The Mounteback May Say, "Pirates Beat Ninjas!": I Say Nay
"Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest was a successful sequel to the original, packed with all the same, original entertainment and fun."
I would write the above line if I were a liar. I desperately want to write that above line—or, I did, before I saw the movie, at least—but I am prevented from doing so, mostly by how I actually felt about the flick. Pirates 2 was a two and a half hour effects festival that fell short in ways I wasn't even expecting; Disney thought they could cash in on a second success big-time, and they did: the highest grossing opening weekend in history (bumping Spiderman). I wish that were deserved.
The beginning of this film, to me, felt like the writers desperately trying to tie the second film to the first while explaining what the characters had been up to since then, and it rushed the audience through a jarring and very confusing series of scenes which ultimately served little purpose in terms of plot or story development. The actors, for the most part, sleepwalked through their performances for the duration of the first twenty to thirty minutes—a long time to get to the real plot—and mouthed the words they were told to say. The legendary performance of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow even felt half-hearted.
Once the movie got going into the plot, with two full hours remaining, it proceeded to be sidetracked time and time again by long, drawn-out special effects sequences that were supposed to be engaging, but came off more like budget being squandered on insignificant sequences of fluff. I could've done without so many scenes revolved around "Holy shit! The Kraken is totally fucking shit up, ya'll!" I got it, guys: there are tentacles, they are big, they are breaking things. No need to show us that for five straight minutes. The entire "Swordfight on a Moving Mill Wheel" scene could've been thrown out; for that matter, the swordfight between Sparrow, Turner and Norrington just felt forced, like the producers raised a hand and yelled, "Time for the obligatory swordfight!" It wasn't choreographed in any way that felt new or interesting, more like they just instructed the actors to swing their prop cutlasses around wildly and smack 'em together once in awhile. And that was a lot of what took me, as a viewer, out of the effects-driven scenes: they mostly seemed forced and clumsy; moreover, all in all, I think the movie easily wasted twenty minutes on footage entirely consisting of special effects.
The story itself really seemed… poorly constructed. As was pointed out by a friend after the movie, there were a lot of MacGuffins throughout the plot. There was one, after the other, after the other, totalling approximately seven (compass, drawing of key, key, chest, heart, jar of dirt, Turner's father); ultimately, this lead to very little audience investment in what was going on, the producers clearly wanting viewers to pay more attention to the shiny effects. It added up to a very boring and contrived type of plot that had so much more potential: I mean, they could've done a lot more with Davy Jones and the mythos surrounding him, but they didn't. It boiled down to a lot of simple "go fetch the plot device!" Yawn.
Speaking of Davy Jones, of all the performances in the film I found the one by Bill Nighy as Captain Jones the best. The character was full of subtle nuance, much like how Captain Sparrow had once been in Pirates 1, and surprised me by being more than just a menacing archvillian stereotype. My ex-roommate noted that he seemed "unable to decide on an accent," but I thought that more intentional than a mistake, somehow representing the diversity of pirates and sailors on the seas: British, Welsh, French, Spanish, so on. The fact that there was a spark of sentiment for the villian was refreshing, and I found myself asking the question: "Why am I supposed to hate this guy, precisely?" In the end, Jack Sparrow is a more vile human being than Davy Jones, who is really just collecting on a promised payment, whereas Sparrow repeatedly proves throughout the film that he's a selfish coward.
Then, oh dear, there's the end. Heh. After two and a half hours we're outright denied an ending. Instead, we get an abrupt cut in the plot, setting up for the sequel, At World's End, inevitably to be released as a blockbuster smash hit next summer. Oh, boy. After two and a half hours of a dull, uninteresting plot interrupted by long sessions of effects masturbation, thanks for that, guys. Thanks for the complete and utter non-ending. I needed that, to feel satisfied after waiting for two and a half hours for something of interest to happen, and to be smacked in the face and laughed at for my effort. "I'm sorry," the producers explain, "Were you thinking this movie would give you anything to leave with? Oh, hah, we don't know why you thought that, really."
