I waited! It was a shock scene with the monkey. He goes up to the chest of the aztec gold and swipes a coin, then comes into the moonlight so that you can see how he’s…um…undead? and then jumps at the camera as though here were going to bite your throat. Good for a jump, but not incredibly scary. Worth the wait, I’d say.
I saw it last night as well. I was really eager to see it, but I thought that it was coming out on Friday and when I realized its opening was yesterday I scrambled to find someone to go with, eventually said the hell with it and went by myself (why are people so nervous about going to the movies by themselves, made it easy to find a seat even though I walked in during the previews).
I actually thought the movie was a little slow, but the action scenes kicked ass and Johnny Depp alone makes me want to pick up the DVD and just watch his scenes all by themselves. I almost pre-ordered it last night.
I really loved…The pirates walking underwater, then getting struck by the moonlight to turn into zombies that then climbed up the ship. What a great visual!
More kudos to the thread title, BTW. Reminds me of a joke I read on the boards once:
A pirate walks into a bar with a steering wheel sticking out of his pants. The bartender looks at him and says, “Hey, you’ve got a steering wheel sticking out of your pants.” The pirate responds, “Arr! It’s driving me nuts!”
Another Pirate Joke…
Your typical pirate walks into a bar, he’s missing one leg and has a hook in place of his right hand and a patch over his right eye.
The bartender asks him, “Hey, how did you lose your leg?” and he replies, “a nasty shark bit it off”.
The bartender then asks him, “and how did you lose your eye?” and the pirate says, “It was the first day with my hook.”
My friend & I started laughing when watching it (specifically the scene where they talk about Jack’s daring escape from the island) because we thought there was a superobscure Watchmen reference in it. Probably not, but it was funny. Johnny Depp was genius.
Just saw the movie; enjoyed it quite a bit. Johnny Depp delivers a truly unique performance as a pirate captain. There’s a lot of humor, and it was neat seeing the emaciated blond fellow from “The Office” as a pirate.
The bit where
Jack and Will sneak out to the ship by walking underwater holding onto an upside-down rowboat so they can breathe
is directly lifted from the Burt Lancaster movie The Crimson Pirate, which itself was sort of a spoof.
The movie definitely could have been cut down a bit shorter, but it moves right along. You could definitely see where the money was spent. Makes me wish somebody would make a big-budget movie about the Battle of Trafalgar.
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Best live-action film Disney’s released in years. Perhaps decades.
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Not a classic, I think, but LOADS of fun. Swashbuckling adventure, all the way around. Check your brains at the door and go for the ride.
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The first decent pirate movie in… hell, I dunno. Decades. And it’s better than decent; it’s quite good. Errol Flynn would have been proud.
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Yes, Johnny Depp is great in it. Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly wind up kind of playing his straight men throughout much of the movie. Geoff Rush durn near steals the show as the best pirate villain since… hell, I dunno. You get the picture, though.
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Gave me faith that it was still possible to make a good pirate movie. Or for that matter, a decent action-adventure film that isn’t rated R.
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I WANT that soundtrack. GREAT music.
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BuckleberryFerry is quite right; there is a sting at the end of the extremely long credits. Don’t miss it. It’s worth hanging around for, especially since even though you get to sit through this insane long list of every single pixel pusher and rowboat commander that helped make this movie, you also get to sit through that glorious, beautiful music while they do it…
I just saw it a second time and I was as engaged the second time as I was the first.
I do have a question though, what is the very very last line that Jack Sparrow says as the movie ends (I keep forgetting)? I think the final scene is one of the coolest in recent memory and I want to keep the final few words in my head…at least until the DVD comes out. I thought Jack just exuded coolness in that scene.
Hmmm, I made this mistake, and if you don’t like missing subtleties, I wouldn’t. As the film goes on, keeping track of who knows what, and what their objectives are, and how they intend to accomplish them, and who is double-crossing whom exactly, gets a little hard to keep track of if you’re not paying attention.
In fact I lost track of that sentence about halfway through. To make it simple, I would say the hardest thing to understand is what each person thinks each other person intends.
What everyone else said. Great fun! Great soundtrack! I loved the movie. But I do have a question…how did the pirates of the Black Pearl know that it was the blood of Will Turner that was needed to break the curse?Who would have told them?
