Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES

** SPOILERS **

In his fourth cinematic adventure, Captain Jack Sparrow sets sail for the Fountain of Youth, but nearly everything in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides feels old and tired. The prevailing feeling of On Stranger Tides is "here we go again". Swash your buckles and avast ye landlubbers, a pirate's life never ends.

As Jack Sparrow ("There should be a 'Captain' in there somewhere."), Johnny Depp has long since had his pirate schtick down pat. In On Stranger Tides, Jack swash-bungles his way through yet another absurd escapade filled to the brim with Saturday morning cartoon derring-do, the macabre and the bizarre. As ever, Captain Jack Sparrow is an impossible-to-kill buffoon-savant; a mad genius at improvisation, a live action Bugs Bunny in mascara and frills. Anyone in the movie or in the audience who is still surprised by Jack's antics simply did not see any of the three prior Pirates of the Caribbean movies. 

In On Stranger Tides, Jack, his perpetual frienemy, a newly peglegged Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), and loyal first mate Gibbs (Kevin McNally) are the only veterans keelhauled from the original trilogy. The new characters include Penelope Cruz as Angelica, the daughter of the infamous Blackbeard (Ian McShane). They want the Fountain of Youth to save Blackbeard's soul from all the evil he's done, ever mind all the evil Blackbeard is currently doing and Angelica is helping him do to find the Fountain of Youth. Let's not think about such things, love.

From an entertaining starting point in "Londontown", England, complete with Jack having a face to face with King George IV, a quick pint with his dad (Keith Richards), and a brief (she thought) makeout session with Dame Judi Dench, the pirates set sail to... where did they go? Were they still on Earth? To find the Fountain of Youth, they first needed to acquire a mermaid from a place called White Cap Bay, then travel across what looked like the Island from Lost, to a place called San Miguel. Honestly, where in the world did the second half of the movie take place? And how come when they found the Fountain of Youth, it looked suspiciously like The Guardian of Forever from classic Star Trek?

"I am the Guardian of Forever. Or am I the Fountain of Youth?"

The most memorable sequence of On Stranger Tides involves the mermaids, enchanting creatures who fight like velociraptors of the sea and can bring a pirate ship down en masse. Cast as mermaids are the most gorgeous women the production could find, with Gemma Massey as the first mermaid we encounter, and Astrid Berges-Frisbey as the mermaid the pirates capture. A mermaid's tears are part of a simplistic ritual involving two silver chalices and water from the Fountain, drinking from which gives... what, exactly? Is it eternal life or just the years from the person who didn't drink from the chalice with the mermaid's tears? Ponce De Leon is dead, so it must be the latter, right? What a gyp.

Perhaps upon realizing the Fountain of Youth did not actually offer immortality, Jack reversed his previous goal of attaining immortality for himself. When Elizabeth Swann sacrificed Jack to the Kraken at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and he had to escape Davy Jones' Locker in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, his own mortality was foremost on Jack's mind. Achieving immortality is why he set sail for the Fountain of Youth to begin with. Instead, he chooses to turn "immortality" over to Penelope Cruz, whom we are asked to believe is Jack's one true love, but we don't. Neither does Jack, who ditches her at the end without regret.

Cruz has the unenviable task of following Keira Knightley as the main girl in a Pirates movie; she's game for the action but her character would have best been marooned on a desert isle much sooner. As Blackbeard, McShane suffers from the same limitations. Blackbeard is possessed of fearsome supernatural powers -- these seem limited to animating the ropes on a pirate ship. Blackbeard also can turn people into zombies but the zombies can talk and don't act like zombies at all, they're just uglier than the ugly pirates. Blackbeard is neither menacing nor ultimately very interesting; he even lacked the pathos Bill Nighy brought to Davy Jones, pining for his true love Calypso. There's also a Christian Missionary who falls for the mermaid Blackbeard captures, in a profoundly uninteresting romance subplot that ends the same way Tom Hanks and Darryl Hannah's does in Splash.

