Hide the rum.

[Megrim]

So,


There are scant few pleasures in cinema these days, and going to the movies for me is unfortunately a rare occurrence (or more rare than i would like), not for the lack of trying, but for the lack of any decent picture to bother spending three hours on. It was therefore a very pleasant surprise when the original Pirates film hit the cinemas here in Sydney. Here was a movie that contained everything a young man who had grown up reading Treasure Island wanted; battle on the high seas, no-so-distressed damsels, flintlock pistols and the Jolly Rodger. Consequently, it was with a fair amount of trepidation that i stepped into the cinema to view Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

I will try to keep this initial post as spoiler free as i can and would ask for those of you who have also seen it to not spoil it for the rest (as there is quite a bit to spoil).

As the school holidays are now on here in Aus, i was slightly chargrinned at having to share the theater with about a billion small squealing things. All this changed quite delightfully however, when the opening tones of the film began on a far darker note then one would expect, acquiring an almost Gothic ambiance. The audience is thrust right into the thick of things from the very beginning, without any awkward re-telling of what had occurred in the previous chapter. Much like the first film, the initial quarter of DMC is spent on a well paced set-up of the events to follow, with straightforward introductions to new characters and the gravity of their place in the film. From this, the movie spins out into a wider perspective, expanding to involve everyone who has made a return, complete with another classy Johnny Depp entrance.

The pace is thus set for a very tightly packed episode and Dead Man's Chest rises to the occasion, pulling the audience into it's world encrusted with salt and soaked in treachery. As the film moves on, it becomes apparent that the script writers have set out to create a story which tries very much to depart from the good guy/bad guy twinkie approach. Character roles are twisted, pulled and otherwise cajoled onto paths their conscience may not normally allow them to traverse, creating a palpable feel of excruciating desperation and quite inevitable doom. This becomes a novel, and very pleasant exercise as the 'Pirate' side of DMC finally makes it's appearance.

And of course, no big-budget film is complete without multi-million dollar special effects. Prior to writing this i had read some brief snippets on various websites, a number of which decried the "bad movie overstuffed with special effects". You don't want to pay any attention to those people because they are door-knob loving cretins. The environment (or dare i say world) created by blending cgi and filmed locations is absolutely breathtaking, with judicious use of special effects and a truly magnificent and awe-inspiring Kraken. I mean, if anything, this film is worth seeing just for the Kraken alone. No witty one-liners, no deus ex machina solutions and no heroic deeds to deal with this beastie. No sir, this here is a proper Kraken. There are action set-pieces (with what i suspect is a very sly nod to Dumas' Three Musketeers), a Monkey Island-esque visit to a voodoo-lady and a further expansion of Jack's line from the original: "...and then they made me their chief".

One of my friends, after the film's end complained that one of the biggest dissapointments had been the lack of humour that had been present in the original. While there are definitely fewer snappy exchanges in Dead Man's Chest, as mentioned in the beginning, the overall tone of the film is much darker which makes for some great gallows humour; from the truly, tearfully distraught cannibals, to the "We brought you a monkey that doesn't die! *bang*". Of course, Johnny Depp being Jack Sparrow is still a pleasure to see, and despite the sometimes desperate situations the characters are placed in, he injects just enough humour (by far the standout being "Elizabeth! aside: Hide the rum!) to remind the audience that watching this movie is like reading a good adventure book: it has everything.

Ultimately, i think it would be fair to say that this movie is a worthy successor to the original, both in that it continues and expands on the theme set initially, and also because it has enough individual strength to stand on it's own. It is not without problems of course, with certain segments being a little contrived (triple-guns what?) and is perhaps a little too macabre at times. Which i suppose is actually a good thing, just don't take your seven year old to see people getting their throats slit. The film ends on what could only be described as a Sylvester Stallone Cliffhanger, which in retrospect is actually hinted at through a good portion of the movie, so bonus points to those of you who see it coming. Having said that: this movie is well worth seeing, and you should do so if you enjoyed the original. I suspect that you will enjoy watching it as much as i did writing about it, and few things give me greater pleasure that discussing a story where the good guys, whoever they may be, don't really win at the end.

[Hoax]

*cough* I nominate Megrim for blue name status, who seconds? *endcough*

[schild]

*cough* I nominate Megrim for blue name status, who seconds? *endcough*

While PotC is awesome and that was pretty awesome. It wasn't about games. Now he needs to buy the totally shitty tie-in game and review that. With rum. :P

[Kenrick]

If Megrim is the person I'm thinking of, she was always one of my favorite posters back at the old P2P.  From Australia?  Or was it Austin?  Some sort of cute animal avatar?

