I’ve tried to mark where there are spoilers about the movie. Regardless, if you haven’t seen the Pirates sequel, you may want to read this afterward.
My expectations were low going into the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel on Friday night. In fact, they were so low that I was sure I was going to enjoy the movie as just another popcorn flick. Boy, was I wrong.
The movie was terrible, and not just because it failed to hit my low expectations. Now, some of this may not have been the movie’s fault. The sound system in the theater was bad, which resulted in the group of us not knowing what was being said some of the time, and without the sound, some of the more dramatic moments felt . . . well . . . muffled.
Regardless, the plot was convoluted, confusing, and contrived. All story-telling involves a little bit of manipulation of reality in order to make things fit into a self-contained tale that will produce particular emotions in an audience. But when the audience knows they’re being manipulated, they feel it and resent it. The parts involving Will Turner’s father felt particularly contrived.
Now, the movie wasn’t a total waste of time. The cinematography, acting, and visual effects were top notch. And the movie did have its fun moments, like Jack Sparrow’s first appearance in the movie.
But from that point on, Jack begins a downhill tumble in making the audience hate him. At the end, when the other characters raise their hands in support of Jack Sparrow, I lost all respect (the small amount left) for them. Couldn’t they see that he was a terrible person, and that everything he had done in the movie was out of selfishness? The screenwriters had lost all credibility with me long before that moment, but that was point when I realized that I would be waiting for the dollar theater to see the third installment.
Then I wondered if it was a different group of screenwriters who worked on it. Nope. Same people. The sloppiness of the plot and writing makes me wonder if they cared more about making loot than making a good story. The characters were so entirely out of character from what we saw in the first one that they could have been replaced with new names and faces and nobody would have known that this was a sequel to the first.
The detractors will say, “It’s just the first half of a movie. Give it a chance.” Not one of my complaints has anything to do about this being a half movie. If it were a good “half movie,” I’d be resenting the wait for the third movie.
But none of our group cared enough about the characters or the story to even bat an eye when things abruptly ended. We just wanted to leave the theater. The reaction of the rest of the audience was the same. Even when the projector screwed up and projected the slide-show ads they show before movies, nobody said anything . . . we just continued to watch, hoping the movie was almost over . . . or that it would miraculously get better.
Spoilers and Predictions—skip to next heading if you haven’t seen the movie.
I was hoping for some good “aha!” moments with what I thought was foreshadowing throughout the plot. Jack Sparrow’s compass doesn’t work for him, but when Elizabeth Swann uses it, it always points at Jack. I thought they were going to reveal that the dead man’s chest was actually Jack Sparrow, and that his heart was somehow that of Davy Jones. Nope. Dead Man’s Chest refers to an actual buried treasure. How disappointing.
And it was also pretty obvious to me that the creole witch doctor lady is Davy Jones lost love and will play a big part in resolving things in the third movie.
OSC’s Review
Some people have loved this movie. Orson Scott Card lauds it as the best movie of the summer. He’s one of my favorite authors of all time, but I’m going to have to disagree with him on this account. His review leaves me wondering if he saw a different movie than I did.
It also makes me wonder if I should give Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest another chance.
Maybe when it’s on DVD.
