Pirates of the Caribbean, No. 3 - Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)

One year after Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest comes its partner, another part of the same super-long movie, At World’s End. The production details behind forcing the Pirates series into a trilogy are known by now, so all that needs be said of At World’s End is how it satisfactorily (or doesn’t) conclude the plot left so far unresolved. (Oh, and on its own this entry – to say nothing of the greater two-part trilogy – is arguably the priciest film ever made! That doesn’t count for nothing.)

Keep in mind, At World’s End was being filmed while they still didn’t know where it was headed. Worse still, Dead Man’s Chest was already well in theaters (and ridiculously successful, despite its issues), meaning the story was now shackled to certain ideas. There would be no rewrites…except for those arriving on a daily basis, no doubt a scheme cooked up by the writers to spend their time in the Bahamas alongside Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, and the endlessly exotic Gore Verbinski.


These are not ideal movie-creating conditions. And there’s no more room for narrative frivolity, such as seemed to dominate 80% of Dead Man’s Chest – no more time for the fun, though infinitely pointless, comic set pieces such as the skewer or the water wheel. Now they have to tie up all ends! Thought the story, boiled to its Star Wars-esque essence is the same as all blockbusters (rebels vs. empire, good vs. evil), the Pirates habit of convolution muddies those waters perpetually. So in actuality, here is what needs to be resolved…

• Get Han Solo – excuse me, Jack Sparrow – out of Davy Jones’ Locker…of course first they have to find the locker, requiring a fetch quest for the charts. And another quest for a ship. And another for the crew. Somehow, with all these needless preliminaries, frivolities are no longer allowed, but time wasting still is.

• Having expended so much former energy breaking up Elizabeth Swann (Knightley) and Will Turner (Orlando Bland – er, Bloom), they now gotta expend the same amount of energy reuniting them – a zero sum gain in total.

• Figuring out how the newly resurrected Captain Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) fits into everything, hastily rewritten as a good guy. And because inquiring minds want to know, justifying further why Barbossa could’ve been revived without an hour-long detour into purgatory, but Depp – er, Jack – cannot. To answer this niggling plot hole, they essentially go with “Because we said so.” Because the metaphysics of the Pirate-verse are growing even more arbitrary, subservient to the strangely mutating plot.

• Continuing tale of Will’s father Bill (Stellan Skarsgård, of both accursed Exorcist prequels), himself alive again after having been declared dead (way back in The Curse of the Black Pearl). Of Will’s need to barter, bargain, and otherwise sneakily deal daddy off of Davy Jones’ Flying Dutchman (a mythic ship I saw fit not to mention previously). And whenever possible, aligning these self interests with having all good guys good and bad guys bad.

• Speaking of bad guys, seeing what the East India Company’s megalomaniacal generalissimo tyrant warlord (huh?!) Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander) does now he’s attained the “Dead Man’s MacGuffin.” Basically, this gives him the leverage to command Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) and his fishy crew, even though formerly when Jack was in the exact same position, he was thoroughly unable to sway Jones in the slightest.

Deep breath!

• As for Jones, they’d formerly established that he went and turned all villain over love spurned…because, with the glorious exception of Jack Sparrow, no Hollywood blockbuster can think of motives beyond love, or possibly revenge. This means finding who Davy’s former beloved is among the cast…which shouldn’t be too difficult, seeing as Pirates rivals Star Wars for its paucity of females. All this to give Davy a tragic redemption arc, ala Vader in Return of the Jedi – this film’s major structural influence.

• Then there’s James Norrington (Jack Davenport), the commodore-turned-drifter-turned-pirate-turned-traitor-turned-admiral [sigh!], now another tool under Beckett’s employ, and himself seeking a redemption arc. It’s inevitable someone would get lost in the shuffle, so James just sorta dies at midway, all rather thanklessly.

• Oh, and that tasty Kraken cephalopod which drove the entirety of Part Two? Eh, it doesn’t jibe with the new set pieces, so it’s dead. Killed twixt films. How anticlima-

No doubt I’m forgetting half a dozen further subplots and character motivations (as ever, I’ve been rather mum on Jack, mostly because these bloated sequels continue to lose sight of him themselves). There are always, always more supporting characters under the rafters – Gibbs, Governor Swann, the hilarious pirate duo Pintel & Ragetti, the hilarious sailor duo Mullroy and Murtogg (sounds like the leads of Lethal Weapon), and also a dwarf, a mute, a monkey, a parrot and a dog. Each has motivations and sub-motivations (yeah, even the parrot!), and each motivation is treated with dead seriousness – we’re talkin’ humorless, choir-bound gravitas, like bloody all blockbusters, excepting Iron Man. Weird, truly, when the one-gag doggie from Part One (lifted from a single animatronic on the ride – ride, what’s that now?) takes on Shakespearean levels of importance.

Wanna try for more? Why the hell not! For all this is just the leftover plot garbage, and a sequel (to justify its existence, and draw viewers in with misleading posters) needs new characters, more and more, until there are seemingly thirty-six major speaking parts racing all about. Chief among the newbies is Captain Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat). What his purpose is, I cannot say, except to fuel certain plot arbitrations when the need arises. And to fuel a brief, visually murky detour into Shanghai, which…Okay, what is the geography of these “Caribbean” movies?!


What of that plot? – for as involved as anything that must needs conclude in a big shiny battle can be. Frankly, the sojourn into Davy Jones’ Locker bears roughly 0.0 relevance to the rest – it simply exists to get over the hugest hurdle Dead Man’s Chest left in its wake. Odd, then, that it lasts about as long as whole movies once did (Duck Soup is shorter than the First Act of At World’s End), and that it delays Jack’s introduction for a whole half hour. That is a perverse decision indeed. All the Locker is good for is affording some family friendly goat-fucking surrealism, the sight of Jack and his ship in Utah’s Bonneville flats – all this a notion Verbinski would improve upon in Rango.

Anyway, once that initial hour and change has passed by, then the movie can start. Now pertinent facts come into play: Beckett has overshadowed Jones as the series’ central villain, the Emperor in the form of a chubby, short little British fop in a wig. It truly is, well, just bizarre that peacekeepers are shown in an evil light, while drunken, sodomizing pirates are the goodies. That’s a moral position I cannot reconcile, which is far more troubling at a distance than when watching the film.

Anyway, Beckett earns his villainy (far removed from any historical example) by enacting widespread genocide in the opening scene…of a Disney movie…including the morbid hanging death of a young boy. Enjoy, kids!


Okay, all that needless mass death distracted me, though it makes me think none to highly of our “heroes,” thus far solely concerned with rescuing merely Jack freaking Sparrow. Even then, Beckett is a threat to be reckoned with – because he has Jones. And Jones, even without his loyal Kraken, has the superweapon to control the seas: the Death Star – er, Flying Dutchman. Yeah, one ship, and one tentacly dude, that makes Beckett a rampaging supervillain. Even when Jack was this close to stopping both Jones and that big squid previously. Really, I’d wager Beckett’s climactic armada of CGI ships is his greater asset (for his dread scheme to rid British colonies of criminal element – boo! hiss!). No matter, it’s Jones who represents Beckett’s threat, because the plot prefers it this way – it keeps all motivations surrounding the heart first and foremost, and without that, Part Two would be a total waste.


