{"id":199,"date":"2006-07-10T21:58:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-11T04:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/replicatedmeat.nocturne.org\/wordpress\/?p=199"},"modified":"2009-06-05T12:12:51","modified_gmt":"2009-06-05T18:12:51","slug":"pirates-of-the-caribbean-dead-mans-chest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.delirium.org\/?p=199","title":{"rendered":"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s what happened. I went to the movie, ’cause, dude, pirates<\/a>! And I watched it (still no Snakes on a Plane trailer. Jerks.), and at the end of the movie… nothing. No opinion whatsoever. So I did what any sane movie reviewer would do. I joined my friends for their kid birthday party evening viewing and watched it all over again. And if I had substantially more income than I do, I might convince myself to perpetuate this lie through another showing tonight, as my house is dead. But in fact my income retains its non-existence, and at any rate I am overdue on this review and another one exactly like it. (I may even cut-and-paste, so if it looks like there’s an error with a review posted twice in a row, rest assured, it’s on purpose. (I’m still lying, here. (OR AM I???))) Without further ado, then, my completely honest and spoiler-free review of the movie. Spoiler stuff will fall below the cut, as ever.<\/p>\n

First, the raw impressions: It was pretty well unforgiving of people who had not seen the original. Chock full of quotable one-liners. Buckles were swashed harder than ever had they been swashed before. The people who made this have with at least 96% certainty played Katamari Damacy<\/a>. Sufficient Cthulhiana to put me well down the road toward being convinced that maybe Lovecraft had a good point about the ocean. The plotlines were substantially more adult than last time. The humor was correspondingly more childlike. I expected five returning characters, and got eleven (or thirteen, depending upon how you count), which is pretty cool. “Undead monkey!” A multitude of characters with complex motivations bumping up against each other in realistic ways, and the corresponding double- and triple-crossing that ensues. Plenty of thematic concern with who’s good, who’s bad, and why, concern that was left unresolved by the end of the film. (The scene with Jack swapping out hats during the barfight, for example, was particularly noteworthy.)<\/p>\n

A lot of things were left unresolved by the end of the film, in fact. Going into it, I was reminded a lot of the Matrix trilogy. You have an initial standalone film, and once it succeeds at making bank, the creators carry on with their originally planned longer story. I liked the second Matrix movie a lot, although it wasn’t quite as strong as the original. Much like here, you see. The one bright spot is that I have no reason to believe At World’s End<\/a> will spectacularly flop, so that correspondence is basically over. So, that was my impression going in. And coming out? I have no complaint with cliffhangers that will be resolved in a reasonable amount of time, as seems to be the case here. My impression of the trilogy structure was altered a little bit, though. And hmm, delving into that requires spoilers, so I’m going to have to wrap things up here.<\/p>\n

In short: Slightly weaker than the original, mostly in that the humor wasn’t quite up to snuff. The storyline was darker, which I for one am all about, and the characters had a lot more depth. As time passes, I’ll probably end up liking this one better, but right now, no matter how much it made me laugh, the original made me laugh more and in better ways, and as a result of having watched it just a couple days ago too, it looms larger in my mind on that scale, as that was the expectation I had walking into the theater.
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\nSo, I was speaking of the trilogy structure. Walking out of the theater, I was left with the distinct impression that someone had just stolen the ending to the Empire Strikes Back. I’ll tick it off. 1) A rogueish character in need of rescue. 2) A new bad guy, far more dire than the original, has appeared but remains to be defeated. 3) The main character’s father is in need of rescue and redemption. 4) An old acquaintance has turned traitor. (That one is a stretch to make it fit, I’ll admit; but just wait and see if Norrington doesn’t come back around to the good side before all is said and done.) 5) Ongoing sexual tension among the leads. (Well, that’s more the whole film than just the ending. But still.) Now, I don’t mind any of this, because Empire is still an excellent movie. But it was a little disconcerting, mythic structure be damned.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, there are open questions left in my mind. How is Barbossa alive again? (With all the show of eating that apple, he’d better be non-zombified.) What was the point of the jar of dirt? (It accomplished exactly nothing that I can figure, and was completely lost by the end of the film.) Is voodoo chick in any sense trustworthy? (I’m guessing not, as she and Davy Jones each had an identical locket. At least I think it was Davy Jones. Now I’ll have to watch it again, damn the rotten luck.) Alternate voodoo chick theory: she’s the one that Jones loved. This would also make a great deal of sense, but I’ve grown fond of the idea of third movie being predicated on a really big trap, in the ten or so minutes since I had it, so I’m hoping maybe not. But I bet that yes. In any case, it is of amusement to me that all three of the questions are probably linked together in some way. Well, in a really obvious way; they all involve the questionably motived voodoo chick, don’t they?<\/p>\n

Alright, that’s plenty long enough for one review. In closing, I’m still creeped out by the crew of the Flying Dutchman. Seriously. Not that it’s on my shelf right now, but I’ll probably have to avoid me some H.P. for a little while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s what happened. I went to the movie, ’cause, dude, pirates! And I watched it (still no Snakes on a Plane trailer. Jerks.), and at the end of the movie… nothing. No opinion whatsoever. So I did what any sane movie reviewer would do. I joined my friends for their kid birthday party evening viewing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}