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Re: *** Official PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST Review Thread
The best comparison I can make, is that "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" feels like "Back to the Future Part II." It's not that it's a bad movie or anything, it just feels like a race to get to the third picture.
The first half of the film is bogged down by an excess of exposition, a little too many joke retreads from the first film and some pretty creaky ways of injecting returning characters into the film.
The new character of Lord Beckett sets the plot in motion with a little too much talk and not enough action. He's not a particularly compelling antagonist, one of the film's flaws, and basically spend a good half an hour making various back handed deals with Will, Elizabeth and eventually Governor Swann. Perhaps if Will had been given a disparate reason to head out on the adventure rather than him and Elizabeth both going to save the other -- the first chunk of the film would have seemed fresher. As it stands, it seems like the same thing happens twice.
Then, the jokes referencing the first film get rolled out. To me this was a problem with the "Back to the Future" sequels. Instead of building fresh humor, often they fell back on recognition humor -- retreading successes of the past. I would have preferred a fresh approach to much of the humor.
This also relates to some recurring characters, such as Pintel and Ragetti. They're reintroduction is sort of just thrown in there with a smattering of explanation. This might have been a good opportunity to build new supporting characters in the spirit of the original's supporting cast, but given the audience something fresh.
Even the main cast begins to strain freshness when both Will and Elizabeth are still treated blandly with simple motivations (until the end).
Captain Jack Sparrow is still fun, but I can certainly see where the eccentricity could begin to fatigue. The writer's try and turn the screws with the grey areas in his character, not being completely good or bad, but the true throughline of his character isn't set up until halfway through the movie.
The film really begins to pick up in the second half when the story contrivances evaporate and we get into the meat of the new story. However, the structure is really just one event stringed together with another bereft of some good structure.
In the original, we were let in on the plot more so than this one, with the macguffin's revelation coming far too late. It's a simple plot and they try and make it more complicated than it is by drawing out the details. the audience can figure out pretty quickly why everyone is seeking the chest, so when the specifics come around they're not the revelation that's intended, just a blank to filled in.
The same can be said for Davy Jones, who doesn't seem to appear until, again, the halfway mark. When Lord Beckett is such an uninspiring antagonist, this leaves the film without a real threat for too long. It was a hard task to match the grandiosity of Barbossa as a baddie, and Davy Jones's design is top notch -- but he's not given enough time to really develop on his own, instead leaving his motivation to come out of other character's mouths. I would have like to have seen a scene to two with Davy clueing us in as to his history.
What the film excels in ultimately is setting up the third film. It seems most of the real juicy character conflicts come at the conclusion, and are just the set up for the third film, which when coupled by a several great twists sets the third film up to be the winner of the series. Much like how all of the exposition and final twists of "Back to the Future part II" just sets up the far better Part III.
After taking its time to build up steam, the film finally does leave you wanting more with a far more rousing second chunk. i just wish they would have spent better care with the first act to make it a solid winner.
"If you write a story about a soldier going AWOL and kidnapping a pregnant woman and finally shooting her in the head, it's called searingly realistic, even though it's never happened in the history of mankind. Whereas if you write about two people falling in love, which happens about a million times a day all over the world, for some reason or another, you're accused of writing something unrealistic and sentimental."
-Richard Curtis, Screenwriter and Director
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