To create the impression of a new, self-contained story (hah!), many new facts emerge. You know, 85% into a trilogy is not the time to resume exposition! So be it. The Brethren Court is called (summoned by that singing dead child – well that OKs it!), this being a council comprised of the Nine Pirate Lords. Why, because for the climactic battle – basically, the Jedi battle, only with the sea replacing space, and ships replacing…er, ships – for this battle to happen, all the world’s pirates must unite. And pirates, being such a rule-abiding lot, may only do so with a highly ceremonial assembly (a dialogue-crazed moment, when we’re all parching for a swordfight). Barbossa is one of the nine. So is Jack. So is Sao Feng, only he’s died now of writer’s convenience, replaced arbitrarily by Elizabeth.

Once this court is assembled, one stops to ponder how we got here from The Curse of the Black Pearl. Each film employs much talk about the Pirate Code, as laid forth by Morgan and Bartholomew. Whereas Black Pearl treated the code as, well ,”more guidelines than actual rules,” At World’s End regards it with pomp and circumstance, like holy writ as passed down by Jesus, Mohammed and Keith Richards combined. When the choirs start chanting the actual, physical presentation of the codex, it’s hard to read this as anything but a joke. In this context, it’s hard to accept Jack and Barbossa were once permitted their blood feud (up to and including Barbossa’s death – he got better) over mere Aztec gold?


At least there’s an end to this madness. The council, at Barbossa’s behest, debates a panacea to resolve the Beckett threat: the goddess Calypso. Oh joy, another left field new development! Settle in, folks! For Calypso, the goddess of the sea, was previously bound in human form by the first Brethren Council – oh, and this obeah Tia Dalma (Naomie “28 Days Later” Harris) happens to be she. (To hear writers Ted Eliot and Terry Rossio tell it, that purposeless cannibal island detour in Part Two exists to ready us somehow for the idea of a god in human form – because they at least recognize how random this all seems otherwise. But that gives you a good idea of how artlessly things are assembled.)

Now, Barbossa aims to “free Calypso of her earthly bonds,” anticipating that she’ll be grateful, and defeat the East India Company in the pirates’ stead. Hence the extended Jack rescue, because he – as a Pirate Lord – has one of nine pieces of eight (now there’s an awkward mouthful – that’s what she said!). With all nine of the eight (urgh!), ceremony can follow ceremony, and voila, Calypso is Calypso. By the way, this process involves Elizabeth getting nominated Pirate King, which is just silly. Unconsciously silly. What a strange evolution she’s undergone, from governor’s daughter to freaking king (er, “queen,” I guess). Though we’ve already swallowed that a homebody could wield swords at ultra-pirate levels.


So at long bilge rat last Calypso is freed, just as hundreds of ships face each other. And she…does nothing. Nothing helpful, at any rate. Surely nothing to help the pirates – well that past hour was a whole lot of nothing (this is the ongoing Pirates mantra)! The lone outcome is she creates a massive whirlpool (or maelstrom) to host the final ship-to-ship struggle. So…all that work to allow for a CGI effect, in a desperate attempt to inject some novelty into the series’ eleventh ship-bound action sequence.

Boy am I sick of the sea! That we’ve now a solid forty minutes of unvaried actioning ahead of us doesn’t help. The climax is long to justify the extended setup; the setup is long to justify the extended climax. It is not earned. A shame, because shortened, and placed in a more dramatically sustainable context, this finale – complete with Jack dueling Jones upon the masts – could be rousing.


Frankly, there’s little room for anything rousing, let alone good old swashbuckling, with three hours of plot, and characters conspiring against each other like “Survivor” contestants. Absent supernaturalism (the theme being its fading – who thought that would make for fun popcorn fare?), there isn’t much new novelty to be gotten from the sea setting. Whatta we got, aside from that danged whirlpool? Um…doldrums…a green flash…fog. From a series that once reveled in zombie skeleton fish monster ghost monkey pirates, this doesn’t suffice.

Oh, and of those hundreds of ships, only three engage in battle, which is just woefully perverse!

Any of the criticisms you could lobby at the overlong multi-film epics of the past easily apply to At World’s End, and retroactively to the whole Pirates of the Caribbean saga (though The Curse of the Black Pearl escapes unscathed). That includes the overlong ending, Return of the King style, only minus that film’s justification as part of a literary adaptation. The Lord of the Rings took a simple and proven story as its spine. Star Wars (the original trilogy, that is) used Joseph Campbell monomyth, and is equally simple even while being original. Pirates of the Caribbean has no elegant, universal plot. Rather, it complicates from the top down, to the point where minor details can change story conditions in an instant.

This is the risk one runs when retroactively developing a trilogy. At At World’s End’s end, it seems then this ought to be it for the Pirates movies – they banked on a trilogy in favor of potentially unlimited self-contained adventures, James Bond style. It’s the pragmatic approach, as it guarantees three films, the larger story demanding audience involvement where isolated sequels cannot. The tradeoff is no sequels can follow once a trilogy is complete, not without undermining that whole enterprise in the first place – oh wait.

Pirates of the Caribbean, No. 4 - Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)

Screenplay by Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot.

Based on characters by Stuart Beattie and Jay Wolpert.

Suggested by the novel by Tim Powers.

Based on Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

There’s no space in there to also cite “Monkey Island,” though you know they intend to.

Way back when, the time came to sequelize Pirates of the Caribbean, two paths diverged in a wood – rollicking, disposable one-offs, or a trilogy. They made a trilogy.

This should preclude the possibility of further sequelization, but…well, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides exists now, doesn’t it? As if conceding that Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End weren’t the audience-pleasing masterpieces one might’ve hoped for, On Stranger Tides elects for the road untaken, to make a one-off adventure starring Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp’s eyeliner), with little greater context.


It’s a nice enough notion, in theory (ala Communism), but the fact remains that there is a two-part Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, and we cannot ignore it. Even at At World’s End’s end (ugh!), Tides was already swelling: Cemented in place from the start, it must needs be a quest to discover the Fountain of Youth, once again pitting Jack against frienemy Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey “The King’s Speech indicates I’m better than this” Rush). The mere presence of the once-dead Barbossa, resurrected via still-unclear means during the “trilogy,” indicates this isn’t a perfectly clean start. Nor does – and this is a most subtle issue underlying Tides – the fact that Jack has already (as of Part Three) had ample opportunity to study a map leading to the Fountain. In fact, it’s hinted that in the Pirates-mandated extended inter-entry downtime (all the better for the series’ trademark breathless, never-ending exposition), both Jack and Barbossa have already gone to the Fountain…and found nothing. So On Stranger Tides becomes a glorified “fetch quest” beforehand, as assorted new characters randomly, unjustifiably know the Fountain’s new exposition, and the items first needed in order to trigger the Fountain’s unclear version of immortality.

All this material On Stranger Tides is predestined to follow. As a sign of good faith, the story is a good deal simpler than what the other sequels have given us, following not the Star Wars “evil empire” storyline, but rather aping Lucas’ other franchise – Indiana Jones. It’s most distinctly The Last Crusade, complete with life-giving chalice(s), and multiple warring parties each racing towards a single location. (There’s a bit of The Princess Bride to this cups o’ life and death bit, too, only played seriously – inconceivable!) Actually, things are maybe too simple, in contrast to The Curse of the Black Pearl, with little underlying twist on time-honored clichés, like that film’s clever notion of returning pirate booty. Arr!


