OK, so on to the second installment of Disney's series about pirates sailing around in a monster-filled ocean, chasing gold and generally being swashbuckling.
It opens with our main characters having their wedding cancelled and being arrested. Then cuts to people being brutally tortured to death.
So that sets the scene.
I mean, the last film also had images of hung, rotten pirate corpses. And then living, rotten pirate corpses. Still, this is just DARK.
DARK.
Possibly the darkest PotC ever gets.
Still, this leads us on to the review, and the main question I mean to answer today. Is this still a kids film?
That is the question. I mean, clearly not, right? There is actualy footage of someone having his eyes pecked out by ravens,
And yet this film also features Jack Sparrow using a coffin to escape from aforementioned pirate torture situation using a coffin (and corpse) as a boat. And a tribe of potential cannibals who Jack defeats, in part, by using fruit skewered on a bamboo pole. And people swinging merrily in cages made from the bones of their deceased comrades, which is meant to be funny based on the fairground music in the score.
WHAT. IS. THIS. FILM???
So, let's start with the points I used to critique the first film, and we can see how the second lines up.
1: coincidence. On the whole, I would actually say this film relies a lot less on coincidence than the first. Due largely to Lord Becket's machinations, there is a definite direction this story is going in. Part 1, Jack avoids Davy Jones. Part 2, Will tries to find Jack to win Elizabeth's freedom. Part 3, the escaped Elizabeth tried to find Will. Part 4: Jack sells out on everyone to try and save himself, goes to hunt down some souls. Part 5, Jack decides to maybe do something good for once, and it doesn't end well for him.
Yes, obviously there are still things that just seem incredibly unlikely, like the fact that Will manages to find Jack on the cannibal island, and Elizabeth manages to find the black pearl, and Norrington manages to.... be in this film. But there's actually a logical way for each of these things to happen. We actually see people finding other people who can tell them there the people they're looking for might be....
Yes, still a lot of mcguffin-ing about, but it's slightly more believeable.
Obviously this doesn't include the fight scenes. They are still completely unbelievably coincidental, but let's be honest, that's what makes them fun :)
2: CGI. So in this film, I generally think the CGI is good. Mostly. The worst moments were where CGI moments (like crab-heads head) have to interact with real things (like the land crab-heads head scuttles along). Davy Jones and his crew, almost entirely CGI in their CGI environment, look pretty good. I think a lot of it is helped by the fact that almost every CGI element is meant to look wet and shiny, and normally is kept in darkness and shadows. Still, the textures are vastly improved from the first film. The other moment that kind of doesn't work is the kraken's mouth. The rest of it looks fine, but the mouth, especially when you see it close up...not so much.
3: The story. This film introduces something that becomes a bit of a PotC trope, a focus on items. In particular, Jack's compass, the key to Davy Jones' heart chest and the heart itself. And a jar of dirt. Finding the items becomes the focus of the plot. This is good in some ways, if you can keep track of the items throughout the story, you can understand the story. If you lose track of one, however, things quickly become complicated. And, of course, there are large parts of this film that feel like a fetch quest. My bigges issue with the whole thing is the key. Because, um.... it's a wooden chest. It would be really, really easy to get inside it without a key, and yet a lot of this film is dedicated to finding the key. Making it all a bit unnecessary. Besides, you could just as easily take the unopened chest and burn it.
Also, while I'm thinking about it, there is a really important question that needs to be answered. The Dutchman must always have a captain. The Captain is whoever destroys Davy Jones' heart. So, if you left the heart in a building that then accidentally caught fire, who is the new captain? What if you accidentally became the captain without knowing it?
So. Many. Questions.
Anyway, the story allows each character to develop. Jack becomes a mite less selfish. Elizabeth and Will become a bt more pirate-y. It may have quite a lot of holes, but still. It doesn't ruin my enjoyment of it too much.
Right then. So, all three things that I thought were lacking in the first film have.... improved. So this film should be better, right?
Um....
no.
Not really.
There's a really big problem, one I alluded to earlier. This film includes the deaths of a lot of people. Not just strangers either. We spend time with some of the characters who die. We know them. And then we watch them die. We see people being tortured. Remember the crew from the first film? Looks like a lot of them ended up making the bone cages that trapped the survivors. There's also plenty of torture, as I mentioned.
And then there's three men duelling on a massive wheel, rolling through a forest while a woman who has sort of been in a compelx relationship with each of them over the course of the last couple of films screams at them for being so childish. And a man fighting by throwing fruit at people.
This film just... doesn't quite find it's tone. Watching this now, I wonder how I wasn't seriously freaked out by it when I was a child.
I think a lot of people think that this is the best film of the original trilogy. I probably wouldn't argue with that too much. It's the best as far as story goes, in my opinion. There's a clear cause and effect at all times. There's a good amount of silliness and fun. There's just also too much gore. I think this film slips a little too far into darkness. I mean, one of the main characters, someone who prides herself on her honour, literally chains up another and leaves him to die. It's brutal.
So all in all, I really enjoyed rewatching this film. But I definitely see it in an entirely new light now. Not quite a kids film. Not quite an adults film. It really changed the whole franchise, setting up part 3 and creating a lot of the themes that would last into the newer films. In short, I really think this film works. I'm just not sure who it works for...
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