Johnny Depp has acted to much better effect before, I've seen it—hell, I saw it in Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl. Orlando Bloom actually grew into the role of Turner more in this film, but it's a shame his character was basically manhandled by the writers and put on the back burner, behind Sparrow's "delightful" antics and pretty, shiny objects. I also found myself more enamored with Miss Knightley as Elizabeth in this iteration, as well, but she, like Bloom, just got shoved in the background as pretty backdrop. The scenes surrounding Elizabeth's adventures as a random pirate in some random, other crew on some insignificant ship were probably the only times in the film I found myself chortling. Jack Davenport danced his steps as the one-trick pony-character of Norrington, namely a lot of "Grr, revenge!" Jonathan Pryce was entirely unconvincing as a despicable villian, and more came off as a bad attempt at a rehash of Grand Moff Tarkin. Oh, gee, who else was there in the movie that wasn't merely killed…?
On the matter of death, by the by, Dead Man's Chest delivers in spades, in literally boatloads. If you thought Black Pearl was a bit objectionable for a Disney film… well, there's little denying that Dead Man's Chest shed any pretense of being a family-friendly flick. From start to finish, there were more deaths than in the first movie five hundred times over: people just died left and right. The film abruptly introduced the crew of Jack Sparrow's ship mainly to slaughter them wholesale, like fattened cattle. Maybe Disney wants us to think that they're "bad people" so them dying horribly isn't bad, but, uh, a little kid would probably be asking questions after about the second dozen bunch of characters were finished being drowned or crushed or burnt or ripped to shreds. I don't know what the producers were getting at outside of trying to heighten sales with gratuitous violence, but there was death, believe you me, sir.
Yeah, and, uh, "spoiler alert" or whatever—not really—don't sit through the fifteen minute credit reel for any bonus content: there's a ten-second cut there, sure, but it's hardly worth sitting through the epic adventure of those credits. A lot of people were apparently involved in piecing together this immense disappointment.
The longer I dwell on this film, the worse it grows in my mind. My ex-roommate liked it well enough, but I… can't. In the first Pirates, Johnny Depp displayed a character of interest and depth; in this one, Depp re-used all of the same tricks from the original movie and added little to nothing new to the mix—Hell, not even "little to nothing": simply "nothing" is accurate. I wasn't compelled to say that "It was more of Jack Sparrow acting like Jack Sparrow." It was just the same lines in a very slightly new context. Old hat, if you will.
What Dead Man's Chest did offer was some brilliant costuming. Davy Jones' crew was an innovatively designed array of terrifying fish people, and there's nothing bad I can about that. The costumes of everyone else were pretty much standard fare, but let's pay more attention to the crazy fish people: seriously, Davy Jones was like some sort of Lovecraftean image of a pirate, and that's awesome. If the movie had spent more of its time focusing on Davy Jones and his crew, I would've been so much happier, because if you're going to have uninteresting character interaction and dialogue, it may as well be done from the confines of an insanely cool costume. If they could've just had more of that, I would've been pleased. It wasn't even about special effects, it was just very creative costume design.
I can't say the soundtrack stood out to me, except for that the end credits were very dramatic. My ex-roommate and I actually wrote a little adventure about the End Credits, that they were a marching army of Credits going to fight the Evil Forces of an encroaching, opposing force of Credits, that right off-camera to the north, there was an epic battle ensuing, words fighting words, names against names. The music swelled as a drastic turn of events took place, the unseen flanking manuever of the enemy Credits general causing a big jump in casualities to the Good Credits, a heroic build-up as the Good Credits continue to endeavour and push forward, slowly making a dent in the enemy forces, their numbers winning over the possibly more skilled strategy of the other General. Things finally turned out well in the end, and the Good Credits won, thankfully, striking another victory for the good guys, a victory like one I had greatly wished Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest had been itself, a film I had anticipated with child-like glee and soon found myself regretting seeing.
Sorry, pirates didn't win this one, folks. Failure Rating: 46% (Upped from previous Rating of 27% on second thought).