Compared to the previous Pirates, with the undead skeleton crewmen of the Black Pearl, the monstrous Kraken (sorely missed - God, do I miss the Kraken!), the motley menagerie of Pirate Lords, and the macabre sea goddess Calypso, On Stranger Tides is a more modest (read: dull) affair. Imagination seems to be sorely lacking, with the final confrontation at the Fountain of Youth taking place in a cave not unlike the final battle in Curse of the Black Pearl. Speaking of the Black Pearl, Jack's beloved pirate ship remains shrunken in a bottle by Blackbeard (oh yes, he had the magical power to shrink pirate ships into bottles), giving Jack license to embark on a fifth Pirates movie. That shivers me timbers.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (***)

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END 

May 25, 2007

Yaaaaaaarrrr-ha-har-har-haaaaaaaarrrrrrrr.

Last year, I wrote of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: "Over the top, mateys. Over the top. I don't like seeing quite so many loud clanging things in my movies, not even my summer blockbusters. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was a model of restraint compared to this sequel."

But here now is Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, which makes in turn makes Dead Man's Chest seem like a model of restraint.   Every complaint about Dead Man's Chest applies even moreso here.  The words "too much" are not enough to describe the excess.  As for being over the top, At World's End is so far from the top that they've completely lost sight of the top. At best, the top is a speck of dirt somewhere far below. 

At World's End is three hours of non-stop action and total fucking absurdity where the characters spend the precious few moments in between swordfighting, leaping, swinging, falling and more swordfighting making bargains with each other and then betraying each other ten minutes later. The configurations of the allegiances in the movie shift and move constantly until your head spins from the whirlwind. And then there is an actual whirlwind, and then a whirlpool. And whatever else the movie decides to throw at you, which is everything they can think of and that's before the giant woman turns into a million crabs.

Sounds like I'm complaining, but this time, I'm actually not.  After Dead Man's Chest I abandoned all hope for this franchise to return to the relatively lean and mean storytelling of Curse of the Black Pearl.  In approaching At World's End, I decided to take the advice Eric Cartman gave to Butters about what to do when two girls start lezzing out: "Just go with it." It was the best advice I could have followed because, surprisingly, I had a really good time, which is I suppose my own kind of reversal and double cross.

It's next to impossible to summarize the plot of the movie without a treasure map but I will say that as it happened I followed all of it without much trouble. Promptly forgot it by the time I hit the rest room afterwards because my brain needed the space back to remember things like my full name, my shoe size, and the names of my friends and family. But I did understand the plot of the movie. I might even be able to pass a test on it as long as it's multiple choice and there are no essay questions.

Actually, a lot of it is coming back to me now:

I liked how the opening in Singapore where Elizabeth Swann and Captain Barbosa visiting Sao Feng echoed the Jabba the Hutt scenes in Return of the Jedi . I liked how Elizabeth was forcibly disarmed, the comedy of their pirate friends below looking up Elizabeth 's skirt and their launching swords through the floor into her and Barbosa's hands.

Naturally, every man in the movie desired Elizabeth. That comes from Princess Leia syndrome, being the only girl in the franchise.  Of course in Star Wars, the only guys who wanted Leia were Han Solo, her brother, and a disgusting giant slug on Tattooine. Between Will, Jack, Norrington, Beckett, and Sao Feng, Elizabeth Swann turned out to have far better choices.

Now that I'm deep in making Star Wars comparisons, one of the pleasures of the Pirates franchise is that they've taken the place of Star Wars as the new big fun adventure movies of the 21st century.  And Pirates lovingly apes the Star Wars archetypes.  We have Will (Luke) and Elizabeth (Leia), lovers instead of brother and sister, Jack (Han Solo) and Gibbs (Chewbacca), the fat pirate and the one eyed pirate are C-3PO and R2-D2, Davey Jones serves as a stand in as both Jabba the Hutt for Jack and Darth Vader for Will, Will is chasing after saving his father from damnation like Luke, Lord Beckett is the Emperor, the Pirates are the Rebel Alliance, the East India Trading Company the Empire, and Barbosa is a form of Lando for Jack with the Black Pearl as the Millennium Falcon, the vessel our heroes use to take us to far-flung, exotic places where they get into endless fine messes that's just one damn thing after another.

I liked how the East India Trading Company gained control over Davey Jones thanks to Lord Beckett coming into possession of Jones's heart at the end of the last movie.  I liked how Beckett used the Flying Dutchman as a weapon to exterminate the pirates.

