Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides

[Khaldun]

Will be curious to see the early word on this one. The novel really is very good--if they stuck to it, this could be pretty great.

[Sir T]

Heard a review on the radio today at work. Basically they said its actually got lots of action sequences but is pretty mindless and dull overall. The guy that saw it claimed that the friends he took to see it fell asleep.

Oh and "arr" is what every sailor says apparently.

[HaemishM]

Well, if it's anything like the last movie, I certainly won't try to see it in the theaters. I watched the first hour of #3 and stopped from boredom and haven't made it back since.

[Merusk]

#3 was indeed the weakest of the 3, but I blame the Will-Elizabeth romance for most of that.  The Pirate Court on was decent (the Calypso part was a little  ), just fast forward to there and give it a go.

[Mrbloodworth]

You guys over think things to much.

[Samwise]

I'm probably going to go see this in the theater, against my better judgement.  There's still a dim possibility that the suck will have left with Will and Elizabeth and we'll get a movie that's even a fraction as fun as the first one.

[Johny Cee]

There are some pretty bad reviews floating around, which is too bad.  I really had some new hope in the franchise both with picking up Ian McShane and licensing the Powers' book to raid for new ideas.

Both those gentlemen deserve a whiff of mainstream  success.


The book is quite good, though it's more of a straight historical fiction with supernatural elements.  Not up to the other Powers books I've read (Anubis Gate, Last Call, Three Days to Never), but I thought those were excellent.  Also more straight-forward than his books tend to be.

[Merusk]

You guys over think things to much.

Nah.  I didn't say I didn't have fun or it was a bad movie, just that it was the weakest.  It lacked a lot of the fun action parts after Singapore until the Pirate Court and the end battle.  The middle bit was far too somber and angsty for me with all the who's-betraying-who drama.


This one is garnering a 36% at RT right now.
ED:  then again, some of the bad reviews say this:

Never amounts to more than a bunch of noisy action scenes loosely strung together by a lackluster plot with no sense of excitement or adventure.

POTC was never about nuance, and now it's even less so: It's about watching Depp fall into peril and wriggle his way out, over and over, for hours.

Which I could be ok with. We'll see as I'll see it at the $6 Saturday morning matinee anyway.

[Ghambit]

Just got back from the movie... saw it in IMAX 3d.  Cinematography flat out wasnt good enough to take advantage of the tech., so dont waste your time unless close-ups of Cruz and Depp are your thing.

Basically, it's the 3rd best movie of the 4.  So yah, rental.  And yah, I almost fell asleep also.

[Khaldun]

The common theme in reviews is that's tedious, boring, ho-hum. That's enough for me to stay away.

[Ghambit]

The common theme in reviews is that's tedious, boring, ho-hum. That's enough for me to stay away.

Part of the problem to me was the serious lack of grandiosity to the whole film.  It just didnt feel epic at all.  Like I said, a LOT of facial closeups of the actors (especially Cruz). 
So if you're expecting some piratey "Master and Commander" you'll be seriously disappointed.  Not a lot of ship combat scenes to begin with either.

[Ratman_tf]

I like Sparrow as much as the next heterosexual guy  , but a movie just about him seems like it would get old fast. Jack seems like he's best when he's fucking with other people's adventures.

[Ragnoros]

So yeah, I saw this with my sister. It's bad. Really bad. Basically all the criticism is spot on. The movies has no point, stuff just happens, seemingly at random. Jack really, really needs a Commodore Norrington or Will Turner to play foil to. It's what made him stand out in the first movies. He just blends in here, leaving nothing memorable.

[WindupAtheist]

You can expect more. The movie is doing merely okay (by "big movie" standards) domestically with a little over $200 million, but is closing in on an additional $700 million overseas. Depp fucking loves playing the character, too. They're going to be making these for-goddamned-ever.

[WindupAtheist]

And it just cracked the billion mark, having done over three-quarters of that internationally. Currently at #7 of all time worldwide.

[VainEldritch]

Unfortunately in a moment of weakness I contributed to the financial success of this lemon... 

'Tis the fault of my S.O. who foolishly left me unattended for an entire afternoon at the mall. I regret my mistake.

[Phred]

A bit late but just piping up to say it's a shame that all they used from the book was the title.
I'd also like to plug Tim Powers. Excellent, whacky SF author. He likes to find alternate, plausable,
explanations for historical events then run with them.

[Khaldun]

I love Powers' work. Such a shame they didn't buy the book for its actual quality.

[stray]

I didn't know that Johnny Depp was capable of a trilogy, let alone a quadrilogy.

The last one was pretty tacky as it is.

[Johny Cee]

A bit late but just piping up to say it's a shame that all they used from the book was the title.
I'd also like to plug Tim Powers. Excellent, whacky SF author. He likes to find alternate, plausable,
explanations for historical events then run with them.

I love Powers' work. Such a shame they didn't buy the book for its actual quality.

Tim Powers is excellent, though I was kind of meh about On Stranger Tides.  I just (finally) read Declare and The Stress of Her Regard, and both of those are amazing.  Charles Stross owes Powers big-time, considering how much of his Laundry books are taken from Declare.

[Phred]

Try the anubis gates as well. It's amazing.

[Johny Cee]

Try the anubis gates as well. It's amazing.

I read most of Powers stuff years ago, I just hadn't gotten around to Stress, Tides, and Declare.

My major complaint with Tides is the plot feels way too derivative of his other books, and the characters, character relationships, and mythology/secret history were weaker.  Powers has a definite formula, I just didn't feel that it was as well executed as some of his other books.  Or it might just be a case that so much of Tides has worked it's way into popular culture it lost much of its uniqueness to modern readers.

I really loved Declare.

[Phred]

Try the anubis gates as well. It's amazing.

I read most of Powers stuff years ago, I just hadn't gotten around to Stress, Tides, and Declare.

My major complaint with Tides is the plot feels way too derivative of his other books, and the characters, character relationships, and mythology/secret history were weaker.  Powers has a definite formula, I just didn't feel that it was as well executed as some of his other books.  Or it might just be a case that so much of Tides has worked it's way into popular culture it lost much of its uniqueness to modern readers.

I really loved Declare.

I think Tides is one of his earliest novels. Can't agree on the whole history thing though. I enjoyed the underpinnings of voodoo, especially the explanation for why Blackbeard had burning wick's woven into his beard. 

No argument on declare though. Would love to see that done as a non-disney movie.