[TIA;TY]
I would write the above line if I were a liar. I desperately want to write that above line—or, I did, before I saw the movie, at least—but I am prevented from doing so, mostly by how I actually felt about the flick. Pirates 2 was a two and a half hour effects festival that fell short in ways I wasn't even expecting; Disney thought they could cash in on a second success big-time, and they did: the highest grossing opening weekend in history (bumping Spiderman). I wish that were deserved.
The beginning of this film, to me, felt like the writers desperately trying to tie the second film to the first while explaining what the characters had been up to since then, and it rushed the audience through a jarring and very confusing series of scenes which ultimately served little purpose in terms of plot or story development. The actors, for the most part, sleepwalked through their performances for the duration of the first twenty to thirty minutes—a long time to get to the real plot—and mouthed the words they were told to say. The legendary performance of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow even felt half-hearted.
Once the movie got going into the plot, with two full hours remaining, it proceeded to be sidetracked time and time again by long, drawn-out special effects sequences that were supposed to be engaging, but came off more like budget being squandered on insignificant sequences of fluff. I could've done without so many scenes revolved around "Holy shit! The Kraken is totally fucking shit up, ya'll!" I got it, guys: there are tentacles, they are big, they are breaking things. No need to show us that for five straight minutes. The entire "Swordfight on a Moving Mill Wheel" scene could've been thrown out; for that matter, the swordfight between Sparrow, Turner and Norrington just felt forced, like the producers raised a hand and yelled, "Time for the obligatory swordfight!" It wasn't choreographed in any way that felt new or interesting, more like they just instructed the actors to swing their prop cutlasses around wildly and smack 'em together once in awhile. And that was a lot of what took me, as a viewer, out of the effects-driven scenes: they mostly seemed forced and clumsy; moreover, all in all, I think the movie easily wasted twenty minutes on footage entirely consisting of special effects.
The story itself really seemed… poorly constructed. As was pointed out by a friend after the movie, there were a lot of MacGuffins throughout the plot. There was one, after the other, after the other, totalling approximately seven (compass, drawing of key, key, chest, heart, jar of dirt, Turner's father); ultimately, this lead to very little audience investment in what was going on, the producers clearly wanting viewers to pay more attention to the shiny effects. It added up to a very boring and contrived type of plot that had so much more potential: I mean, they could've done a lot more with Davy Jones and the mythos surrounding him, but they didn't. It boiled down to a lot of simple "go fetch the plot device!" Yawn.
Speaking of Davy Jones, of all the performances in the film I found the one by Bill Nighy as Captain Jones the best. The character was full of subtle nuance, much like how Captain Sparrow had once been in Pirates 1, and surprised me by being more than just a menacing archvillian stereotype. My ex-roommate noted that he seemed "unable to decide on an accent," but I thought that more intentional than a mistake, somehow representing the diversity of pirates and sailors on the seas: British, Welsh, French, Spanish, so on. The fact that there was a spark of sentiment for the villian was refreshing, and I found myself asking the question: "Why am I supposed to hate this guy, precisely?" In the end, Jack Sparrow is a more vile human being than Davy Jones, who is really just collecting on a promised payment, whereas Sparrow repeatedly proves throughout the film that he's a selfish coward.
Then, oh dear, there's the end. Heh. After two and a half hours we're outright denied an ending. Instead, we get an abrupt cut in the plot, setting up for the sequel, At World's End, inevitably to be released as a blockbuster smash hit next summer. Oh, boy. After two and a half hours of a dull, uninteresting plot interrupted by long sessions of effects masturbation, thanks for that, guys. Thanks for the complete and utter non-ending. I needed that, to feel satisfied after waiting for two and a half hours for something of interest to happen, and to be smacked in the face and laughed at for my effort. "I'm sorry," the producers explain, "Were you thinking this movie would give you anything to leave with? Oh, hah, we don't know why you thought that, really."
