PSA: Dead Man’s Chest a Dud
The new Pirates of the Caribbean is a waste. And that is such a shame.
I simply cannot understand how some screenwriters can write awesome first movies and then turn out the worst sequels imaginable. To be fair, there are other writers credited for both Zorro movies and for the story of the first Pirates, but Chest is apparently, lamentably, all their own.
I don’t even have the heart to rev up a full review. Suffice to say that in the first film, Johnny Depp ruled; in this he was a victimized afterthought going through the motions. In the first, the characters’ motivations were made clear and their behaviors compatible with them; in this there were extraneous characters thrown about willy-nilly and supposedly known quantities acting bizarrely contrary to their former natures. The first was sharply sequenced and well paced; this had about five expositions that didn’t give us the information we needed, split the supposed protagonists up into too many parties to reliably keep track of, and spent far too long on meaningless action scenes that weren’t even that enjoyable for their own sake. Interesting side note: the writers evidently love Return of the Jedi not wisely but too well; a few clumsy nods to Lucas & Co. in no way made up for the faults of the scenes they inhabited.
I’m too depressed about the writing to bother scoring off the actors. They just didn’t have enough to work with. When Johnny Depp is phoning it in, you know you have a serious problem. And the worst part of all? **SPOILER** The movie is a waste, but it’s cliffhanger waste. It follows Star Wars in that way as well–if you want to see the Captain rescued, you have to see the third movie. One can only hope the writers bring their A game this time, because their sequel game isn’t even good enough to warm the bench.
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The problem with sequels is that the first movie is written because the writers believe in the story and they put their heart and soul into the script. The story line was probably hashed out in high school spiral notebooks and acted out in basements for 20 years before ever seeing the light of the silver screen.
The second movie is expected by the audience and suits of the production company. I think most of the time it’s made because the first movie was so successful and whether or not it’s good, people will come to see it because they expect the same level of quality in the story. Sometimes it works such as Star Wars Ep. 5, but that’s probably a special case.
Comment by John Aughey — August 21, 2006 @ 8:29 am
I know what you mean, but with a list of credits as long as these guys have, and *what* they???ve written, it doesn???t seem to apply here. PiratesI was a Disney vision based on a *ride* at Disneyland. These guys weren???t cooking up a cool role for Johnny Depp, Pirate Captain, back in their basements after coming home from Disneyland. They were hired to do a job and did it, ably, on PiratesI. Not so much here.
In other news I need to figure out how to teach this blog to remember people???s names and comment info so you don???t have to fill it out each time.Nevermind. It does it already. Apparently I just hadn???t commented from this browser before.
Comment by Anwyn — August 21, 2006 @ 2:05 pm