Simple is good. As dictated by Bob Iger, the latest evil megalomaniac behind the Disney Corporation, On Stranger Tides is restricted by a reduced returning cast – apart from the aforementioned dueling buccaneers, that be solely Gibbs, Jack’s underappreciated first mate, and Lt. Gillette, barely even recognizable as an entity. That means NO Keira Knightley nor Orlando Bloom, and all the saints rejoiced! Also, impeded by a halved budget of a mere $150 million, On Stranger Tides is able to escape CGI-necessitated bloat, as phantasmagoric supernaturalism recedes into the background, stepping aside for a rejuvenated focus upon swashbuckling.

But losing the bad isn’t the same thing as adding the good, and while On Notably Less Than Usual Tides is thus not as immediately reproachable, fundamentally, as its immediate precursor, it doesn’t actually have a point. It’s sort of the very definition of “meh,” proving that – even if you accept this was where an initial Pirates sequel ought to have gone – perhaps the series never really demanded sequels in the first place. At long last Gore Verbinski seems to think so, pulling a mutiny to go do Rango instead, and any path which allows for greater spaghetti western aping is automatically the better path. Stepping in for the Gore hound is Rob Marshall, helmer of musicals (Chicago, Nine), proving perfectly anonymous with action, and utterly worthless with dialogue.

In theory, even then there’s always that Oscar-nominated role of Jack Sparrow, to arguably provide fitful entertainment even on watered-down watery seas. This might’ve been functional in 2006, had On Stranger Tides been the initial sequel…yet recall reactions to Dead Man’s Chest, that Jack was already tiring from repetition. Well nigh a decades’ worth of Johnny Depp recycling that same schtick to lesser results has done much, furthermore, to dilute the character.


So it is. Fighting my own apathy towards the film’s emotional impact, let us play a little intellectual game, and imagine this the first Pirates sequel, just for the bloody hell of it. And assume the choice was made, much sooner, to graduate Jack to main character, inarguably. One now sees why producers were somewhat hesitant to go this route the first time out. Jack is not a rounded character, which is part of his appeal. He is perpetually opposed to growth, arc immune, and amoral to boot. All of which makes for a reasonable degree of fun, but Black Pearl balanced Jack with more traditionally “good” and “evil” characters. Without such archetypes (at least without the “good”), Jack is expected to be the hero himself, a role he isn’t entirely suited for.

Not that the earlier sequels didn’t screw up this equation to begin with. The former good guys took on Jack-like traits come Dead Man’s Chest, creating two whole films of chaotic amorals. Which weaken Jack’s stance. Now, without that option, instead it is Jack who starts taking on uncharacteristic characteristics, demonstrably doing things for lofty notions like good and honor and other such B.S.

(There is some attempt to instill Tides with some non-Jack moral grounding, in the form of a pseudo-Bloom missionary, and his eventual romance with a mermaid – cough hack wheeze choke shudder! With this guy – Philip he’s called, and I am bored – come ideas of faith and salvation, the impression of a theme, but never the weight of one. Philip is a lesser shadow of Will Turner, who could’ve been wholly excised from the picture, but he’s in it little enough it barely matters in the first place.)


An example of Jack’s inexplicable newfound do-goodery: When many of his fellow salty seamen face imminent blubbery death, Jack (who is perfectly safe) goes out of his way to save them. Odd, no? It’s remarkably unclear, especially in light of Jack’s habitual motives, what he’s getting at in the rush to reach – totally uncontested – a lighthouse. That this is presented like an action sequence is most curious. One simply understands, from an understanding of action cinema, that a great big mess of whale oil has been established, so it must explode, Q.E.D. Jack’s mad rush to do so (to what end?!) is thus comprehensible solely in genre terms.

Also, it seems about time the filmmakers start desperately insisting upon Jack’s heterosexuality – this in a film which otherwise goes out of its way to have Jack assert “I’m as bent as ever.” Because all blockbusters must parade trite romance (to appeal to another quadrant). This is baggage Will and Elizabeth would’ve once carried. Sans those ciphers, Jack gains a love interest, Angelica (Penélope Cruz, yet another Oscar-nominated performer appearing to no end). Lacking new characterization, she’s basically a female Jack Sparrow – her introduction is literally so, as someone realized Jack basically resembles a mustachioed Miss Cruz to begin with. (Just like Orlando Bloom is but a mustachioed teenybopper girl.) The two, Jack and Angelica, share a never-once-seen past, complete with hilarious implied non-consensual nunnery rape (Disney!). This relationship drives Jack’s vague motives late in the film, as yet another summer blockbuster reduces its female lead to damsel come the climax.


So Jack is somewhat compromised, the movie not knowing quite what to do with him in a greater capacity. No such problem exists for Barbossa, even though it’s still hard to credit the same “Arr!”ing Black Pearl maniac is now arguably a bosom dear chum of children everywhere…or at any rate, a nominal good guy. Rush makes this work simply by being a ham, and – logic be damned – it’s just too amusing to see a newly-peg legged ex-pirate psychotic inhabit a new set of British privateer stereotypes. It’s not AAR-tistic, but it’s ent-AAR-taining, which is good enough.

Otherwise, the rest of Tides pools its resources to explore whatever maritime tropes haven’t already been taken out to sea – one reason a Part Four is not the time to replace Part Two, especially without enough time to build up nostalgia or inspiration. Regardless of how they fit together as a singular whole, here are the latest random pieces in the Pirates gumbo: zombies, mermaids, Blackbeard, the Spanish Armada, and Florida (significantly less dangerous in is early days than it is now, overrun with Cuban maniacs and mis-voting retirees).


Blackbeard (Al Swearengen – ‘scuze me, Ian McShane) is the chief baddie, much in the way that Davy Jones was an unauthorized lift of preexisting nautical lore. Blackbeard, as seen here, is the hoariest possibly pirate captain – in other words, he is exactly as Barbossa once was, making it somewhat confusing when the two appear at once…except that visually Barbossa now resembles Cap’n Crunch. Surely there’s little of the historical Blackbeard in here – not unless Edward Teach had a sentient, snake-like ship, or zombified first mates, or real ships trapped in bottles.

All those details are just that – details – with little narrative impact. At least fantasy never overwhelms, because it prevents the screenwriters from relying too heavily upon their favored arbitrary metaphysics. Things are, relatively speaking, decently grounded – getting ever so slightly back to Black Pearl’s swashbuckler pastiche. The best moments of On Unfamiliar Person Tides have zero ghosties about them – I’m thinking of an early, mostly contextless sequence wherein Jack escapes directly from the Jabba-esque clutches of that vilest of gangsters, King George II. It’s all chandelier-swinging, rope-cutting, carriage-jumping braggadocio, nothing you couldn’t’ve found in the cheaper B-pictures of the 1930s, yet that simple throwback pleasure remains potent. There’s little imaginative updating of old heroics, like the waterwheel – director Marshall’s big weakness – but the fundamentals are sound.


All in all, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is founded upon a sound notion, only one seven years too late. Would that something like this approach (only done with Dead Man’s Chest’s gusto, over Tides’ exhaustion) had occurred in 2006. In that case, Pirates movies might’ve continued on with a better framework for perpetuation – in the style of James Bond. In that sense, Jack’s immutability mightn’t have even been a problem, for how rarely people have cared for Bond’s dramatic evolution.

