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| It's been a hard days night... |
We are reintroduced to our lily-white protagonists Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann (Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley) on the day of their interrupted wedding. Right from the get-go we get red-flags that we’re going to be in for quite a bit of over-indulgence from returning director Gore Verbinski, as the slow-motion tracking shots of the rained-out wedding look more like a 19th century Calvin Klein commercial than something from an adventure serial. Also I imagine many in the audience are already thinking “What, these two again? I came here to see more Jack Sparrow! Where is he?” We soon meet the conniving Lord Cutler Beckett (played with sniveling sourness by Tom Hollander,) head of the East India Trading Company, who plans to send our star-crossed pair to the gallows for their part in the escape of Captain Sparrow (“They said his name! Where is he!?”) - unless Will can procure the pirate’s magic compass.
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| Wait, are you still a blacksmith? Am I still perfect to you? Was that you? |
The plot, thus far, is pretty straight-forward; and it’s actually kind of interesting to see the consequences of the previous films happy ending (“Aww shucks - let’s let Sparrow get a head-start, the big lug.”) Unfortunately, when we finally do re-join the scurvy Captain Sparrow (Johnny Depp,) we are plunged into a second storyline involving his quest to find the “dead man’s chest” of the title, which contains the still-beating heart of the mythical Davy Jones (to whom Jack owes a blood debt.) While not so far-fetched as to feel out of place in this series (the first film was about undead pirates who turned into walking skeletons, after all,) the apparent need to "embiggen" every aspect of a film in its sequel soon overtakes the comparatively simple joys of the first movie. Once we discover that Jones can summon the massively monstrous Kraken to destroy whole ships in a visceral spectacle of flying bodies and tentacles, the effects soon take over the whole film.
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| Just throw in a Japanese schoolgirl, and we've got one heck of an anime going! |
While only three years separate this film from the first, they feel like very different beasts. While Curse Of The Black Pearl seemed like a sizably-budgeted risk from a studio not entirely comfortable in the live-action summer blockbuster game, there’s a clear feeling that Dead Man’s Chest is a much more calculated product. Disney and Bruckheimer now know they’ve got a lucrative franchise in front of them, and want to give it all the trappings of other massively-budgeted Hollywood blockbusters. Therefore the CG work is increased to overwhelming levels, as is the film’s contrast and aggressive color grading (not quite pumped up to the sweaty orange-and-teal level of a Michael Bay flick, but getting close.)
We even get a more obnoxious score this time around from prolific drum-and-drone expert Hans Zimmer. Zimmer had been contracted to write themes for the first film, but left most of the composing duties to Klaus Badelt (as well as seven other uncredited composers) due to scheduling conflicts. That film’s score, while full of droning bass and repetitive string arrangements, was still a straightforward recording of the orchestra's performance (more or less.) For Dead Man’s Chest, Zimmer himself took full composing duty; we are therefore assaulted with a soundtrack full of electronic overdubs, loud synthesized basslines and what often sounds like a weirdly out-of-place electric guitar - to which Zimmer stated (in an interview with soundtrack.net): “Actually, it's not an electric guitar. You know what it is? It's the orchestra put through a guitar amp and piped back into the room.” Same difference, you tone-deaf has-been.
The excesses naturally extend to the length and scope of the set-pieces - something I felt was already detrimental to the first film. While there were a number of sequences in Curse Of The Black Pearl that were in need of judicious editing, they were mere flashes-in-the-pan compared to some of the action scenes here that go way beyond outstaying their welcome. The first offender finds Sparrow and his crew separately escaping from an island of cannibals. The realities of human stamina are tossed aside (as are a few laws of physics) as the Black Pearl’s crew swing their suspended spherical cage up a cliff side, down hills and into a watery cavern, like a bunch of hyperactive pirate hamsters. Worse is Sparrow’s getaway, in which he finds himself tied to a long wooden pole that he uses to vault himself over a cliff, before smashing through a dozen-or-so wood suspension bridges and landing in the ocean, apparently none the worse for wear. Even Sam Peckinpah would've shaken his head in disbelief over how much abuse a human body can take in movies nowadays.
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| Aye, lad ... I remember having dignity, once... |
The three-way sword fight between Sparrow, Turner and a revenge-minded Norrington (Jack Davenport, better here than in the first film, though unnecessary) which leads into the film’s climax starts off modestly enough. For several minutes, it’s simply the three men fighting between themselves, making their way across a wide swath of sandy beach - and one feels a sense of relief that the film is actually giving you a straight-forward fight scene, free of CG and over-the-top stunt work.
And then they come to the mill.
Of course they manage to clang-clang-clang their way to a conveniently-located derelict mill of some kind in the middle of the island. Before you can say “wake me when it’s over,” Turner and Norrington have somehow managed to continue their duel atop the mill’s detached water-wheel, which rolls its way through the jungle like a runaway bike tire. Sparrow, meanwhile, further reduced to slapstick comic relief in his own franchise, gets stuck between the wheel's slats as he tries to get hold of the key to the dead man’s chest. In the first movie, Jack was a charming scallywag who easily gets himself into trouble (and then cons his way back out of it,) but far too many times he ends up being tossed around like a pathetic rag doll in this movie, emitting a frightened holler than goes a long way toward lessening the impact the character initially had.
