On being a sheep
Having not updated for some months/weeks, I can no longer resist an indepth review/analysis of movie all of my flist is gabbling about, PotC: Dead Man's Curse.
I rate this movie pretty well for entertainment. It may not have used any laws of logic/physics that I'm acquainted with, but it followed its own personal logic and I didn't get bored after a hundred and fifty minutes. I went to the thing twice in 24 hours (having ended up on the end of the front row the first time) and I didn't get bored. That's pretty impressive.
Nevertheless, there's nothing worse than ripping off your own movie. Over and over again. Bringing back the Rum joke put DMC on a bad footing from the start and the screenwriters never made up the lost ground. I always loved the first movie because it told a story, and (IMO) it told it very, very well. Dead Man's Chest didn't tell a story, it told us about a series of action sequences and physical gags - and yes, it's a sequel what-can-you-expect, and yes, technically it's only half a story cut-it-some-slack - but lordy, isn't half a story easier to tell than a whole? We had a lot of the same elements: Jack uses his compass to search for a priceless treasure, the Undead Pirate Captain Villain captures Elizabeth and/or Will and does nasty things to them, everyone mucks around until they can all get aboard a ship, a heart-wrenching sea battle ensues, a ship is sunk, logic is slaughtered somewhere in the background. In CotBP, that was nicely choreographed and it was fun. In DMC, it was deja vu.
If the screenwriters lost all my respect, at least the movie was redeemed by its visuals. I'm sure you couldn't have failed to notice that this is a movie full of pretty people, bright colours, gorgeous tropical locations and lots of interesting background details. I like that. Best of all, the CGI pirates were one notch higher than fantastic. I could have spent the whole movie studying the different pirates, Orlando Bloom's wet back, Davy Jones' tentacles, the inky woman's house/costume, that starfish on Bill Turner's face, etc. Even sitting in the front row didn't ruin that.
If I'm going to rant about one thing, though, it's the east india trading company. I don't like blatant morals much in kids' movies - even as a child, morals always made me want to do the opposite - and for a large-scale film to slap us around the face with the threat of corporate giants just made me growl. A disney film, of all things! How much more hypocritical can you get? If there's two political messages that almost never fail to kill a movie for me, it's Evil Corporate Giants and global warming. It's a cheap emotional shot at the audience that makes us look ignorant and easily manipulated. Pirates only had one of those messages, but it was enough to bring the mood way down. I'm hoping the East India TC will turn out to have some purpose in PotC3 other than as the villain, in which case all will be forgiven, but the chances of that look like slim to nothing.
Bringing things back to the positive, I love the foursome of Jack/Elizabeth/Will/Norrington. Not the literal foursome (though I'd probably like that too, if anyone can recommend any fics ;) ) but the four characters and their interactions. I love these characters. I can get very, very critical of characterisation, even in movies or books I like (Jack from Lost, Meredith from Grey's Anatomy, Lyra and Will from His Dark Materials, almost anyone from Harry Potter), but I really love the PotC characters to death (no pun intended, Jack). I love the sparkling background characters like Pintel & Ragetti, Tia Dalma, Gibbs, Bootstrap, Beckett...look, I could go on all day. And I love the main three/four characters beyond words. They made the first movie worth watching ten times over like a giddy fangirl and they saved this one from the rocks.
I think in my mind the crux of it is that I see them as four parodies of a hero. Not parodies on the level of Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim, perhaps, but individual aspects of a hero that mock the whole. Jack is morally bankrupt and fakes insanity, Norrington is so adverse to failure that he loses all his virtues when faced with it, Elizabeth is the archetype hero (but not the archetype heroine) except she can't help acting like a woman, and Will is just so pure and virtuous he mocks himself. I liked the CotBP Will and Elizabeth better because it was their naivete and failures that made them appealing, but they still retained some of that in DMC. And having all four of them in the same place in DMC, watching them bounce off each other (figuratively and literally), was heaven on all the parts of me that revile against bad characterisation. Feel free to argue me on any of these points.
So to sum up a few bad points that I needn't emphasize:
- The cannibals, because seriously, this stereotype is way out of date
- Will Turner doing things right all by himself, because he just shouldn't
- The weird scene where they blow up the Kraken with barrels of rum and gunpowder but don't blow up the ship or the people underneath
- Johnny Depp not putting his heart into Jack Sparrow, evidently having realised he's in a disney sequel, poor man
- Bill Turner not looking anything like Will Turner, even though it was a major plot point in the first movie
- Lapses in logic. Why didn't they just get the chest, then have Will make a key using the diagram? He's a blacksmith!
And a few good points that made me joyful:
- Bootstrap Bill. Everything about him was awesome, even if he didn't look like Old Wrinkly Orlando Bloom, which would have been even better
- The kraken. Exactly as seafarers of the 1600s imagined him. Though "kraken" to me will always mean John Wyndham's half-chocolate egg aliens
- "Oh, and she's probably naked."
- Ragetti "reading" the bible
- The three-way sword fight, and Elizabeth's line, "Let's just pull out our swords and start banging away at each other!"
- THE ENDING.
Because dude. Barbossa wins the 17th century internet. What is it this year with last-second endings that rock? X-Men3, PotC...ok, maybe that's it.