I liked the waterfall in the middle of nowhere that lead Barbosa, Elizabeth, Will, and company to Davey Jones' Locker. I liked Jack's line to Tia Dalma: "You add an agreeable bit of macabre to any delirium."

I liked the back story between Davey Jones and Tia Dalma.  I figured out right away that she was really Calypso by the Law of Economy of Characters (only two women in the movie and Calypso wasn't Elizabeth.)  I liked how Davey Jones's betrayal of Calypso echoed Elizabeth's betrayal of Jack in Dead Man's Chest.

I liked the Mexican stand off between Jack, Will, Barbosa, and Elizabeth, and how alliances were hastily forged purely out of immediate convenience. And I liked the double crosses and betrayals.  Which ones?  Take your pick.  There's like a dozen.

I liked the sea of dead souls abandoned by Davey Jones and Elizabeth meeting her father there.

I liked rocking the Black Pearl upside down so that sunset became sunrise.

I was sad to see the Kraken was dead on a beach, but then the Kraken already had its movie.

I liked Sao Feng making Elizabeth Swann captain and how she chose to remain with her Singapore pirates instead of leaving with Admiral Norrington.  That's every Asian man's fantasy right there.

I liked the visual of Shipwreck Cove (and the dialogue about how uncreative pirates are at naming things.)   I also dug the reveal of the Pirate Lords' Nine Pieces of Eight, the joke about how it sounds cooler than "the nine pieces of whatever they happened to have lying around," and how Barbosa's Piece of Eight was the one-eyed pirate's wooden eye. Little details like how the one-eyed pirate spent three movies trying to keep that eye safe paid off with a cool reveal.

It was cool that Calypso showed us Davey Jones' human form and I'm glad that Bill Nighy got to have his real face on screen if even for a few moments so the audience got to see the man beneath all of the CGI tentacles.

I liked the vote for the Pirate King and Jack's surprise vote:  "Elizabeth Swann. Curious, isn't it?"   Also Jack's line when his father Keith Richards showed him his mom:  "She looks great." I think for all of the hype and anticipation of his appearance, Keith Richards was just kind of there. He blended in with the scenery but didn't really have as much impact as expected.

I liked the parley and negotiation (and side switching and betrayal) on the wisp of sand island in between the pirate fleet and the East Indian Trading Company fleet.  The Pirates franchise has always been fantastic at finding white sand island locations surrounded by crystal blue waters that are dazzling to the eye.

I liked the ridiculous proposal and marriage of Will and Elizabeth in the middle of the ridiculous battle with fish monsters and British Navy troops in the middle of a maelstrom. I like that Will became the one who stabbed Davey Jones' heart and replaced him as Captain of the Flying Dutchman (I had figured Barbosa would get that job).

I liked the Black Pearl and the Flying Dutchman teaming up to destroy the East India Trading Company flagship. I also liked how the other 8 ships in the pirate fleet stayed out of the fight altogether and just cheered when it was over.

I liked that Will and Elizabeth finally got their wedding night (because if she had to wait ten years for Will to return, she'd have been forced to end up as a 30 year old virgin). The bonus scene after the credits was a nice capper, showing Will returning "ten years later" to an Elizabeth who hadn't aged a day and their ten year old son. Good to see those two crazy kids got their happily ever after.

And I liked the set up for the fourth Pirates movie and the Fountain of Youth. Wait, did I like that? I thought this was the last one. Aw, who cares. I'll show up if they make one.  By if I mean when.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (**1/2)

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST

 

July 8, 2006

Yarrrr.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is a Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner cartoon come to life. It's over the top, mateys. Over the top. I don't like seeing quite so many loud clanging things in my movies, not even my summer blockbusters. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was a model of restraint compared to this sequel. It was also a better movie by far.

Coming to kill Captain Jack Sparrow, Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann were Davey Jones, the East India Trading Company, island cannibals, every kind of CGI-fish monster the sea could spit out, and even familiar faces like ex-Commodore Norrington. Yet never once are Jack, Will, and Elizabeth in any real danger. Never once are they in genuine jeopardy. There is no chance whatsoever that any of the three main characters will be harmed in any lasting way. No matter what kind of absurdity the movie throws at them, they manage to scream, run in just the right place in just the right way, fight anything just well enough, and they never get tired or hurt, hungry or thirsty, or bored with all the screaming, running, and fighting they have to do.