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| You spin me right 'round, baby, right 'round... |
The worst aspect of this film, for me (I qualify this because it seems to be an unpopular opinion - not that I’ve avoided stepping on some toes in the past,) is anything that has to do with Davy Jones and his Flying Dutchman. The crew of computer-generated “lost souls” (i.e. fish people) look absolutely ridiculous - even more so than the “skeleton crew” of the first film. It seems that the filmmakers were going for a ship full of frightening monsters, but instead ended up with a collection of silly action figures that strain credibility to the breaking point. In the original screenplay, writers Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio (returning from the first film, but forced to work on Disney and Bruckheimer’s schedule) imagined the crew of the Dutchman as ghosts, but apparently Verbinski was more fond of the barnacle-encrusted sea-creature look. While unique, there’s something extremely off-putting about the design of the seashell-bedazzled ship and its motley crew.
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| Who lives in a pineapple under the sea... |
Likewise, actor Bill Nighy is employed for a motion-capture performance as the tentacle-bearded Davy Jones, and delivers a … let’s say, an interesting performance. Nighy performs the octopus-faced captain as if he were wearing a big rubbery prosthetic, so frantic and contrived are his expressions and facial ticks (not unusual for the eccentric actor, to be fair.) Taking this and his bizarre vocal performance (the big squid-head doesn't have a deep, thunderous voice? Is he doing some kind of accent?) into account, an already distractingly ludicrous character is rendered almost completely free of menace. To be honest, though, the lobster-claw hand (no doubt substituting a more “typical” pirate’s hook) is a pretty sweet visual; that it then requires Jones to ridiculously play his giant coral pipe organ (sure, why the hell not?) WITH HIS GODDAMNED FACE, however, makes it a regrettable addition to an already overwrought design.
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| Cheer up sleepy Jean, oh what can it mean... |
I don’t mean to be overly-negative (well, maybe a little,) as there are things to appreciate in this movie. Depp, when he’s not being tossed around and acting like a complete buffoon, is clearly having a ball playing what quickly became his definitive character (his ongoing fondness for the role can be witnesses in the number of in-character appearances Depp has made outside of filming.) Additionally, near-unrecognizable appearances from Stellan Skarsgård (as Will’s long-lost father, “Bootstrap” Bill) and future Miss Moneypenny Naomie Harris (as mysterious obeah priestess Tia Dalma) are appreciatively well-acted high points. Also good to see is the screenplay’s willingness to let the cadre of cutthroat characters actually act like pirates, with each of them repeatedly double-crossing and backstabbing each other, and not falling back on the tired idea of “honor amongst thieves.”
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| Easy, Breezy, Beautiful - Cover Zombie |
This leads to the rather surprising turn of events in the film’s climax, in which Sparrow ends up being swallowed up by the Kraken and sent to Davy Jones’ locker. That Sparrow would “die” at the end of the film is not surprising, as knowing that Disney was planning a trilogy (and eventually more) makes one see this “twist” coming from a mile away; but that he does so unwillingly after being shackled to the Black Pearl’s mast by none other than willowy Elizabeth Swann came as something of a shock. To the filmmakers credit, they distracted from this moment by pushing a rather unconvincing “love triangle” plotline that portrayed Ms. Swann as being attracted to whichever pirate happened to be within sight. Up to the end, I’d written this off as yet another unnecessary plot-thread in an overloaded film - but it seemed to pay off, as I found myself thinking (in spite of my sensitive nature) “Wow - what a bitch move!” as Elizabeth pulled the old “kiss n’ shackle” on poor old Jack. This late story development made me think that perhaps Knightley’s character wasn’t a waste of screen time after all. The proceeding cliffhanger isn’t nearly as edge-of-your-seat as something like The Empire Strikes Back (which I feel like the filmmakers were trying to emulate, though not very well,) but it’s a nice surprise to see Geoffrey Rush back in the fold.
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| From Hell's heart, I stab at thee, vagina dentata! |
Not to belabor a point, but despite my best efforts I just couldn’t get into this one as much as the first film (this was my second attempt at watching it, as during the first I fell asleep.) I get the feeling that many others (critics and moviegoers alike) would’ve preferred the movie to be a much leaner beast, dispensing with the superfluous supernatural elements and producing a more quick-and-dirty adventure film chronicling the further exploits of scurvy seadog Captain Jack Sparrow. Instead we are made to go deeper into the characters of Will and Elizabeth (who honestly don’t have that much depth to explore) and witness the filmmakers giving into the urge to further the extravagances of the original to headache-inducing, multiplex-filling excess. Of course, all of my whining doesn’t change the fact that the movie still made beaucoup bucks at the box office, ensuring that the next installment (which was filmed back-to-back with Dead Man’s Chest) and further adventures would be coming soon.
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| Ye best be visitin' the head, lads - the next 'un be near t' three hours long! Arr!! |
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