A wizard did it?
A wizard should know better…
Yeah, it was all over the place, but I kind of felt even more in the moment b/c of that. Did you stay through the end credits? I was an idiot and didn’t…but I got to see it on my second go around. nice touch.
I am late to this review-fest.
My friend and I went to see it last night and we laughed throughout the entire film. Depp was deliously swishy to the point of being a poof. We couldn’t stop giggling like 12 year olds.
I feel that it was an excellent transition film, preparing us for the 3rd and final money shot film. The ending was perfect and, I am really jonesing for watching it NOW, NOW, NOW!
With the characters already firmly established the plot has a chance to become deeper and more complicated. This did not fail. Double crossings galore.
The voodoo lady (Tia Dalma is her offical ‘name’.) and Davy Jones are really the only two notable additions. The seedy East India company guy really is too, but he is a plot-mover-alonger and, naturally, a bad guy for 3rd to get his comeuppence.
I think one of the bigger let downs were [spoiler]the William Turner Sr personality. He’s only been under water for 13 years and a complete phhhffffft. Yes, I know he got the beat down and all that, but I expected more of the “good man” stuff from him somehow. It was such a lack luster character.
The reappearance of Barbossa at the end was fantastic! I loves me some Geoffry Rush. I want to know exactly how he survived from the last scene of CofBP.
I was a bit diassapointed with Elizabeth dressed up as a boy part. She really did nothing to disguise her voice at all or smudge up her face. I mean, how could you not tell?
lastly, I was particularly amused by Norrington’s turn of events and how he became what he most hated, a pirate. [/spoiler]
Oh, I don’t know that it was such a shame. I wouldn’t mind eating her, myself ;).
I knew from the trailers that there was an illithid pirate in this one, and that’s already way cool. But an illithid lich pirate? No way, man, you just can’t top that.
Yeah, the whole movie was full of implausible swashbuckling and fortuitous circumstances, but I don’t think you can rightly complain about that. That’s what this movie was, inherently. It’s like complaining about a carrot being orange.
My biggest disappointment was, why did they need to find the key? Well, to open the chest, of course, but they didn’t need the original key for that. They had the pattern for it, and remember, one of the main characters was a blacksmith. They should have gone with that.
That’s what I kept thinking - they have the pattern for the key, and Will’s a blacksmith. Why doesn’t he just make one?
I got the impression the key was somewhat magical. Otherwise, why not just smash the chest?
Saw it night before last and loved it. A few things…
Why did Bootstrap look like Frankenstein? Were they trying to play into the “gentle monster” type?
Did anyone else totally cringe when Elizabeth kissed Jack? Imagine his breath! YUCK!
I just got back from seeing this. I admit, it didn’t quite have the same feel as the first, but I still enjoyed it. In all, I’m glad I saw it in the theatre. Some speculation of my own, just to throw some more ideas out here:
[SPOILER]Regarding Barbossa’s return, is it possible that we have another n-tuple cross (or whatever, I’ve lost count and this point. 
)set up? I mean, when he was sending his crew onto the island to retrieve the chest, Davy Jones said something to the effect that he couldn’t return to the land for nearly another ten years (it having already been been established that he can only come on land once every ten years).
So, that would mean he went ashore a few months before PotC II. Perhaps, say, right around the end of PotC I? As in, right after the curse was broken and Barbossa was shot. In other words, has Barbossa struck a deal with Jones, to get the Pearl back? :eek: [/SPOILER]
Truth be told, I’m not sure if I believe it myself, but it’s out there as a possibilty.
That’s the best theory I’ve heard yet.
Awful movie.
My wife kept saying “It will never end” like she was being tortured. I just sat there with my eyes glazing over, wondering whether to make this the first movie I ever walked out of.
Any bits of adventure or silliness were buried under lumps of exposition, never-ending scenes, pointless tasks and indecipherable accents. (What did the voodoo lady just say? Damned if I know.)
Did I mention the pointless tasks? Will searched for Jack so he could get the compass. Jack went after the key drawing. Elizabeth went after the letters of marque and then went after … something. Can’t remember what. One-eyed pirate and fat pirate went after the Black Pearl (though what they were doing in the South Seas, I have no idea). Jack sought out the voodoo lady. Will boarded the wrecked ship looking for the key. Jack went in search of 99 souls. Oh god I can’t go on.
A few specific gripes:
_ the dice game made no sense. Hard to build up tension if your audience has no idea what all those 5s and 6s mean.
_ the water wheel was a fun idea. Unfortunately, cutting away to all the other pirates’ antics sort of sucked the drama out of it, and it ended with a whimper (one reprised the from the round cage gag, too) instead of a big climax.
_ I could never figure out whether Elizabeth was really supposed to be sexually attracted to Jack or just pretending. If it was supposed to be real, it failed badly because I never got any sense that she was tempted by him.
A few things I liked:
_ Elizabeth’s decision about leaving Jack behind to face the kraken. I like the fact that she did something that caused real regret and raised real questions about here character.
_ The crew of the Dutchman. They were a little TOO busy, with all the coral and starfish and eels and such, but it was still damned impressive.
_ Can’t think of anything else.
One other observation: Sparrow seemed much nastier than I remember him from Curse. Much more willing to abandon comrades and sell people’s souls. He also spent most of the movie in fear – sticking to the shallows, avoiding trouble, etc. It seems to me that he didn’t have much opportunty to play the witty, what-the-hell-I’ll-try-anything rake.
I left the theater genuinely angry over the movie’s tremendous waste of actors, concepts and the audience’s good will.