But even as it is, there is talk from drooling producers about a second trilogy of Pirateses to come – one can only pray they don’t bog things down in unsustainable continuity as before. How does Tides tide? It’s something of a series orphan, freed of the sequels’ baggage, but without the novelty or energy of the first. It feels like so many belated Parts Four – patently unnecessary, without enough audience interest to fuel more, all in contrast to the producers’ wish to do just that. In this way, quite unintentionally the Pirates films do effectively mirror Indiana Jones, long has it been their wish. Too bad it’s Crystal Skull their duplicating, complete with CGI death. Should this be the end for the series, so be it, for surely Tides goes out with many things dangling – Penélope Cruz in particular (though sadly not her pirate booty). It isn’t a Tide-y conclusion. Whether they mean to or not, further one-offs would be hard to sustain from this. What Pirates wants to be is rarely what it is.


Arr!

Pirates of the Caribbean, No. 3 - Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)

One year after Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest comes its partner, another part of the same super-long movie, At World’s End. The production details behind forcing the Pirates series into a trilogy are known by now, so all that needs be said of At World’s End is how it satisfactorily (or doesn’t) conclude the plot left so far unresolved. (Oh, and on its own this entry – to say nothing of the greater two-part trilogy – is arguably the priciest film ever made! That doesn’t count for nothing.)

Keep in mind, At World’s End was being filmed while they still didn’t know where it was headed. Worse still, Dead Man’s Chest was already well in theaters (and ridiculously successful, despite its issues), meaning the story was now shackled to certain ideas. There would be no rewrites…except for those arriving on a daily basis, no doubt a scheme cooked up by the writers to spend their time in the Bahamas alongside Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, and the endlessly exotic Gore Verbinski.


These are not ideal movie-creating conditions. And there’s no more room for narrative frivolity, such as seemed to dominate 80% of Dead Man’s Chest – no more time for the fun, though infinitely pointless, comic set pieces such as the skewer or the water wheel. Now they have to tie up all ends! Thought the story, boiled to its Star Wars-esque essence is the same as all blockbusters (rebels vs. empire, good vs. evil), the Pirates habit of convolution muddies those waters perpetually. So in actuality, here is what needs to be resolved…

• Get Han Solo – excuse me, Jack Sparrow – out of Davy Jones’ Locker…of course first they have to find the locker, requiring a fetch quest for the charts. And another quest for a ship. And another for the crew. Somehow, with all these needless preliminaries, frivolities are no longer allowed, but time wasting still is.

• Having expended so much former energy breaking up Elizabeth Swann (Knightley) and Will Turner (Orlando Bland – er, Bloom), they now gotta expend the same amount of energy reuniting them – a zero sum gain in total.

• Figuring out how the newly resurrected Captain Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) fits into everything, hastily rewritten as a good guy. And because inquiring minds want to know, justifying further why Barbossa could’ve been revived without an hour-long detour into purgatory, but Depp – er, Jack – cannot. To answer this niggling plot hole, they essentially go with “Because we said so.” Because the metaphysics of the Pirate-verse are growing even more arbitrary, subservient to the strangely mutating plot.

• Continuing tale of Will’s father Bill (Stellan Skarsgård, of both accursed Exorcist prequels), himself alive again after having been declared dead (way back in The Curse of the Black Pearl). Of Will’s need to barter, bargain, and otherwise sneakily deal daddy off of Davy Jones’ Flying Dutchman (a mythic ship I saw fit not to mention previously). And whenever possible, aligning these self interests with having all good guys good and bad guys bad.

• Speaking of bad guys, seeing what the East India Company’s megalomaniacal generalissimo tyrant warlord (huh?!) Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander) does now he’s attained the “Dead Man’s MacGuffin.” Basically, this gives him the leverage to command Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) and his fishy crew, even though formerly when Jack was in the exact same position, he was thoroughly unable to sway Jones in the slightest.

Deep breath!

• As for Jones, they’d formerly established that he went and turned all villain over love spurned…because, with the glorious exception of Jack Sparrow, no Hollywood blockbuster can think of motives beyond love, or possibly revenge. This means finding who Davy’s former beloved is among the cast…which shouldn’t be too difficult, seeing as Pirates rivals Star Wars for its paucity of females. All this to give Davy a tragic redemption arc, ala Vader in Return of the Jedi – this film’s major structural influence.

• Then there’s James Norrington (Jack Davenport), the commodore-turned-drifter-turned-pirate-turned-traitor-turned-admiral [sigh!], now another tool under Beckett’s employ, and himself seeking a redemption arc. It’s inevitable someone would get lost in the shuffle, so James just sorta dies at midway, all rather thanklessly.

• Oh, and that tasty Kraken cephalopod which drove the entirety of Part Two? Eh, it doesn’t jibe with the new set pieces, so it’s dead. Killed twixt films. How anticlima-

No doubt I’m forgetting half a dozen further subplots and character motivations (as ever, I’ve been rather mum on Jack, mostly because these bloated sequels continue to lose sight of him themselves). There are always, always more supporting characters under the rafters – Gibbs, Governor Swann, the hilarious pirate duo Pintel & Ragetti, the hilarious sailor duo Mullroy and Murtogg (sounds like the leads of Lethal Weapon), and also a dwarf, a mute, a monkey, a parrot and a dog. Each has motivations and sub-motivations (yeah, even the parrot!), and each motivation is treated with dead seriousness – we’re talkin’ humorless, choir-bound gravitas, like bloody all blockbusters, excepting Iron Man. Weird, truly, when the one-gag doggie from Part One (lifted from a single animatronic on the ride – ride, what’s that now?) takes on Shakespearean levels of importance.

Wanna try for more? Why the hell not! For all this is just the leftover plot garbage, and a sequel (to justify its existence, and draw viewers in with misleading posters) needs new characters, more and more, until there are seemingly thirty-six major speaking parts racing all about. Chief among the newbies is Captain Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat). What his purpose is, I cannot say, except to fuel certain plot arbitrations when the need arises. And to fuel a brief, visually murky detour into Shanghai, which…Okay, what is the geography of these “Caribbean” movies?!


What of that plot? – for as involved as anything that must needs conclude in a big shiny battle can be. Frankly, the sojourn into Davy Jones’ Locker bears roughly 0.0 relevance to the rest – it simply exists to get over the hugest hurdle Dead Man’s Chest left in its wake. Odd, then, that it lasts about as long as whole movies once did (Duck Soup is shorter than the First Act of At World’s End), and that it delays Jack’s introduction for a whole half hour. That is a perverse decision indeed. All the Locker is good for is affording some family friendly goat-fucking surrealism, the sight of Jack and his ship in Utah’s Bonneville flats – all this a notion Verbinski would improve upon in Rango.

Anyway, once that initial hour and change has passed by, then the movie can start. Now pertinent facts come into play: Beckett has overshadowed Jones as the series’ central villain, the Emperor in the form of a chubby, short little British fop in a wig. It truly is, well, just bizarre that peacekeepers are shown in an evil light, while drunken, sodomizing pirates are the goodies. That’s a moral position I cannot reconcile, which is far more troubling at a distance than when watching the film.

Anyway, Beckett earns his villainy (far removed from any historical example) by enacting widespread genocide in the opening scene…of a Disney movie…including the morbid hanging death of a young boy. Enjoy, kids!


