Five weeks after it premiered in theatres, I finally got a chance to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. This is most definately the hit of the summer, and for me it is the best movie I’ve seen this year (considering the only other movie I’ve seen is X-Men 3). I went to see it at the Regal Germantown Stadium 14 theatre in Germantown, MD while visiting my brother with my parents for the weekend. We caught the 4:15 show with our free Blingo tickets that arrived in the mail recently. I was pretty surprised that five weeks into it’s summer run that the theatre was almost as filled as when I saw X-Men during its second week in theatres with roughly one-third of the seats taken. The previews consisted of Night at the Museum, Talladega Nights, Lady in the Water, Invincible, Accepted, and a teaser for Transformers. None really garnered any considerable crowd reaction, but the only one that interested me was the Transformers teaser even if it really didn’t show anything (as expected). I’d be interested in seeing it in an updated CGI feature movie since I really liked the 80′s cartoon as a little kid. As usual, I smuggled in a can of soda, particularly an Aruba Jam Sprite Remix this time and a pack of green apple Mentos.
If you haven’t seen Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest yet, one word describes it, “action”. Pretty much, the entire movie is one action scene connected to another with small pauses to progress the storyline. Even the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie didn’t have close to as much action as this one, but was equally fun and humorous. From Johnny Depp’s flamboyant performace as Captain Jack Sparrow to Orlando “Legolas” Bloom’s quick-witted comments as Will Turner to Keira Knightly’s bantering as Elizabeth Swann, this movie is exactly the Hollywood blockbuster hit I’ve been looking for since the most recent Harry Potter, Star Wars, and The Lord of the Rings movies. Even better was that length of the movie at 150 minutes was definately long enough to fill out the storyline while leaving me really satisfied. One of the gripes I had with X-Men 3 was that it was much too short giving me the feeling the director could easily have added more content. Nothing in Pirates really left me wanting more except for a few small things (not nearly enough for me to detract from enjoying the film).
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The main concerns I had mostly dealt with what happened between the first and second film. How did Captain Jack come to an agreement with Davy Jones and selling his soul to him? How is that monkey undead again? (Actually solved in a small scene at end of the credits in the first film if you didn’t see it) And what is Davy Jones’ heart doing on an island inside a box which he has the key for? How did they get separated in the first place? Hopefully these things can be solved in the third film.
The last problem I had was that as a stand-alone movie, nothing was really solved from start to finish, but even as a trilogy the first two movies didn’t flow together like the Back to the Future or The Lord of the Rings trilogies. Sure, people think that Captain Jack “died” to the Kraken while going down with the Black Pearl, but it was pretty obvious that they will be able to get him back (Johnny Depp will always be part of the Pirates movies anyway). As one of the three key characters, Jack Sparrow is probably lounging around in the stomach of the Kraken like those movies where they have an island inside the stomach of a huge sea monster (Pinocchio, One Piece), or he is really dead and the heroes go find his soul or something similar. The first movie also didn’t have a hook into what we would see in this movie so that detracted a little from the “epic trilogy” feel, but I can understand that the first movie might not have been a guaranteed success (The Matrix and its sequels followed a very similar pattern).
Other than a few quirks, this movie rates as one of my favorites. The family-style humor, the amazing backgrounds, complementary soundtrack, and the non-stop action make this one special. Everything I liked about the first movie is brought back and taken up a notch. And although some might think it was a little overdone, the CGI was used very effectively to great success.
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Everything about Captain Davy Jones, his crew, the Flying Dutchman, and the Kraken are certainly more than adequate replacements as antagonists for the now-departed (mostly) cursed pirate crew of Captain Barbossa. The intricacy of each individual crew member was astounding. Davy Jones’ moving tentacles on his face, the hammerhead shark guy, the hermit crab guy, and the blowfish guy were memorable and funny representations of the enormous diversity within this movie.
Lastly, it’s been confirmed for a while that Pirates of the Caribbean 3 will be coming next year in May 2007 a la Matrix Revolutions-style (Most of the taping was done at the same time as this movie). It has been speculated that the title will be called “At World’s End” following the quote at the conclusion of this movie. Chow Yun Fat will be playing a role as well so look out for him in a possible major character. The question is whether there will be a Pirates of the Caribbean 4. Anyway, I’ll be at the theatres to see the next one for sure.
Things to look for (in very vague, broad terms) if you haven’t seen the movie yet.
- Depp bouncing on a stick
- Impromptu fruit kabob
- “Gareth” the genius
- Cantonese hermit crab guy
- Indy sandbag replacement technique
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