[Rasix]

Thanks for this, I may now see it opening weekend without trepidation. I was a little spooked by the scathing review CNN gave it.

[eldaec]

Too long, over-indulgent editing, fun in parts, but too many long dull scenes which take themselves too seriously. Too much angst. Pirates of the Carribean should not be primarily about angst.

Jack Davenport is great but not in the film nearly enough, Depp is very good but you've seen it all before, Bloom gets too many scenes where he seems to be playing the straight man of a comedy duo, only without a funny man to work with. The villian is not even a fraction as much fun as Geoffery Rush was.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that while there is plenty of soap opera, angst, and general heartache, buckles do not get properly swashed until what felt like around 90 minutes in. If you go to see this film you can snooze through everything till they dig up the 'treasure'.

Knock $50 million off the budget and I suspect this would have been a much better film.

Also, exactly wtf is the point of going to the carribean to make a pirate film on almost entirely cloudy days?

[stray]

I hate to be the guy who does this, but....


http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=7547.0

[eldaec]

Well that's what you get for indecipherable thread titles.

EDIT : I shan't get offended if someone with otherworldly powers wishes to merge lock or delete this.

[Lantyssa]

Thanks for this, I may now see it opening weekend without trepidation. I was a little spooked by the scathing review CNN gave it.

From her introduction I gathered she hated the first Pirates with a passion.  I'll judge for myself if it is good or not.

[bhodi]

Well, I'll see it tonight. I'm a bad judge though, since I like almost everything.

On an unrelated note, I just noticed that I'm special, like everyone else here.

Also, Lant, Stop waving your butt at me, it's distracting!

[Lantyssa]

Okay.

[bhodi]

You're still waving in that mesmerizing way...

Anyway, the movie. It sucked. It was a huge setup for the next one, and had plot to fill about half the movie and the rest was just filler. If you thought master and commander was boring, you ain't seen nothin' yet! Hollywood doesn't know how to do excitement on the sea. It seems their only ability is to communicate just how boring sea travel was.

Some of my hatred probably comes from the fact I got the crowd from hell watching it with me on opening night; I had a laugher sitting next to me who let out loud bellows at inopportune moments, I had the the chatty sisters behind, people's rap cellphones went off at least twice, and of course, the king douchebag of them all, laser pointer man.

So it's possible the movie was just average but my overall "viewing experience" was terrible.

The next one will probably be good, but this was like watching 2 hours of setup and then cutting it off when it starts getting interesting.

Edit: oh, the fight scenes.  The CGI was nice, but... well, remember that part in king kong with the dinos, where they're chasing everyone through the little canyon, and then past some other crap, and then they start falling down the gorge, get stuck on the vines, and it's ANOTHER escape sequence? Yeah, the action sequences were like that. They should have been cut in half, just like this movie.

[Merusk]

I enjoyed it, but was completely disappointed that it was just a set-up, too.   It definitely could have been tightened-up in some places, with some scenes being shortened or just removed due to their excess.    Overall, it was pretty decent and I had a good time watching it.

 The harshest criticism my family leveled at it was that since they're following 3 main characters who are completely separated at some points, you didn't get enough Jack.

It's hard to have a good discussion without injecting spoilers, though.

[Llava]

Like the first one, Depp makes this into a good movie.

Every moment Jack is on the screen is pure entertainment.

The villain wasn't as good as Barbosa, no.  I was most disappointed in this, I think.  Was very much looking forward to the new, Cthulu-esque badguy.  He was made... too cartoony at times.  Really interesting idea, not executed as well as possible.

But, like I said about the first one, if Depp wasn't in this movie it would've sucked.  He saves it.

Oh, and Keira Knightley looks hotter in this one than she did in the last one, imo.

[eldaec]

Knightley, for all that she slashes at sea monsters and dashes around dangerous jungles Domino-style, still comes across as an eager-to-please sixth-former offering to make cucumber sandwiches for a school fête. Too tentative and awkward to be a comic actress, she seems at best to condone the script's humorous passages rather than to play along with them.

qft.

[Llava]

Knightley, for all that she slashes at sea monsters and dashes around dangerous jungles Domino-style, still comes across as an eager-to-please sixth-former offering to make cucumber sandwiches for a school fête.