OK, so I saw Pirates last night. It’s pretty good. Lots of action, lush settings, fairly witty dialog, and great sight gags. Johnny Depp’s first step onto the dock was hillarious. It’s not Citizen Kane, but it’s not Cutthroat Island, either.
My daughter thought pretty well of both Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom (though she thought Depp should lose the eye-liner!), and Keira Knightley is a pretty and gutsy heroine, with hair that mysteriously restores itself to perfect order seconds after a fight, a swim through shark-infested waters, or a drunken revel on the beach.
The special effects are stunning. As anyone who’s seen the trailers know, the cursed pirates
turn into rotting skeletons
when seen by moonlight. The movie, naturally, has as many scenes as possible set at night, so that the pirates can move quickly in and out of the patches of moonlight. The CGI effects are seamless and utterly realistic looking – and pretty gross!
Besides Depp and Bloom, Geoffrey Rush chewed the scenery pretty well, and Jonathan Price was quite good as the (somewhat clueless) governor. There are two sets of comedy relief, a pair of low-ranking pirates and a pair of low-ranking soldiers, all of whom keep the action light-hearted.
The only real criticism I have (and remember that it is a summer movie, not Truffaut) is that the battle scenes go on a little too long. The only reference to the Disneyland ride is a (mercifully brief) singing of the ride’s theme song “Yo-Ho-Ho”. Otherwise, it’s a hoot.
Actually I saw two other references to the Disney World ride- the scene where the prisoners try to coax the dog to bring them the key to the cell and the scene where one pirate is sleeping with the pigs.
I was a little troubled by the scene where Sparrow and Will walked underwater to the boat while holding an inverted rowboat. Seemed to me that the bouyant forces would make this impossible.
Other than that quibble, and the need for a little more editing (at times it seemed to drag), it was a fun film.
Oh drat, could a mod put some of my previous in a spoiler box?
I wondered about that one myself. Unless the boat was far too heavy to lift, I doubt that they could hold it down…but it was a pretty cool idea, and it
prefigured the pirate’s attack on the Dauntless
later on in the movie.
I also saw it last night! Ditto on everything said above. It’s a great movie, and despite being light-hearted summer fare does have some intelligence to it :eek: !!! Oh, sure it has a few minor plot holes (mostly involving the heroine’s state of hair), but remember, that sort of thing in this sort of movie just adds to the fun!
Johnny Depp definately made the movie. His ridiculous make-up, mentioned so much above, definately adds to his character!
Go see it! It’s arrrrrrguably the best summer movie in years!
I saw it last night - what a good, mindless pirate movie should be! Great fun!
Minor nitpick:
[SPOILER]
The notion of keeping a pistol loaded for ten years, while it is carried around, dumped in the ocean, etc. - and it still goes off perfectly - kinda bothered me.
Silly, when you consider that the notion of cursed pirates didn’t faze me at all. [/SPOILER]
Another reference to the ride at Disneyland…
When Johnny Depp drank the red wine and you saw it go down through his bones
I’m an Age-of-Sail fiction/non-fiction purest so many of the historial innaccuracies really bothered me in POTC, although, it was nice they made an actual effort with some of the terminology (long nine bowchasers, top gallants etc) that I still enjoyed the movie for what is was.
But for purests, they will be happy to know that the The Far Side of The World an adaptation of the fantastic Patrick O’Brian Aubrey/Maturin novel series is complete and will be released in December. It was originally due out in May, but the studio thinks its so good they held it off for the Oscar race. It stars Russel Crowe and Paul Bettany. http://us.imdb.com/EGallery?source=ss&group=0311113&photo=Ss/0311113/179-29R.jpg&path=gallery&path_key=0311113
Heh, when I was watching, I thought, “Wow! It’s so authentic! Amazing attention to detail!” But then I thought, “Wait a minute, what am I talking about? I don’t know the first thing about sailing or piracy or the time period this is supposed to be set in. I’m probably being absolutely duped.” Can you point out some specific inaccuracies or anachronisms? That’s one of my favorite parts. 
I saw it too. Count me as another future DVD buyer.
Before seeing the movie, I heard that Johnny Depp based his performance on Keith Richards and someone else. I could easily see the Keith Richards part, but I couldn’t remember the other person he based Sparrow on. Does anyone else recall hearing something like this? Can you tell me who the other person is?
I thought Depp was Oscar caliber.