And that is all I have to say about Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. If you made it this far, I commend you :D
I rate this movie pretty well for entertainment. It may not have used any laws of logic/physics that I'm acquainted with, but it followed its own personal logic and I didn't get bored after a hundred and fifty minutes. I went to the thing twice in 24 hours (having ended up on the end of the front row the first time) and I didn't get bored. That's pretty impressive.
Nevertheless, there's nothing worse than ripping off your own movie. Over and over again. Bringing back the Rum joke put DMC on a bad footing from the start and the screenwriters never made up the lost ground. I always loved the first movie because it told a story, and (IMO) it told it very, very well. Dead Man's Chest didn't tell a story, it told us about a series of action sequences and physical gags - and yes, it's a sequel what-can-you-expect, and yes, technically it's only half a story cut-it-some-slack - but lordy, isn't half a story easier to tell than a whole? We had a lot of the same elements: Jack uses his compass to search for a priceless treasure, the Undead Pirate Captain Villain captures Elizabeth and/or Will and does nasty things to them, everyone mucks around until they can all get aboard a ship, a heart-wrenching sea battle ensues, a ship is sunk, logic is slaughtered somewhere in the background. In CotBP, that was nicely choreographed and it was fun. In DMC, it was deja vu.
If the screenwriters lost all my respect, at least the movie was redeemed by its visuals. I'm sure you couldn't have failed to notice that this is a movie full of pretty people, bright colours, gorgeous tropical locations and lots of interesting background details. I like that. Best of all, the CGI pirates were one notch higher than fantastic. I could have spent the whole movie studying the different pirates, Orlando Bloom's wet back, Davy Jones' tentacles, the inky woman's house/costume, that starfish on Bill Turner's face, etc. Even sitting in the front row didn't ruin that.
If I'm going to rant about one thing, though, it's the east india trading company. I don't like blatant morals much in kids' movies - even as a child, morals always made me want to do the opposite - and for a large-scale film to slap us around the face with the threat of corporate giants just made me growl. A disney film, of all things! How much more hypocritical can you get? If there's two political messages that almost never fail to kill a movie for me, it's Evil Corporate Giants and global warming. It's a cheap emotional shot at the audience that makes us look ignorant and easily manipulated. Pirates only had one of those messages, but it was enough to bring the mood way down. I'm hoping the East India TC will turn out to have some purpose in PotC3 other than as the villain, in which case all will be forgiven, but the chances of that look like slim to nothing.
Bringing things back to the positive, I love the foursome of Jack/Elizabeth/Will/Norrington. Not the literal foursome (though I'd probably like that too, if anyone can recommend any fics ;) ) but the four characters and their interactions. I love these characters. I can get very, very critical of characterisation, even in movies or books I like (Jack from Lost, Meredith from Grey's Anatomy, Lyra and Will from His Dark Materials, almost anyone from Harry Potter), but I really love the PotC characters to death (no pun intended, Jack). I love the sparkling background characters like Pintel & Ragetti, Tia Dalma, Gibbs, Bootstrap, Beckett...look, I could go on all day. And I love the main three/four characters beyond words. They made the first movie worth watching ten times over like a giddy fangirl and they saved this one from the rocks.
I think in my mind the crux of it is that I see them as four parodies of a hero. Not parodies on the level of Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim, perhaps, but individual aspects of a hero that mock the whole. Jack is morally bankrupt and fakes insanity, Norrington is so adverse to failure that he loses all his virtues when faced with it, Elizabeth is the archetype hero (but not the archetype heroine) except she can't help acting like a woman, and Will is just so pure and virtuous he mocks himself. I liked the CotBP Will and Elizabeth better because it was their naivete and failures that made them appealing, but they still retained some of that in DMC. And having all four of them in the same place in DMC, watching them bounce off each other (figuratively and literally), was heaven on all the parts of me that revile against bad characterisation. Feel free to argue me on any of these points.
So to sum up a few bad points that I needn't emphasize:
- The cannibals, because seriously, this stereotype is way out of date
- Will Turner doing things right all by himself, because he just shouldn't
- The weird scene where they blow up the Kraken with barrels of rum and gunpowder but don't blow up the ship or the people underneath
- Johnny Depp not putting his heart into Jack Sparrow, evidently having realised he's in a disney sequel, poor man
- Bill Turner not looking anything like Will Turner, even though it was a major plot point in the first movie
- Lapses in logic. Why didn't they just get the chest, then have Will make a key using the diagram? He's a blacksmith!
And a few good points that made me joyful:
- Bootstrap Bill. Everything about him was awesome, even if he didn't look like Old Wrinkly Orlando Bloom, which would have been even better
- The kraken. Exactly as seafarers of the 1600s imagined him. Though "kraken" to me will always mean John Wyndham's half-chocolate egg aliens
- "Oh, and she's probably naked."
- Ragetti "reading" the bible
- The three-way sword fight, and Elizabeth's line, "Let's just pull out our swords and start banging away at each other!"
- THE ENDING.
Because dude. Barbossa wins the 17th century internet. What is it this year with last-second endings that rock? X-Men3, PotC...ok, maybe that's it.
And that is all I have to say about Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. If you made it this far, I commend you :D