I don't even know what that means.

But she was hot.

[stray]

Knightley, for all that she slashes at sea monsters and dashes around dangerous jungles Domino-style, still comes across as an eager-to-please sixth-former offering to make cucumber sandwiches for a school fête.

I don't even know what that means.

Maybe it should be read in the voice of "Lanky Dean".

[eldaec]

Knightley, fo' all thet she roo-barbs wif sea monsters an' dashes aroun' dangerous jungles Domino-style, still comes acrost as an eager t'please sixth-fo'mer offerin' t'make cucumber san'wiches fo' a skoo fête.

[Johny Cee]

Hmm....  Caught it today.

When this thread goes spoilerific,  I'd like to hear some opinions on the last scene.

[Llava]

I don't like cucumber.  It has a weird flavor.  Hard to nail down.  It's certainly not the most unpleasant flavor in the world, but there's something about it I don't trust.  It reminds me of honeydew melon far more than it should.

[stray]

Most vegetables are pretty much the same to me, except cauliflower and squash. Everything else is watery goodness.

[edit]

As for Pirates, it's at 53% on RT. That's worse than the typical form of bad.

[Litigator]

Saw it. Loved it.

I'm not sure why the critics lashed back so hard at the "Pirates of the Caribbean" sequel. I suspect it's a kind of aversion to $200 million dollar summer blockbusters, or to blockbuster sequels, or to having to see Johnny Depp play the same character twice.

I can certainly see why the first Pirates movie was a surprise. By all indications, it should have been abysmal, and the consensus seems to be that Depp snuck in and stole or saved the film as everyone else tried diligently to make a terrible movie. I never really agreed that this is what happened. I think the film was always about Jack Sparrow, and that Will Turner and his conventional romantic motivation was always there as a familiar foil for Jack's madness and so that audiences could identify with something if Jack came off unsympathetically.

I think the performance was just a surprise, and it was a surprise that a movie based on a theme park ride could turn out so strong, especially when Disney had been so dismal otherwise.

I think it's a fair criticism that the rhythm of plot twists and double-crosses probably isn't as fresh this time, and a plot involving another supernatural pirate ship seems kind of redundant, though the Davy Jones crew is exceptionally well-designed.

But I still thought the movie was dazzling. The success of the first film freed the sequels, not just in regards to the production budget, but to celebrate Jack in all of his greedy, selfish, cowardly splendor. The film's whole storyline is about Jack trying to welsh on a debt and throwing everyone else into horrible peril, and getting plenty of peripheral characters horribly killed.

I'm not too sure why everyone is so up in arms about the ending. Obviously, it leaves you wanting more, but it's no more contrived than the ends of the first two "Lord of the Rings" movies or "The Empire Strikes Back."

I think the cannibal island scene was overly prolonged because it didn't advance the plot very much, and the film would have done better to flesh out the relationship between Jack and Davy Jones, and to generally better establish Jones. The reasoning behind the contents and the significance of the Dead Man's Chest is really sketchily drawn, and it should have been given more time. This is a major new character's primary motivation, not just a MacGuffin to justify the action like the Rabbit's Foot in "M:I3." We need to know more about this character, other than that his girlfriend messed him over a few hundred years ago. For example, why does he have a squid for a head?

Compared to the Geoffrey Rush's virtuoso scene establishing Barbossa and his crew in Pirates 1 ("You better start believin' in ghost stories, Miss Turner. You're in one."), Davy gets the short shrift. This makes it hard for Nighy, who is a fine actor working behind lots of CGI calamari, to ever really establish the character. It seems like there should be a LOTR-style extended version of the movie to balance this out, so I guess I disagree with those who say that the film is overlong. I did not think that the set pieces were excessive, but a bit more thematic and plot development would have been appreciated. There are points where it almost seems like they cut whole scenes and replaced then with expository monologues.

That said, Stellan Skaarsgard had his work cut out for him trying to play pathos opposite Orlando Bloom, who kind of reads blank. Bloom was well-cast as Legolas, because his blankness came across as the otherworldliness of the elves in "Rings," and he worked in "Elizabethtown," because his demeanor seemed appropriate for someone who had been shocked by sudden and tremendous loss. As a romantic lead, though, he is leaden, and he's not a great foil for these father-son themes. Paired with Liam Neeson, in "Kingdom of Heaven," and Skaarsgard in this, Orlando just falls flat, and the heroic efforts of his estimable co-stars can't revive the scenes. But his stiffness does work opposite Depp as Sparrow, so he's the right guy for this part though the Bootstrap Bill story thread seems wrong for this movie.