Okay, all that needless mass death distracted me, though it makes me think none to highly of our “heroes,” thus far solely concerned with rescuing merely Jack freaking Sparrow. Even then, Beckett is a threat to be reckoned with – because he has Jones. And Jones, even without his loyal Kraken, has the superweapon to control the seas: the Death Star – er, Flying Dutchman. Yeah, one ship, and one tentacly dude, that makes Beckett a rampaging supervillain. Even when Jack was this close to stopping both Jones and that big squid previously. Really, I’d wager Beckett’s climactic armada of CGI ships is his greater asset (for his dread scheme to rid British colonies of criminal element – boo! hiss!). No matter, it’s Jones who represents Beckett’s threat, because the plot prefers it this way – it keeps all motivations surrounding the heart first and foremost, and without that, Part Two would be a total waste.


To create the impression of a new, self-contained story (hah!), many new facts emerge. You know, 85% into a trilogy is not the time to resume exposition! So be it. The Brethren Court is called (summoned by that singing dead child – well that OKs it!), this being a council comprised of the Nine Pirate Lords. Why, because for the climactic battle – basically, the Jedi battle, only with the sea replacing space, and ships replacing…er, ships – for this battle to happen, all the world’s pirates must unite. And pirates, being such a rule-abiding lot, may only do so with a highly ceremonial assembly (a dialogue-crazed moment, when we’re all parching for a swordfight). Barbossa is one of the nine. So is Jack. So is Sao Feng, only he’s died now of writer’s convenience, replaced arbitrarily by Elizabeth.

Once this court is assembled, one stops to ponder how we got here from The Curse of the Black Pearl. Each film employs much talk about the Pirate Code, as laid forth by Morgan and Bartholomew. Whereas Black Pearl treated the code as, well ,”more guidelines than actual rules,” At World’s End regards it with pomp and circumstance, like holy writ as passed down by Jesus, Mohammed and Keith Richards combined. When the choirs start chanting the actual, physical presentation of the codex, it’s hard to read this as anything but a joke. In this context, it’s hard to accept Jack and Barbossa were once permitted their blood feud (up to and including Barbossa’s death – he got better) over mere Aztec gold?


At least there’s an end to this madness. The council, at Barbossa’s behest, debates a panacea to resolve the Beckett threat: the goddess Calypso. Oh joy, another left field new development! Settle in, folks! For Calypso, the goddess of the sea, was previously bound in human form by the first Brethren Council – oh, and this obeah Tia Dalma (Naomie “28 Days Later” Harris) happens to be she. (To hear writers Ted Eliot and Terry Rossio tell it, that purposeless cannibal island detour in Part Two exists to ready us somehow for the idea of a god in human form – because they at least recognize how random this all seems otherwise. But that gives you a good idea of how artlessly things are assembled.)

Now, Barbossa aims to “free Calypso of her earthly bonds,” anticipating that she’ll be grateful, and defeat the East India Company in the pirates’ stead. Hence the extended Jack rescue, because he – as a Pirate Lord – has one of nine pieces of eight (now there’s an awkward mouthful – that’s what she said!). With all nine of the eight (urgh!), ceremony can follow ceremony, and voila, Calypso is Calypso. By the way, this process involves Elizabeth getting nominated Pirate King, which is just silly. Unconsciously silly. What a strange evolution she’s undergone, from governor’s daughter to freaking king (er, “queen,” I guess). Though we’ve already swallowed that a homebody could wield swords at ultra-pirate levels.


So at long bilge rat last Calypso is freed, just as hundreds of ships face each other. And she…does nothing. Nothing helpful, at any rate. Surely nothing to help the pirates – well that past hour was a whole lot of nothing (this is the ongoing Pirates mantra)! The lone outcome is she creates a massive whirlpool (or maelstrom) to host the final ship-to-ship struggle. So…all that work to allow for a CGI effect, in a desperate attempt to inject some novelty into the series’ eleventh ship-bound action sequence.

Boy am I sick of the sea! That we’ve now a solid forty minutes of unvaried actioning ahead of us doesn’t help. The climax is long to justify the extended setup; the setup is long to justify the extended climax. It is not earned. A shame, because shortened, and placed in a more dramatically sustainable context, this finale – complete with Jack dueling Jones upon the masts – could be rousing.


Frankly, there’s little room for anything rousing, let alone good old swashbuckling, with three hours of plot, and characters conspiring against each other like “Survivor” contestants. Absent supernaturalism (the theme being its fading – who thought that would make for fun popcorn fare?), there isn’t much new novelty to be gotten from the sea setting. Whatta we got, aside from that danged whirlpool? Um…doldrums…a green flash…fog. From a series that once reveled in zombie skeleton fish monster ghost monkey pirates, this doesn’t suffice.

Oh, and of those hundreds of ships, only three engage in battle, which is just woefully perverse!

Any of the criticisms you could lobby at the overlong multi-film epics of the past easily apply to At World’s End, and retroactively to the whole Pirates of the Caribbean saga (though The Curse of the Black Pearl escapes unscathed). That includes the overlong ending, Return of the King style, only minus that film’s justification as part of a literary adaptation. The Lord of the Rings took a simple and proven story as its spine. Star Wars (the original trilogy, that is) used Joseph Campbell monomyth, and is equally simple even while being original. Pirates of the Caribbean has no elegant, universal plot. Rather, it complicates from the top down, to the point where minor details can change story conditions in an instant.

This is the risk one runs when retroactively developing a trilogy. At At World’s End’s end, it seems then this ought to be it for the Pirates movies – they banked on a trilogy in favor of potentially unlimited self-contained adventures, James Bond style. It’s the pragmatic approach, as it guarantees three films, the larger story demanding audience involvement where isolated sequels cannot. The tradeoff is no sequels can follow once a trilogy is complete, not without undermining that whole enterprise in the first place – oh wait.

Pirates of the Caribbean, No. 4 - Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)

Screenplay by Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot.

Based on characters by Stuart Beattie and Jay Wolpert.

Suggested by the novel by Tim Powers.

Based on Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

There’s no space in there to also cite “Monkey Island,” though you know they intend to.

Way back when, the time came to sequelize Pirates of the Caribbean, two paths diverged in a wood – rollicking, disposable one-offs, or a trilogy. They made a trilogy.

This should preclude the possibility of further sequelization, but…well, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides exists now, doesn’t it? As if conceding that Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End weren’t the audience-pleasing masterpieces one might’ve hoped for, On Stranger Tides elects for the road untaken, to make a one-off adventure starring Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp’s eyeliner), with little greater context.


It’s a nice enough notion, in theory (ala Communism), but the fact remains that there is a two-part Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, and we cannot ignore it. Even at At World’s End’s end (ugh!), Tides was already swelling: Cemented in place from the start, it must needs be a quest to discover the Fountain of Youth, once again pitting Jack against frienemy Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey “The King’s Speech indicates I’m better than this” Rush). The mere presence of the once-dead Barbossa, resurrected via still-unclear means during the “trilogy,” indicates this isn’t a perfectly clean start. Nor does – and this is a most subtle issue underlying Tides – the fact that Jack has already (as of Part Three) had ample opportunity to study a map leading to the Fountain. In fact, it’s hinted that in the Pirates-mandated extended inter-entry downtime (all the better for the series’ trademark breathless, never-ending exposition), both Jack and Barbossa have already gone to the Fountain…and found nothing. So On Stranger Tides becomes a glorified “fetch quest” beforehand, as assorted new characters randomly, unjustifiably know the Fountain’s new exposition, and the items first needed in order to trigger the Fountain’s unclear version of immortality.

