the Fourth of July, but empowered Brody and Hooper to do anything necessary to make them safe.

Brody and gun

Brody hunting the shark

Brody and Hooper set up a patrol of deputies and townsfolk at the beach, with Hooper out on the water and Brody on the beach. Brody told his son, Mike, to put his boat in the pond and not on the beach for safety. After the shark seemingly appeared, Brody and Hooper rushed everyone in the water back to the beach, only to find out it was a pair of kids with a cardboard fin. The shark, however, swam into the pond and devoured a man trying to teach Mike and his friends how to fix a boat for sail, causing Mike to go into shock. At the hospital, Brody told his wife, Ellen, to take their youngest son, Sean, home and managed to persuade Vaughan to sign a payment order, allowing Brody to hire Quint to kill the shark once and for all. Brody and Hooper paid Quint a visit and agreed to his fee terms. Brody was fascinated by the many shark jaw trophies hanging on Quint's walls and, after Hooper introduced himself to Quint, the two requested to accompany him on the hunt for the shark. Quint told them that while they were onboard his vessel, they were his crew and he was their captain, which they agreed to. The trio set out on Quint's sharking boat, the Orca, to hunt the shark. Brody was given the task of laying a chum line while Quint used piano wire fishing reel to hook the shark. He succeeded, but the shark bit through the wire and escaped.

After they had travelled south-southeast for twelve minutes, Quint had Brody start to lay the chum line again and an enormous Great White shark appeared in front of him. Brody walked inside the boat's cabin to Quint and told him he would need a bigger boat. The trio watch as the shark swam by the Orca, with Quint estimating its size as being twenty-five feet in length with a weight of 6,000 pounds. Questioning how they were to handle the situation, Brody refused to help Hooper with taking good photos of the shark and got up on the wheel of the boat when Quint came up front with his harpoon rifle and told Hooper to attach its line to one of the flotation kegs on the boat. Quint harpooned the shark, but it dragged the keg under the surface and the trio retired to the Orca's cabin for the night when they didn't find it again. After supper, Hooper and Brody listened to Quint's story as a survivor of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the men began to sing. However, the shark reappeared and damaged the boat's engine and Brody got his pistol ready when Quint ordered them ondeck. The next day, Brody helped Hooper and Quint repair the Orca's damaged engine and alerted Quint when the keg on the shark resurfaced. After the shark severed the line, Brody tried to call the Coast Guard on the radio, but Quint smashed it, angering Brody. The shark reappeared and, after Hooper and Quint worked together and harpooned it twice more, Brody shot the shark in the head with his pistol as it swam by the boat.

When Quint drove the Orca over to the kegs, Brody and Hooper attached the ropes on the kegs to the stern cleats. After the shark began to work its way up the ropes towards them, Brody and Hooper called for Quint before he harpooned the shark again below the jaw. After the shark ripped of the stern cleats, Quint told Brody to pump out the water taken on because of the shark. After Quint became obsessed to kill the shark and blew out the Orca's engine, Brody, Hooper and Quint decided to try a desperate approach to kill the shark by putting together Hooper's anti-shark cage and setting it in the water so that Hooper could try to stab the shark with a hypodermic spear filled with strychnine nitrate. However, the shark destroyed the cage and caused the Orca's crane to give weigh to its massive weight when Quint tried to crank it up. Hooper still managed to escape in time, however. The shark then threw itself onto the Orca's stern, crushing the transom and prompting Quint and Brody to retreat into the cabin. After Quint lost his grip on the bar, Brody tried to grab him, but Quint slipped through his wet hand and down to the shark, where he was killed after a bloody tussle. Brody shoved a compressed air tank into the sharks mouth when it attacked him, grabbed Quint's rifle, and climbed the mast where, after being disarmed of a spear he pick up by the shark, Brody fired several missed shots at the air tank in the sharks mouth, finally hitting it with his last one, blowing the shark to pieces. Afterwards, Brody was rejoined at the surface by Hooper and the two laughed, glad that the ordeal was finally over and lamented the death of Quint, whom they held a brief moment of silent respect for, before returning to Amity Island.

Jaws 2[]

Four years after the events of Jaws, Chief Martin Brody attended an opening ceremony for a new hotel on Amity Island. Now more experienced at his job, Brody investigated a boating accident in which two people went missing after beginning to investigate the disappearnce of two wealthy divers. Not being able to find out anything, Brody called in an oceanographer to help identify what killed an Orca beached at the lighthouse. Suggesting a great white shark might have from the size of the wounds, the oceanographer told Brody that it was either that or another orca, but that it couldn't be told from the current state of the corpse. Brody approached Mayor Larry Vaughan, who was once again unwilling to believe that they had a shark problem and warned Brody not to press the issue. Brody later found the body of one of the missing people that was burned from a gasoline fire. He received word about Matthew Hooper, a friend of his who had helped with the past shark problem, and was informed that he was on board a sea-bound vessel and wouldn't be able to help or talk until next spring. Brody forced his son, Mike, to get a job at the beach to learn responsibility and, as he was watching in his shark tower, he spotted a school of bluefish and mistook it for a shark.

In a quick haste, Brody started a panic on the beach and emptied his gun on the school of bluefish before realizing what it was. Sitting in his office later, Brody was phone by a film developer whom had developed film from the camera of the missing divers that revealed photos of the Orca, Quint's boat from Jaws. Brody went down to his workshop and watched as he developed a photo of the shark Brody suspected was in the area, which Brody took to a town council meeting. Vaughan and the others refused to accept that the photo is of a shark and the council fired Brody for causing the beach panic, Vaughan being the only one to vote against dismissal. Brody later gave his badge to Hendricks, his deputy, who was promoted to his job and toasted his promotion with Hendricks and Ellen, Brody's wife. The next morning, Brody and Ellen learned that Mike had gone sailing with his friends and they left with Hendricks on the police launch to find the kids after discovering a friend of theirs had had an embolism after being scared underwater. They found the boat of Tina, a local tennage girl, who had just witnessed the death of her boyfriend, Eddie, who was eaten by the shark, and she confirmed Brody's suspicion about the shark in the area.

Brody headed out to find the children at the lighthouse and contacted the Coast Guard for aid after he found that they weren't there. He was cut off and forced to continue his search for them alone. He found his eldest son, Mike, on board a boat with two friends coming back to the lighthouse after being attacked by the shark and was told that Sean, Mike's younger brother, was still out there with the rest of the kids. Brody took off towards Cable Junction, an island with a power station, and found the kids stuck there. He tried to help them aboard the police launch, but the shark appeared and made Brody beach the boat on Cable Junction when he tried to dodge the shark. Brody tried to help the kids attach a rope to his wench hooks, but it got stuck on a power cable that Brody ended up pulling up when he put the wench in reverse. When the shark reappeared, Brody pounded the power cable with a boat paddle and caused a rhythmic vibration under the water to draw the shark away. When it resurfaced again, Brody started to pound the cable some more and tricked the shark into charging him. When it got close, Brody tricked the shark into biting down on the power cable, which electrocuted the shark to death. Brody then rowed over and picked up Jackie, Michael's girlfriend, and Sean, who Brody comically hugs and laughs with when the latter attempts to say that he was forced to go with his brother, before rowing to Cable Junction to await rescue.

Jaws: The Revenge[]

Former Police Chief Martin Brody died of a heart attack in the beginning of Jaws: The Revenge. He was not seen, but his death was revealed to the audience in the beginning.


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