I didn't feel that the movie was terribly overlong or excessive on the set pieces. In fact, compared to the emptiness of Superman and the mess that was X-Men 3, I thought this was superlative.

And, in fact there seems to even be a rather interesting theme about the fluidity of morality, or, emphasized with a joke where one character guesses that man's primary preoccupation is the "dichotomy of good and evil." The bad men in these movies always turn out to be a bit more honorable, and the good guys turn out to be a bit more treacherous than anyone expects. The villains have that scenery chewing snarl, but at the same time, they have tragic qualities that makes them identifiable.

Verbinski and his writers have the courage not to make the heroes totally identifiable and the villains not totally reprehensible, even though the conventional wisdom seems to be that such ambiguity would disasterously confuse a mainstream audience. By allowing that extra complexity, they permit the characters to provide ballast for the set pieces. This keeps the set pieces from looking like something out of a video game. "Pirates" does right what "King Kong" did right, and what the "Star Wars" and "Matrix" sequels did wrong.

[schild]

It was near perfect.

I don't feel the need to add anything else.

[stray]

I think the film was always about Jack Sparrow, and that Will Turner and his conventional romantic motivation was always there as a familiar foil for Jack's madness and so that audiences could identify with something if Jack came off unsympathetically.

The role of Jack Sparrow was originally written for someone like Kevin Kline or Cary Elwes. An arrogant, comic relief pirate to play off protagonist-hero Will Turner. Not the mad, stammering, Keith Richards, scene stealing pirate it came to be. There was no "secret plan of Jack Sparrow" here. It was supposed to be conventional Disney stuff. Take the script at face value, and it's a completely different film. Depp made it seem different purely through performance. The writing says something else.

Even when they were filming it and decided to let him do his thing, the rest of the actors (not just the suits) were kind of wondering what was going on. Like, "Wow, can he do that? What is he doing exactly?" People were really surprised, because no one but him saw the role that way. All of the sudden, the script they'd been reading for months becomes a completely different film once they start shooting.

[Litigator]

I think the film was always about Jack Sparrow, and that Will Turner and his conventional romantic motivation was always there as a familiar foil for Jack's madness and so that audiences could identify with something if Jack came off unsympathetically.

The role of Jack Sparrow was originally written for someone like Kevin Kline or Cary Elwes. An arrogant, comic relief pirate to play off protagonist-hero Will Turner. Not the mad, stammering, Keith Richards, scene stealing pirate it came to be. There was no "secret plan of Jack Sparrow" here. It was supposed to be conventional Disney stuff. Take the script at face value, and it's a completely different film. Depp made it seem different purely through performance. The writing says something else.

Even when they were filming it and decided to let him do his thing, the rest of the actors (not just the suits) were kind of wondering what was going on. Like, "Wow, can he do that? What is he doing exactly?" People were really surprised, because no one but him saw the role that way. All of the sudden, the script they'd been reading for months becomes a completely different film once they start shooting.

There's an interview with Depp in the current Rolling Stone. His version of events is that he was onboard well before there was a script. He has a seven-year old daughter who was three at the time, and they were constantly watching Disney movies, so he went in to see if he could get a voice job in an animated film, and they offerred him "Pirates," and he accepted it on the spot without seeing the script.

[eldaec]

I think the film was always about Jack Sparrow, and that Will Turner and his conventional romantic motivation was always there as a familiar foil for Jack's madness and so that audiences could identify with something if Jack came off unsympathetically.

Both this and the last film always appeared to be about Jack and Elizabeth, Commander Norrington and Will are backdrops rather than characters, one of the many problems with v2 is that it's about exactly the same thing. 'Will Jack do the right thing?' 'Will Elizabeth do the fun thing?' and 2 barely ever asks the question in a new way. The relationship between Elizabeth and Jack remains locked exactly where it was at the end of the last film. Commander Norrington is the only character in any remotely new situation over the entire two and a half hours.

On top of that film 2 does everything until the treasure in such a dreary way. Compare the escapes from Port Royal in one and two, sure two didn't have Jack to support it, but even aside from Jack buckles got swashed and fun was had all round in the first film, in the second film you get 3 or 4 lines between Elizabeth and sinister-east-india-company-guy and that is it, beside that we had rain, drearyness, and high drama which the audience sits through just waiting for something fun to happen.