All this material On Stranger Tides is predestined to follow. As a sign of good faith, the story is a good deal simpler than what the other sequels have given us, following not the Star Wars “evil empire” storyline, but rather aping Lucas’ other franchise – Indiana Jones. It’s most distinctly The Last Crusade, complete with life-giving chalice(s), and multiple warring parties each racing towards a single location. (There’s a bit of The Princess Bride to this cups o’ life and death bit, too, only played seriously – inconceivable!) Actually, things are maybe too simple, in contrast to The Curse of the Black Pearl, with little underlying twist on time-honored clichés, like that film’s clever notion of returning pirate booty. Arr!


Simple is good. As dictated by Bob Iger, the latest evil megalomaniac behind the Disney Corporation, On Stranger Tides is restricted by a reduced returning cast – apart from the aforementioned dueling buccaneers, that be solely Gibbs, Jack’s underappreciated first mate, and Lt. Gillette, barely even recognizable as an entity. That means NO Keira Knightley nor Orlando Bloom, and all the saints rejoiced! Also, impeded by a halved budget of a mere $150 million, On Stranger Tides is able to escape CGI-necessitated bloat, as phantasmagoric supernaturalism recedes into the background, stepping aside for a rejuvenated focus upon swashbuckling.

But losing the bad isn’t the same thing as adding the good, and while On Notably Less Than Usual Tides is thus not as immediately reproachable, fundamentally, as its immediate precursor, it doesn’t actually have a point. It’s sort of the very definition of “meh,” proving that – even if you accept this was where an initial Pirates sequel ought to have gone – perhaps the series never really demanded sequels in the first place. At long last Gore Verbinski seems to think so, pulling a mutiny to go do Rango instead, and any path which allows for greater spaghetti western aping is automatically the better path. Stepping in for the Gore hound is Rob Marshall, helmer of musicals (Chicago, Nine), proving perfectly anonymous with action, and utterly worthless with dialogue.

In theory, even then there’s always that Oscar-nominated role of Jack Sparrow, to arguably provide fitful entertainment even on watered-down watery seas. This might’ve been functional in 2006, had On Stranger Tides been the initial sequel…yet recall reactions to Dead Man’s Chest, that Jack was already tiring from repetition. Well nigh a decades’ worth of Johnny Depp recycling that same schtick to lesser results has done much, furthermore, to dilute the character.


So it is. Fighting my own apathy towards the film’s emotional impact, let us play a little intellectual game, and imagine this the first Pirates sequel, just for the bloody hell of it. And assume the choice was made, much sooner, to graduate Jack to main character, inarguably. One now sees why producers were somewhat hesitant to go this route the first time out. Jack is not a rounded character, which is part of his appeal. He is perpetually opposed to growth, arc immune, and amoral to boot. All of which makes for a reasonable degree of fun, but Black Pearl balanced Jack with more traditionally “good” and “evil” characters. Without such archetypes (at least without the “good”), Jack is expected to be the hero himself, a role he isn’t entirely suited for.

Not that the earlier sequels didn’t screw up this equation to begin with. The former good guys took on Jack-like traits come Dead Man’s Chest, creating two whole films of chaotic amorals. Which weaken Jack’s stance. Now, without that option, instead it is Jack who starts taking on uncharacteristic characteristics, demonstrably doing things for lofty notions like good and honor and other such B.S.

(There is some attempt to instill Tides with some non-Jack moral grounding, in the form of a pseudo-Bloom missionary, and his eventual romance with a mermaid – cough hack wheeze choke shudder! With this guy – Philip he’s called, and I am bored – come ideas of faith and salvation, the impression of a theme, but never the weight of one. Philip is a lesser shadow of Will Turner, who could’ve been wholly excised from the picture, but he’s in it little enough it barely matters in the first place.)


An example of Jack’s inexplicable newfound do-goodery: When many of his fellow salty seamen face imminent blubbery death, Jack (who is perfectly safe) goes out of his way to save them. Odd, no? It’s remarkably unclear, especially in light of Jack’s habitual motives, what he’s getting at in the rush to reach – totally uncontested – a lighthouse. That this is presented like an action sequence is most curious. One simply understands, from an understanding of action cinema, that a great big mess of whale oil has been established, so it must explode, Q.E.D. Jack’s mad rush to do so (to what end?!) is thus comprehensible solely in genre terms.

Also, it seems about time the filmmakers start desperately insisting upon Jack’s heterosexuality – this in a film which otherwise goes out of its way to have Jack assert “I’m as bent as ever.” Because all blockbusters must parade trite romance (to appeal to another quadrant). This is baggage Will and Elizabeth would’ve once carried. Sans those ciphers, Jack gains a love interest, Angelica (Penélope Cruz, yet another Oscar-nominated performer appearing to no end). Lacking new characterization, she’s basically a female Jack Sparrow – her introduction is literally so, as someone realized Jack basically resembles a mustachioed Miss Cruz to begin with. (Just like Orlando Bloom is but a mustachioed teenybopper girl.) The two, Jack and Angelica, share a never-once-seen past, complete with hilarious implied non-consensual nunnery rape (Disney!). This relationship drives Jack’s vague motives late in the film, as yet another summer blockbuster reduces its female lead to damsel come the climax.


So Jack is somewhat compromised, the movie not knowing quite what to do with him in a greater capacity. No such problem exists for Barbossa, even though it’s still hard to credit the same “Arr!”ing Black Pearl maniac is now arguably a bosom dear chum of children everywhere…or at any rate, a nominal good guy. Rush makes this work simply by being a ham, and – logic be damned – it’s just too amusing to see a newly-peg legged ex-pirate psychotic inhabit a new set of British privateer stereotypes. It’s not AAR-tistic, but it’s ent-AAR-taining, which is good enough.

Otherwise, the rest of Tides pools its resources to explore whatever maritime tropes haven’t already been taken out to sea – one reason a Part Four is not the time to replace Part Two, especially without enough time to build up nostalgia or inspiration. Regardless of how they fit together as a singular whole, here are the latest random pieces in the Pirates gumbo: zombies, mermaids, Blackbeard, the Spanish Armada, and Florida (significantly less dangerous in is early days than it is now, overrun with Cuban maniacs and mis-voting retirees).


Blackbeard (Al Swearengen – ‘scuze me, Ian McShane) is the chief baddie, much in the way that Davy Jones was an unauthorized lift of preexisting nautical lore. Blackbeard, as seen here, is the hoariest possibly pirate captain – in other words, he is exactly as Barbossa once was, making it somewhat confusing when the two appear at once…except that visually Barbossa now resembles Cap’n Crunch. Surely there’s little of the historical Blackbeard in here – not unless Edward Teach had a sentient, snake-like ship, or zombified first mates, or real ships trapped in bottles.

All those details are just that – details – with little narrative impact. At least fantasy never overwhelms, because it prevents the screenwriters from relying too heavily upon their favored arbitrary metaphysics. Things are, relatively speaking, decently grounded – getting ever so slightly back to Black Pearl’s swashbuckler pastiche. The best moments of On Unfamiliar Person Tides have zero ghosties about them – I’m thinking of an early, mostly contextless sequence wherein Jack escapes directly from the Jabba-esque clutches of that vilest of gangsters, King George II. It’s all chandelier-swinging, rope-cutting, carriage-jumping braggadocio, nothing you couldn’t’ve found in the cheaper B-pictures of the 1930s, yet that simple throwback pleasure remains potent. There’s little imaginative updating of old heroics, like the waterwheel – director Marshall’s big weakness – but the fundamentals are sound.