Actually, that's the movie's strength: It's not boring and it's hellbent on entertaining you. It's weakness is that it's hellbent on entertaining you Saturday morning cartoon-style. Not one but two very long rolling ball gags: the first act with Will Turner and the crew of the Black Pearl caught in a bone version of those rolling spheres on American Gladiators , and then another one with Turner, Sparrow and Norrington having a triple threat swordfight on a wheel rolling along an island. Dead Man's Chest throws everything it can think of at you to show you a good time and thinks you'll have an even better time of it throws it at you again. Many critics have complained the storyline is incomprehensible but the multitudes of children in the audience understood what was happening just fine because they're used to cartoons.

For the pubes and post-puberty crowd, there was some enjoyable stuff. Johnny Depp is still pretty entertaining as Captain Jack Sparrow. His performance is no longer surprising and unique, but he was the only character who was in on the joke and conveyed to the audience that he understood everything that was happening was ridiculous. Sparrow is half-mad, but he's really more half-sane in a madman's movie.

Sparrow's character thankfully wasn't compromised: he's still a rogue out for his own ends, coming up with strategies on the fly and using everyone around him constantly as means to an end while fighting his heroic inclinations every step of the way. I liked the twist in the big finish where his one big act of conscience: returning to save the Black Pearl from the Kraken, was met with his being betrayed and essentially doomed to death by Elizabeth Swann.

The cliffhanger was Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan all over again, which is now officially both the greatest and most borrowed-from second-act finish in movies today. (only McCoy didn't turn on Spock and chain him to the exploding warp core.) Jack Sparrow “dies” to save his crewmates, who vow to bring him back in the third movie. We just saw this aped three years ago in X2: X-Men United and here it is again. Kill a main character and promise to bring him or her back in the third movie. Works every time. Those Star Trek writers were geniuses. I hope they get a check every time someone steals their gimmick.

Oddly, while I didn't really enjoy myself while I was watching Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, looking back at it, I'm dwelling a lot more on the things I did like: 

Keira Knightley got to play like a boy this time and she can run, scream, and swordfight CGI monster men with the best of them. I can't imagine a circumstance where I'd ever get tired of looking at her; I found myself fitful and impatient whenever she wasn't on screen. The third act of the movie when she finally shared scenes with both Depp and Orlando Bloom was the part I liked best. I liked the reveal that Sparrow's broken compass points the user towards what he or she really wants and the running gag of Elizabeth being frustrated that it kept pointing her towards Sparrow. I suppose she'll figure out in the next one that it isn't telling her she wants Jack but that she really wants a pirate and for Will to become a real pirate. And that she wants to be a pirate as well. I also liked Elizabeth using her dress to “haunt” the merchant ship she was stowed away on. I loved the shot where the dress sinks down to the depths of the sea and the implication that Elizabeth and Will's intended life together as regular people is lost forever. 

Bill Nighy is such a fantastic actor that it's a shame he was buried under the CGI claws and tentacles as Davey Jones. The animators did manage to convey some of Nighy's trademark facial expressions: his pout and his raised eyebrow. Davey Jones didn't quite have the menace he should have had, but he was much more effective and relatable than the CGI fish monsters who crewed the Flying Dutchman. Davey Jones was a neat idea in conception but lacked the menace and pathos of Geoffrey Rush's villainous Captain Barbossa, and that's the damn CGI's fault. (Rush's cameo at the very end as the Captain on the expedition to World's End was a great fucking twist that sold me on the third Pirates movie instantly.)

I liked the Kraken and I liked the plan Jack, Will, and Elizabeth executed to blow it up with the gunpowder and rum. I also liked the expanded roles of the two pirates, the fat one and the wooden-eyed one, and their philosophical conversations. They're a non-gay pirate version of R2D2 and C-3PO.

It's a strange dichotomy: ultimately, I think Dead Man's Chest is a bad movie but a good cartoon. Regardless, I still want more Pirates and I'll be there with bells on for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End .