Yo ho, Yo ho, A Pirate’s Movie for Me
July 7th, 2006
I have to admit I was worried about Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. I thought the first one was delightful. I saw it twice in the theater; I bought the soundtrack and swashbuckled around the house, accompanied by my leaping cat. But the trailer for Pirates 2 didn’t look that great—and then the reviews started coming out yesterday. The first one I saw was , which absolutely panned it, giving it a D+. EW critic Lisa Schwarzbaum described the movie as ”a theme ride, if by ride you mean a hellish contraption into which a ticket holder is strapped, overstimulated but unsatisfied, and unable to disengage until the operator releases the restraining harness.” Ouch.
Most other reviews I read beforehand painted Pirates 2 in various shades of mediocrity.
I am pleased to say that the reviewers were wrong. Many of them didn’t like the first Pirates either, so they lack authority. They also must be completely opposed to fun.
Because that’s what Pirates of the Caribbean is. Fun. There’s swordfighting. There’s a pirate who struts and staggers around like a certain rocker who fell out of a palm tree earlier this year. There are great supporting characters hammed up by Britain’s best (For example, Mackenzie Crook—Gareth of BBC’s “The Office”—plays the pirate whose eyeball keeps popping out—in Pirates 2, he finds himself debating his partner-in-comedy about predestination and the etymology of mythological words. Jack Davenport—Steve Taylor in BBC’s “Coupling”—reprises his role as Commodore Norrington—with some twists.) And did I mention that there’s an undead monkey?
Yes, that was all in the first Pirates, too. But I don’t find it tiring. In fact, I think I may have laughed even more at this Pirates than at the first one. I’d been in a foul mood much of the day because bulldozers had been felling trees in sight of my window, and the movie was a very welcome distraction. And as far as I’m concerned, it gets extra points for not harming any of its animal characters (points I definitely can’t award to Superman Returns).
Speaking of Superman Returns, , whose writing I love even when I disagree with his verdict, summarized my feelings precisely: “What is curious about the recent crop of high-tech blockbusters is how seriously they take themselves, and unlike, say, Superman Returns, Dead Man’s Chest cannot be called pretentious. It makes no claims to being about good and evil, the difficulty of saving the world in the modern era, or the inner lives of any of its characters.”
Now, as somebody who spends way too much time analyzing the movies’ ethics, I love Pirates because there are no ethics to analyze. When Elizabeth Swann says to Jack, “There will come a moment when you have the chance to do the right thing,” Jack replies breezily, “I love those moments. I like to wave at them as they pass by.” (Which actually is very similar to a quip about deadlines that Douglas Adams once penned.)
The movie does, of course, have its noble goober Orlando Bloom, who you want to pat on the head even as you laugh at his completely serious delivery of pompous lines something like, “I have promised to avenge my father, and I must.” On the subject of Orlando, I must once again quote A.O. Scott: “Mr. Bloom, as is his custom, leaps about, trying to overcome his incurable blandness, and is upstaged by special effects, musical cues, octopus tentacles and pieces of wood.”
That has to be one of the best sentences I’ve ever read in a movie review. (Sorry, Minklet—no offense to your regard for Mr. Pretty Boy.)
Anyway, don’t trust the critics on this one. Sure, Pirates has its flaws, but it’s worth them. For fun.
Entry Filed under: Movies
9 Comments Add your own
1. Dormouse | July 8th, 2006 at 5:06 pm
While I agree with you overall here–undead monkeys!!!–even despite my fondness for my darling retarded puppy Orli, I will challenge this statement:
I love Pirates because there are no ethics to analyze
I would say there *are* ethics, and one of the strengths of the Pirates franchise is that it can be more than just a rollicking good time. I love adventure movies and movies that, like Pirates, are unclassifiable b/c they’re action/adventure/horror/comedy/romances. (Maybe they are best described as romances, in the old sense–like Scott’s novels.)
However, unlike, say, The Mummy (::heart!::), I would argue that underneath Pirates’s apparent devil-may-care attitude towards ethics there lie a number of ethical struggles–in fact, I’d argue that the four key characters almost all struggle with their morality at one point or another.
One of the scenes cut from the first movie and slightlly replicated in this one–the scene popularly known as the “peas in a pod” scene, wherein Jack confronts Elizabeth about her withholding of crucial information from Norrington–I think highlights one of these struggles. Will, who is never really a pirate, despite his family history and his fondness for Jack, never questions the right thing to do. His ethics are solid and relatively unchanging.