All in all, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is founded upon a sound notion, only one seven years too late. Would that something like this approach (only done with Dead Man’s Chest’s gusto, over Tides’ exhaustion) had occurred in 2006. In that case, Pirates movies might’ve continued on with a better framework for perpetuation – in the style of James Bond. In that sense, Jack’s immutability mightn’t have even been a problem, for how rarely people have cared for Bond’s dramatic evolution.

But even as it is, there is talk from drooling producers about a second trilogy of Pirateses to come – one can only pray they don’t bog things down in unsustainable continuity as before. How does Tides tide? It’s something of a series orphan, freed of the sequels’ baggage, but without the novelty or energy of the first. It feels like so many belated Parts Four – patently unnecessary, without enough audience interest to fuel more, all in contrast to the producers’ wish to do just that. In this way, quite unintentionally the Pirates films do effectively mirror Indiana Jones, long has it been their wish. Too bad it’s Crystal Skull their duplicating, complete with CGI death. Should this be the end for the series, so be it, for surely Tides goes out with many things dangling – Penélope Cruz in particular (though sadly not her pirate booty). It isn’t a Tide-y conclusion. Whether they mean to or not, further one-offs would be hard to sustain from this. What Pirates wants to be is rarely what it is.


Arr!

Pirates of the Caribbean, No. 2 - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)

A Pirates of the Caribbean sequel – which was anticipated to the extent that they thought an original movie with a lugubrious subtitle (The Curse of the Black Pearl) was a good idea – wasn’t anticipated enough for them (the filmmakers) to know what to do. And there were two ways they could go. Either make a standalone sequel, in the manner of the Indiana Jones series (which Pirates echoes by updating an outdated genre), with the further adventures of one Jack Sparrow. Or don’t simply perpetuate Pirates piecemeal, but turn it into Serious Drama, a trilogy, as was the style at the time.

They went with the second one – a trilogy – a decision which would dictate the very evolution of this series.

And not just any trilogy, but with sequels filmed back-to-back, as one mega movie ya gotta pay twice for (one sees why the moneymen would get behind such an endeavor). This is an ancient cinematic practice, but it has its modern precedent in the Back to the Future sequels. But that’s all just technicalities. What every such trilogy really wants to be is Star Wars, and thus operates under delusions of grandeur and mono-mything. And so, far from Pirates of the Caribbean standing as a welcome frivolous alternative to more self-serious fare such as Lord of the Rings and The Matrix (two contemporary multi-sequel-at-once franchises), these Pirates films do the same sort of narrative, only in a high seas milieu.


Creating a macro-narrative trilogy demands a single thread running throughout – even in the non-trilogy first Pirates. So screenwriters Ted Eliot and Terry Rossio struggle to locate a deeper plot in that one-off…unsuccessfully. Instead, that first Pirates is now just setup for the main characters, who must face a two-movie arc, starting with Dead Man’s Chest.

These conditions are not ideal for creating a flawless blockbuster. Despite a multi-year lead-in, screenwriting wasn’t complete by the time Dead Man’s Chest was filming…leading to moments when both director Gore Verbinski and super-Sparrow-star Johnny Depp frankly didn’t know what was going on. This situation – lack of prep, inflated and unwanted ambitions – brings out the worst in the writers, whose former overreliance upon exposition (slightly justified as thematic storytelling) now runs hog wild.

Because the first film was a delicious stew of basically all pirate clichés – with planks and treasure maps and parrots and wenches tossed in simply because it’s expected– now Dead Man’s Chest must stretch further for material. (Furthermore, references to the Disneyland ride are now woefully nil, evidence of the series moving beyond its inspiration’s shadow.) Now the Pirates milieu seems to be maritime tropes altogether. Those are largely supernatural tropes, because no trilogy can compete without succumbing to the same damned fantasy format as the rest.


So in a vain effort to one-up ghost skeleton pirate zombies, Dead Man’s Chest delivers fish monsters, ghost ships, Eldritch abominations and one very pissy Kraken. (Plus an undead monkey, and be prepared for confusion if you didn’t see that post-movie tag which established said simian in the first place.) The rules governing fish-fiends, the damnéd crew of one mythical Davy Jones (Bill Nighy, his pus shining through impressive octopus CGI), change with time, as the ever-changing script demands new arbitrary scenarios to allow for the preplanned set pieces. This is the cart leading the horse, as it were, lumpy storytelling where crazy ideas are concocted (hey, what if Jack were to randomly go to a Turkish prison somehow here in the Polynesian Caribbean Wherever?), then awkwardly justified through deathless expository scenes. Said chat is nakedly in service of delivering swashbuckling…which, it must be said, pales compared to the first, since an increased reliance upon CGI removes the light sense of play which made Black Pearl an audience favorite. And when – suddenly! – you can’t have Davy Jones emerging onto land for a climactic six-way swordfight, because his strengths would overpower the scene, well then, just announce suddenly that he “cannot step foot [or claw-tentacle-something] on land” except for “every ten years.” Part of that does service Part Three, but that doesn’t benefit us now. Man, the metaphysics of all this are oh so wonky!

Having discussed Dead Man’s Chest as a potpourri of random set pieces, basically, with a script running way overlong to account for them all (one and a half hours needed to create one swordfight = not efficient filmmaking), what of the plot, so-called? Evidently (if you’re somehow relying solely upon this slap-happy blog for a synopsis), Davy Jones, Captain Cthulhu himself, is the villain – with his suckers set on (Captain) Jack Sparrow concerning some ten-year-old debt which retcons Jack’s former possession of the Black Pearl – all this is back story in Part One as well, repeated or assumed here. Okay, ignoring the complications, basically a really clever monster wants to “get” Jack Sparrow, and Jack must escape this damnation. Through simply killing the monster?...Eh, perhaps, though the same complications which created this evil vs. not-as-evil tale also make things never that simple. We’ll get to why.


Meanwhile, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) are back, and one must ask, “Whyyyyyy?!” This is the primest evidence that the trilogy route wasn’t the right one for Pirates, since that approach demands all characters continue on, as if they have further stories to tell. But for this duo, a love story was all they had to tell, and that was over. Eh, except they didn’t wed, so…just postpone that at movie’s start, then arbitrarily keep ‘em apart throughout the picture in that romantic comedy sort of way, and there ya go. Oh, and toss in a secondary villain as well, one Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander), head of the East India Trading Company, the aquatic equivalent of the Star Wars Empire. Beckett, ever the ambitious capitalist (“Boo!” we’re expected to say, prodded on by the money-grubbing executives who so oft vilify their fellow plutocrats), is taming the Seven Seas, and getting rid of pirates. In real world terms, the polar opposite of evil, except this franchise has already re-defined “pirate” not to mean “illegal software downloader” – er, I mean, “rape-crazed, murdering sea burglar” – but “hippie.” Pirates are just free spirits who don’t want to live by your rules, man! Oh dear god, this being a 2006 movie, I do fear we’ve got us an artless anti-Bush Doctrine screed, and Lord knows those things play like gangbusters.


So…two sets of villains, and events conspiring to reunite Jack, Will and Elizabeth (and also James Norrington – Jack Davenport – because all former characters must remain). This eventually comprises even more supporting characters on down the line – Gibbs, Pintel, Ragetti, that key dog even – with each given some treacle about “destiny” or “desire” or some movie terminology for heightened dramatics. Ugh!