Johnny Depp has acted to much better effect before, I've seen it—hell, I saw it in Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl. Orlando Bloom actually grew into the role of Turner more in this film, but it's a shame his character was basically manhandled by the writers and put on the back burner, behind Sparrow's "delightful" antics and pretty, shiny objects. I also found myself more enamored with Miss Knightley as Elizabeth in this iteration, as well, but she, like Bloom, just got shoved in the background as pretty backdrop. The scenes surrounding Elizabeth's adventures as a random pirate in some random, other crew on some insignificant ship were probably the only times in the film I found myself chortling. Jack Davenport danced his steps as the one-trick pony-character of Norrington, namely a lot of "Grr, revenge!" Jonathan Pryce was entirely unconvincing as a despicable villian, and more came off as a bad attempt at a rehash of Grand Moff Tarkin. Oh, gee, who else was there in the movie that wasn't merely killed…?
On the matter of death, by the by, Dead Man's Chest delivers in spades, in literally boatloads. If you thought Black Pearl was a bit objectionable for a Disney film… well, there's little denying that Dead Man's Chest shed any pretense of being a family-friendly flick. From start to finish, there were more deaths than in the first movie five hundred times over: people just died left and right. The film abruptly introduced the crew of Jack Sparrow's ship mainly to slaughter them wholesale, like fattened cattle. Maybe Disney wants us to think that they're "bad people" so them dying horribly isn't bad, but, uh, a little kid would probably be asking questions after about the second dozen bunch of characters were finished being drowned or crushed or burnt or ripped to shreds. I don't know what the producers were getting at outside of trying to heighten sales with gratuitous violence, but there was death, believe you me, sir.
Yeah, and, uh, "spoiler alert" or whatever—not really—don't sit through the fifteen minute credit reel for any bonus content: there's a ten-second cut there, sure, but it's hardly worth sitting through the epic adventure of those credits. A lot of people were apparently involved in piecing together this immense disappointment.
The longer I dwell on this film, the worse it grows in my mind. My ex-roommate liked it well enough, but I… can't. In the first Pirates, Johnny Depp displayed a character of interest and depth; in this one, Depp re-used all of the same tricks from the original movie and added little to nothing new to the mix—Hell, not even "little to nothing": simply "nothing" is accurate. I wasn't compelled to say that "It was more of Jack Sparrow acting like Jack Sparrow." It was just the same lines in a very slightly new context. Old hat, if you will.
What Dead Man's Chest did offer was some brilliant costuming. Davy Jones' crew was an innovatively designed array of terrifying fish people, and there's nothing bad I can about that. The costumes of everyone else were pretty much standard fare, but let's pay more attention to the crazy fish people: seriously, Davy Jones was like some sort of Lovecraftean image of a pirate, and that's awesome. If the movie had spent more of its time focusing on Davy Jones and his crew, I would've been so much happier, because if you're going to have uninteresting character interaction and dialogue, it may as well be done from the confines of an insanely cool costume. If they could've just had more of that, I would've been pleased. It wasn't even about special effects, it was just very creative costume design.
I can't say the soundtrack stood out to me, except for that the end credits were very dramatic. My ex-roommate and I actually wrote a little adventure about the End Credits, that they were a marching army of Credits going to fight the Evil Forces of an encroaching, opposing force of Credits, that right off-camera to the north, there was an epic battle ensuing, words fighting words, names against names. The music swelled as a drastic turn of events took place, the unseen flanking manuever of the enemy Credits general causing a big jump in casualities to the Good Credits, a heroic build-up as the Good Credits continue to endeavour and push forward, slowly making a dent in the enemy forces, their numbers winning over the possibly more skilled strategy of the other General. Things finally turned out well in the end, and the Good Credits won, thankfully, striking another victory for the good guys, a victory like one I had greatly wished Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest had been itself, a film I had anticipated with child-like glee and soon found myself regretting seeing.
Sorry, pirates didn't win this one, folks. Failure Rating: 46% (Upped from previous Rating of 27% on second thought).
[TIA;TY]
posted by c.Jay Wrong at
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