I didn't really have a problem with the ending other than the slightly cheap way it seemed to want you remind you of Star Trek 3, ESB, and the bloody Matrix sequels (only not in a fun way).

[stray]

There's an interview with Depp in the current Rolling Stone. His version of events is that he was onboard well before there was a script.

Just to mention, magazine interviews are not good for details. I bet that if the entire interview was quoted word for word, the article would probably take up 15 pages instead of 2.

Either something is left out, or perhaps he just meant that he accepted it before seeing a script -- Simply because it was about pirates.

Because a screenplay did exist. Multiple scripts, in fact. There were like 4 or 5 writers working on different versions and acts over a period of years. For example, one of the original ideas actually had Elizabeth as the main protagonist, and Northington as the villain -- who, because of Elizabeth's rejection of him (among other things), decides to freak out and hang out with pirates (It was supposed to be somewhat loosely based on some old naval officer who went bad. Henry Morgan, I think? I forget).

Also, go play the first PotC game. Really, if Disney had been banking on Jack being the main character "all along", then that game would have never been made. It would have looked like the second game.

Anyways....Besides everything else I've said, a simple analysis of where the actual storytelling leads and what the archetypes are should tell you who it was supposed to be about. If you pay attention only to performances though, then sure, Will is just a "backdrop" -- But that isn't how it's actually written.

Everything is pretty much driven by Will's and Elizabeth's actions. Jack just makes the ride much more interesting. Doesn't make him the main character though (to mention another film with a similar formula, it's pretty the same deal with Han Solo and Luke).

[Lantyssa]

I don't like cucumber.  It has a weird flavor.  Hard to nail down.  It's certainly not the most unpleasant flavor in the world, but there's something about it I don't trust.  It reminds me of honeydew melon far more than it should.

You're in luck then!  It also explains why it has a melony taste.

I liked the movie for what it was.

[Llava]

... But I don't wanna taste the cuculoupe.

[Johny Cee]

My major complaint with the second pirates:

Geofrey Rush was my favorite part of the first movie.  He was a pirate's pirate.  His performance should have been caricature,  but it somehow wasn't.  He was great playing off of Knightley or Jack.

And you have to love the ever-present apple.  He was really just a poor guy in over his head, who wanted to get back to normal.  He wanted to taste and feel again.

Davey Jones?  Very much a lesser villain.  His motivation is cloudy,  and he and his crew are too much CGI.  The crew of the Black Pearl in the first movie were supernatural,  but had very human touches (down to the awful teeth, bad complexion, and slightly yellowed eyes).

Except for Bootstrap Bill, the crew of the second is almost entirely inhuman.

[sinij]

*spoiler**spoiler**spoiler*

Darth Vader is Luke's father.

*spoiler**spoiler**spoiler*

While I wasn't bored watching the movie aside from special effect there wasn't much to see. Entire story boils down to about two paragraphs of dialog.

[stray]

That's a retarded way to post a spoiler (at the beginning of a post, with hardly any space seperating the warning from the spoiler). Hopefully it's a joke and not true.

[Ookii]

As for the numbers go:

Walt Disney Pictures' highly-anticipated Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, starring Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley and Bill Nighy, broke Spider-Man's ($114.8 million) four-year-old opening weekend record with a massive $132 million from 4,133 theaters, the fourth-widest release ever. The movie made $55.5 million on Friday (the biggest single day and opening day in box office history, surpassing Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith ($50 million)), $44.7 million on Saturday (the fifth-biggest single day) and $31.8 million on Sunday, for an average of $31,944 per theater for the weekend. If estimates hold, this means that "Dead Man's Chest" crossed the $100 million mark in two days, which has never been done before - the previous fastest time was three days. Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Gore Verbinski, the movie cost about $225 million to make.

http://comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=15306

They'll probaly make 3 more!

[Trippy]

They made almost as much money on Pirates in 3 days as Superman has made in 12 ($132 million vs $142 million).

[Zetleft]

Saw it today, read part of this thread so was expecting the worse.   I gotta say I really oved this flick, the only filler scenes would be a bit too much on cannibal island but everything else was fine and not overly drawn out.  If anything they could have gone into more details especially where Davey Jones is concerned.  Not going spoiler here but the last scene was awesome, that is all.