Also, I agree with whoever pointed out that Jacks’ “heroism” consisted of doing what Elizabeth was about to do anyway. If you want to truly show Jack being heroic, make him the one to suggest blowing up all the rum.
Not to be shallow, but: Am I the only one who found the newly-filthy-and-bitter Norrington insanely hot?
Oh yes. Nothing like an uptight prig suddenly going against all the rules.
::::::::::::swoon:::::::::::::::::
And I’ve just now gotten out to see the movie. Color me impatient. Even avoiding spoilers as much as I could, I knew this was just a giant prologue for the third movie, with no self-contained ending. But hot damn, I feel cheated. I spent two and a half hours (which I will admit to enjoying for its own absurd swagger) and don’t even get an ending. I guess I’m saying I liked the movie well enough, but only because I know there will be another one to complete its story. Until that third part, I’m just feeling a bit ripped off.
I am expecting more importance to the voodoo lady in the third one. Did anybody notice that during the first visit to her hut, when Jack gets the jar of dirt from voodoo lady, and when he’s surreptitiously nipping various things from her shack, he picks up a ring that’s on the table with a heart shaped locket, which is itself very similar to Davy Jones’ musical locket and design on his heart-chest? I expect we’ll learn that voodoo lady is the woman who spited Davy lo those many years/decades/centuries/whatever ago. And as such, she’ll have some part in righting his villany in the third movie.
I need the third film, and now!
We went to see it this morning. MilliCal was alternately bored (“When is the neat stuff gonna happen?”) and scared (mostrly when the Kraken was munching down), but it held our interest.
I’ll agree that it was all over the map. A little more direction would’ve helped.
The effects were gorgeous. I grew up watcvhing Harryhausen’s It Came from Beneath the Sea, and modern CGI, sadly, blows that out of the water.
With all the “horror of the sea creatures” stuff involving Davy Jones and his crew, drawn from Coleridge and Lovecraft and whatever, the Disney folks can now make “The Shadow over Innsmouth” or “The Call of Cthulhu” anytime, and it’ll look great.
They really made a mess of old sea legends, though – Davy Jones looked like a monster in some early stuff. but he was never associated with any Flying Dutchman. And he sure aas heck wasn’t some ordinary seaman who got transmogrified and locked his heart away.
By the way, the multiple-pronged key that, at first glance, ought not to be usable showed up first in the comic strip “Barbarella”. Interesting to see it show up here. And that someone actually figured out a way to make it work.
Believe it or not, I didn’t actually know that a third one was planned until the last scene of this one. Not at all surprising, of course: Studios don’t just abandon a cash cow like this one. But I didn’t know it was already in the works. Even with not knowing there was going to be a third one, though, I didn’t have any problem at all with the cliffhanger ending.
And yeah, Only Mostly Dead, I did get that impression about the voodoo lady (she sure seemed to know a lot about Davy’s story). I didn’t notice about the locket, though. It is going to make things a mite difficult in the third one, though, seeing as how Will is going to fulfill his oath to his dad.
Shirley and Flipstrip…I tell ya, I was distracted away from Depp’s hotness (which is formidable) more times than I can count by that rough and ragged man. (Oh, the things I thought…) I’m glad to see you’re with me!
Okay, back to substantive discussion.
(BTW, I was so delighted to hear Garet–, I mean, Ragetti and Pintel [thanks, IMDB!] argue about the pronunciation of “kraken,” because I spent a month reading a book featuring the kraken to my fourth graders, and I pronounced it with a long A.)
Just saw it today. (First theater experience in years. No cell phones, no talking; very curteous audience.) It was packed for a Sunday afternoon, so I’m thinking it cracked $200 million this weekend.
I didn’t hate it. I didn’t love the first one; I thought the zombie goofiness was childish, but given that context I was expecting plenty of childish monsters as bad guys, so the fishmen didn’t make me roll my eyes.
However, what really annoyed me about this one is that they lost their mission statement somewhere along the way. This is a PIRATE movie, dammit! IIRC, it was two friggin’ hours before the first swordfight springs up, there was only one very brief “ship of the line” combat scene, and I don’t recall a single instance of ship-to-ship boarding battles. I’ll admit that the swordfights at the end did offer a nice payoff, but that’s only one out of three elements of pirate fighting; the other two were virtualy nonexistant.
Think back to the first movie, where we get swordfighting right off the bat, with the solid one-on-one duel in the smithy. (Not to mention Jack flying around the ship just prior, simulating a boarding battle with the guards.) There was plenty of ship of the line cannon fighting, a ship bombarded a town, pirates looted and pillaged, and several ship to ship boarding battles ensued.
This movie? Let’s see, we had a giant seamonster on a loop for three scenes, no boarding battles at all, four ship of the line cannon shots in the whole movie (which were confined to a single two minute patch of film,) and no looting or pillaging. The three-way swordfight and the waterwheel swordfight was quite fun, and mostly sated my appetite for swordfighting, but really even then I felt a bit cheated in that there was not a single satisfying mano y mano swordfighting duel.
I really missed the pirate stuff. I enjoyed the escape from the cannibal tribe, but there was about 100 minutes of exposition that could have easily been shortened to 20, add in 30 minutes of old fashioned pirate stuff, (pillaging and looting a town, an extended ship of the line cannon battle, plus a few boarding battles,) and they would have tightened it up to less than two hours and it would have been much more satisfying, IMO.
I guess one could say that they added a barfight at the seedy port, but that felt to me like a ripoff of a cheesy western barroom brawl cliche.
Overall, out of 4 stars I give the first 2½, and this one 1½.