It’s Elizabeth whose moral center wavers constantly. Jack’s right about her, and we get that hammered home in this episode. Elizabeth doesn’t forget, she doesn’t forgive, and she can be as cold-hearted as they come. She’s the real pirate in her relationship with Will.
The movie presents us with all of this, and presents us with a Norrington, a steadfastly honorable man, who has fallen so low that he’ll sell his soul–figuratively, as opposed to literally–for a chance to get even the veneer of respectability back. However, I have no doubt that we will see him turn back to heroism, because James is more like Will than he’d ever admit.
And then, of course, there’s Jack–the heart and soul of the movies, whose self-love is stronger than his love for anything or anyone, except maybe the Pearl. He’s not a coward, and he claims to not be ethical or to be a ‘good man,’ but, like his brothers-in-spirit, Captains Han Solo and Mal Reynolds, Jack Sparrow is a good man trying to be otherwise. It’s a strange reversal of what we see in Elizabeth–a woman who could be quite disturbingly evil, but who chooses instead to be “good.”
These are just examples, and I’m just rambling, but I’d also point out that both movies are consumed with the notion of soul-selling, which is nothing if not an old-fashioned way of talking about morality and courage and right and wrong. The great strength of Pirates above movies like Superman (besides not sucking) is that it is so deceptive–we don’t realize what we’ve got, b/c we’re too busy chuckling about undead monkeys and drunkenly sober sailors. It isn’t until later, when the movie has caught hold of you, that the layers become evident.
And that, my friend, is why I love fandom so much.
2. theotter | July 9th, 2006 at 8:08 am
I suppose I should amend my statement to “I love Pirates because there are no ethics that I care to analyze.” By and large, they just don’t interest me in these two films. Which is not to say that your analysis isn’t interesting, because it is.
Only I have to quibble with one small point: Jack is not a brother-in-spirit to Han Solo! Blech! (As much as I like Mal, he IS indisputably inspired by Han Solo.) But not Captain Jack! Han Solo has too much of an ego to be as weird as Jack is. (I suppose that’s a kind of courage, if you want to look at it like that, because Jack clearly doesn’t mind that people think he’s insane. As long as they call him “Captain.”)
By the way, this week’s Entertainment Weekly arrived yesterday, and Pirates is the cover story. Squee!
There’s some fun stuff about how much trouble Johnny Depp originally got into with Disney execs . . . before the first film became a success.
There are also some vague forecasts for the next film. Verbinski says one of the main themes is that “Piracy itself is at stake. It’s like the railroad is coming to the West.” He also mentions more on the Will-Elizabeth romance: “They realize love is something that hurts, and there are things they have to overcome if the relationship is to last.” Well, I hope those things are physical obstacles along the lines of gigantic rolling wheels, because I’m really not looking for emotional depth here–though it may please you, Dormouse.
Orlando Bloom is also pleased about the darker shades of the next film. He says he was frustrated with having to be “the upright, strailaced, naive Will Turner” in the first movie. Too bad his grand tally of three facial expressions doesn’t allow him to be much more. But, oh, the poor puppy. In the interview, he also mentioned (or was questioned about) his poor reviews for Kingdom of Heaven and Elizabethtown. “It was really tough. My confidence took a bit of a hit. When you’ve got your mom calling, saying, ‘It’s all right, darling, everything’s going to be okay . . .’” Awww. I almost begin to feel sorry for him. Almost.
It’s common news now that Keith Richards will have a cameo as Jack Sparrow’s father in Pirates 3. Just a few days ago, though, I read an amusing anecdote about how Richards asked if he could have all the other Rolling Stones with him in the movie as his back-up band of roving pirates. Fortunately, Verbinski said no. As amusing as it would be to see Mick Jagger saying “Aargh,” I think it might be difficult to work the Stones into the script.
Possum recently mentioned a rumor about a band of lady pirates in the third movie–does anyone else know anything about this?
3. Dormouse | July 9th, 2006 at 12:03 pm
Thbbbbbppppt.
4. Dormouse | July 9th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
Thbbbbbppppt. —that’s me blowing a raspberry at you, if you’re wondering.
As usual, you let your dislike (and, I’m sorry to say, very rudimentary knowledge) of Star Wars cloud your judgment of its characters.
Jack and Han don’t have anything in common on the surface, I’ll give you that. But. What they do share, and share with Mal, is a very deliberate, careful construction of personae as men who don’t care about wrong/right, who only care about money and their ships, and who don’t care much about the people who surround them.
