Friday night a few friends and I went to go see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie at the drive-in. Out of all of the movies out so far, this was definitely the one for which I was most excited. I was looking forward to X-men III and Superman Returns, but Pirates was the movie I was anticipating for weeks. Unfortunately the hype turned out to be bigger than the actual movie, and I left disappointed.
First off, don’t take my word for it – check out this review by AskANinja. This video is freakin’ hilarious, especially if you’ve seen the movie. Of course, you have to take his word with a grain of salt, as there is the big Ninja vs. Pirates feud. However, many of the points that he brought up were true:
There are far too many plot-lines in this movie. The ninja’s not joking when he says that the dog, ship, ocean and body parts all have plots – and none of them get resolved! The story was extremely complicated, and without giving away too much information – the movie ended with absolutely nothing happening. At the end of the movie, I felt like I just paid money to watch a 2-hour preview of the third Pirates movie. The Ninja was right that everyone was pretty much a pirate in this movie. Elizabeth especially bugged me, because she basically got mad pirate skills overnight.
Johnny Depp gave a pretty decent performance, but it had nowhere near the impact that his character had in the first movie. I firmly believe that Depp’s portrayal of Jack Sparrow single-handedly made the first movie a classic (I thought he should have taken the Oscar for Best Actor that year). Unfortunately he raised the bar so high that there was no way to meet our expectations in Dead Man’s Chest. I think that Depp was a victim of his own success – but he didn’t drag the movie down by any means as well.
The movie just seemed over the top. They took what were potentially very cool scenes and blew them completely out of proportion. The 3-person sword fight was pretty cool – the first 10 minutes. As soon as they got the wheel involved and took another 15, you knew things were out of control.
I’m anxious to see the next Pirates movie, but this movie didn’t leave me dying to see it. The problem was that they took what was supposed to be a one-shot deal in Curse of the Black Pearl and made this "the trilogy that never should have been". Comparing this to other trilogies (Star Wars and the Matrix come to mind), I have nowhere near the desire to see the final movie. I feel like I’m going to go see the third one so I won’t be so pissed about the second one anymore.