In terms of overall arc, these people are the Rebels. Even with things confused at Dead Man’s Chest’s end, it’s clear the ultimate goal is to pretty much just retell the monomyth, and hope we don’t notice. There are preoccupations masking that end. In Black Pearl, Jack Sparrow was bracingly amoral, a good guy only when plot circumstances conspired to align his motives with the film’s (the more they insist upon this approach, the more strongly the writer’s hand will be felt). But now, it seems all characters share that amorality.


Extended exposition aims to create new and distinct motives for somewhere around half a dozen different parties, each seeking the titular heart (which can either kill or control Davy Jones, Master of All the Seas Except When He Isn’t). Thus, rather than revert to action-heavy swordplay immediately (boy, never thought I’d be arguing for more senseless violence in a movie), they endlessly barter, dealing and counter-dealing and counter-counter-counter-counter-dealing until the sea cows come home – but I gotta hold off on this thread, because I know At World’s End is nigh. But the effect of it, even by this stage, is that everyone has adopted some of Jack’s modus operandi. For Jack, the most inexperienced fighter and generally the weakest character, mastering this skill made him instead the most formidable member of the Pirates universe. Now that everyone’s doing it (possibly inspired by Jack’s former antics), he recedes into the background.

Oh right, Jack Sparrow. Odd that one could say so much about Dead Man’s Chest without addressing him, the very reason these things are a franchise in the first place. Well, the cat’s out of the bag, as Davy Jones himself says at one point. Jack was formerly a grand shock to both the standard pirate procedure, as well as blockbusters as a whole. Now, the same thing is expected – and there’s no better way to curtail zaniness than to anticipate it. Oh, and those writers, now they know Johnny Depp will play a drunken, bisexual lunatic. It influences their writing. Jack then becomes a bit of a buffoon, as every element struggles to reinforce what was once so breezy, to the point where his persona barely registers at all. And then Depp started leaning upon that method as his S.O.P. (see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, or Alice in Wonderland, or possibly the next thing he’ll do with Tim Burton).


The star is compromised. With the only semi-functional Dead Man’s Chest on display for examination, it’s simple to identify just how Jack is underserved – what with the self-conscious approach, or the myth-laden plot, or the efforts to glom on a three-film character arc. Though one could say that no sequel would’ve served Jack perfectly – that’s the problem with repetition, it doesn’t serve everything perfectly. Certain Pirates elements – the action – have demonstrated historically to be great sequel fodder, as that is a repeatable thrill, easier to duplicate. It’s far harder to maintain a character for the long term, and Jack’s in-your-face abnormality suffers greatly from a loss of novelty.

With Johnny Depp a shadow of his former Sparrow, it’s surprising to find that the lone player still working at full capacity is Verbinski. At least, as the film’s visual fabric is concerned, for let us assume that contractually he had no way to influence the story’s slipshod shabbiness, its sickly unseaworthy structure. To merely behold, Dead Man’s Chest is wonderful eye candy, with far greater artistry than most of its fellow summer tent poles – credit it as a period piece, which necessitates an all-encompassing visual touch, and allows for greater control of tone. The images continue to recall N.C. Wyeth’s illustrations for “Treasure Island,” all golden hues and rich, baroque textures. The whole of the production design crew must be credited, for delivering the film’s themes (about encroaching modernity into the realm of piracy, which we all know no longer exists today – [cough!]) with much greater subtlety than the screenplay. Even the CGI feels at home, which is something.


Divorced even from his behind-the-scenes crew, Verbinski carries a certain skill. Individually, there are many tremendous sequences in Dead Man’s Chest. The first true action sequence – which comes an unforgivable 40 minutes into the film – is the climax to a half hour of cannibal island hijinks. To criticize plot, there is NO reason for this extended detour to exist – it’s the purest manifestation of Wacky Wayside Tribes I’ve ever seen. Furthermore, it’s kinda stupefying that they reverted to man-eating Pacific Islander stereotypes in 2006. Okay, so ignoring all these massive, massive issues, when our heroes do escape, it’s a fun little moment. Most desperately flee in a spherical bone cage (a…rib cage?!), equal parts zorb and hamster ball. Jack, always the standout, vaults about on…let’s see if I can even phrase this…on a bamboo skewer weighted by assorted mangos. The result is more Buster Keaton than Errol Flynn – surely, this ain’t no swashbuckling! – and it’s kinda more funny than thrilling. And one cannot credit Jack’s ridiculous plunge from a cliff at all. Ah, but without expectations, there are nuggets of elevated slapstick goodness in here – It helps that I really like Buster Keaton.


The partner to this sequence is the nearly climactic water wheel fight. Picture a three-way duel (and ignore the heaps of effort it took to get Jack fighting Will fighting James), upon a water wheel (read: hamster wheel; someone here must love hamsters – possibly Jack) spinning wildly through the jungle. Oh, and it’s all practical! For fleeting moments when the movie goes “full retard,” it becomes transcendental, almost by accident.

But then the real climax isn’t such action-as-comedy silliness. It’s a Kraken attack. Which is neat to see, to witness the iconic “giant squid vs. ship” scenario from so many Nantucket paintings, but it remains just dudes in pirate costumes flailing before so much CGI. It’s kind of the up-market equivalent of all those SyFy Originals, and this might be Sharktopus done right, but it’s still the Sharktopus mentality.


And when the movie ends, well…it doesn’t end! I pity anyone in theaters not knowing this aims to be the Empire Strikes Back of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, because this boasts that classic middle chapter lack of resolution. More specifically, the final half hour (amidst what should be frivolous squid amputations) takes that trademark Pirates route of over-strenuous exposition. (Talking way to much – that’s something this blog is intimately familiar with.) Plot threads are stretched so horridly you have no idea how they’re going to resolve them – because the writers didn’t either. And here they are:

• Davy Jones and Beckett join forces (off screen), to become an Axis of Evil or whatever.

• Jack Sparrow is eaten whole by the Kraken, not dead (death becoming a most nebulous thing in this franchise), but rather taken to Davy Jones’ Locker. Or, to rephrase it, Jack is frozen in carbonite. Because every such trilogy falsely removes a major character at this stage – Han Solo, obviously. Neo trapped in limbo. The Doc sent to the Old West. Gandalf plunged to the depths with the Balrog. At any rate, that maps out the First Act of Part Three.

• Will and Elizabeth see their relationship strained, over treachery and deceit and seduction. To boil it down, it’s the same sort of misunderstanding that defined “Three’s Company,” so I continue in my disinterest of their plotline.

• Oh, and Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) returns for the final pre-credits shot, to remind us of something this movie was sorely lacking. And to promise that just maybe some piratical nonsense might be restored for the third.

• Also, some claptrap about destiny and fate and gods and dirt.

Okay, so there are some…issues with Dead Man’s Chest – though in a two-parter, it’s unwise to form conclusions before things are wrapped up. That’ll be At World’s End. And that “final” film’s success will indicate the true worth of Dead Man’s Chest, in audiences’ eyes. For while Dead Man’s Chest has been unfathomably successful monetarily – the fourth highest grossing film ever, worldwide – one can assume that was largely due to audience love for the first. Recall, The Curse of the Black Pearl was a sleeper hit, the little blockbuster that could. That it made bucks at all was a triumph. For the bloated second to do well was expected. For it to be good…well, not so much.