Han blows off that persona fairly early on–by the end of the first movie, though he keeps trying to resurrect it here and there (the fact that he refuses a commission in the Rebel Alliance until RotJ is indicative of this). Similarly, we never *really* see Mal putting that persona on–just clinging to the vestiges of it. I would argue that Kaylee and Zoe, in particular, are responsible for making sure that he isn’t able to distance himself as much as he might like, and he’s already got them by the time we really get to see him in action.
Which brings me to Jack. Jack has *plenty* of ego. He doesn’t care if people think he’s insane b/c it ensures that they underestimate him. It’s part of the reason he’s so successful. Pretend to be a lunatic, and shock the heck out of everyone when you do something brilliant. But it’s all part of his incredibly huge ego. Those moments of brilliance create the persona–as a man who can do anything. “I’m Captain Jack Sparrow”–his answer to any question as to how he did some impossible thing or another. He doesn’t have more or less ego than Han Solo–he simply uses it in a different way, and, unlike Han and Mal, there’s no one who’s gotten under his skin, who he’s willing to really risk his life for. Or, if there is, he’d deny it with his last breath.
Admittedly, I think the comparison isn’t immediately clear. Han’s circumstances are so wildly different from Jack’s, for one thing, that it’s rather like apples and oranges. But, as the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding might say, they’re both fruit. And in this case, I think their similarities do ouweigh their differences.
5. theotter | July 9th, 2006 at 1:10 pm
“What they do share, and share with Mal, is a very deliberate, careful construction of personae as men who don’t care about wrong/right, who only care about money and their ships, and who don’t care much about the people who surround them.”
I’ll wholeheartedly agree there.
I just think there’s more similarity between Han and his persona than you do. As in, not much difference at all. He may not really care about money, but he’s still a jerk. I can’t stand Han Solo, I like Mal Reynolds, and I love Jack Sparrow, so for me the differences between the three obviously outweigh the similarities!
I agree with you that Jack has plenty of ego–it just doesn’t prevent him from acting insane (and therefore entertaining the audience immensely). His ego manifestation is fun; Han’s is annoying.
6. Pop Otter | July 10th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
The problem with WWJD is that, for all the time I’ve spent in Bible study and partly because of that time, I am seldom confident about what Jesus would actually do in any given situation. Take yesterday evening: on my way home from a full day of pastoring with mind long gone due to a sermon into which I had poured much energy, it suddenly occurred to me that I would like to see for a second time the original “Pirates” movie that I had once been coerced into seeing by a certain Otter. The DVD’s were all checked out from my local video store. So, in sour grapes fashion, I began to wonder whether Jesus would watch a movie like “Pirates.” It would seem like such a waste of time to someone out to save the world. Yet to my surprise, I found myself suspecting that Jesus would choose a movie about joyful rascals above one about pretentious do-gooders every time, especially if he were going to watch the movie with someone inclined to take his/her own efforts too seriously. Hmmm. So, lacking the movie, I came home and spent the hour remaining before bedtime looking at websites about dogs. I noticed that the theme of “joyful rascals” had not been lost to me for the evening.
7. theotter | July 11th, 2006 at 7:24 am
Ha! Aren’t you glad I coerced you into seeing it? One of these days, after Pirates 2 makes a billion gazillion, you may get to see it. Or you could always drive an hour to your nearest movie theater.
You know, I’d be willing to bet that there’s some show dog out there registered as “So-and-so’s Captain Jack Sparrow.” I hope it’s not a chihuahua.
8. Dormouse | July 11th, 2006 at 9:17 am
Here’s a Pirates review you need to read. It’s brilliant, though I rather disagree with her analysis of Davy Jones (Barbossa was more infused with humanity for my money), I think the rest is spot-on. And not just because she draws the obvious Empire Strikes Back comparisons. *grin*
9. theotter | July 11th, 2006 at 7:04 pm
Here’s a nugget of gold from Cinematical’s Geek Beat:
“I want … no, need … an undead monkey. Aside from the apparent trade value should I ever find myself in need of the services of a crazy witch doctor/hedge wizard, the thing was just cool. He’d be a great conversational piece, and a pet I would never have to bury in my back yard. Heck, I could pass him along to my children; he’d eventually become a family heirloom.”
I’m currently thrilled by anything that mentions undead monkeys.
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