The Ottery
“If an otter can’t have fun doing something, it just simply won’t do it.”

I Like Pirates 3: So There!

May 26th, 2007

On Thursday we attended the night-before-official-opening-day showing of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, which, fortunately for us old folks, was at 8:00 rather than midnight. Many attendees, including some in our own party, were of course in full piratical garb. So imagine the uproar when, about halfway through the end credits, the picture vanished from the screen and was replaced by theater ads. We all knew that there was going to be an epilogue scene after the credits, as there has been in every Pirates movie; some of us (okay, me) even knew that there were supposed to be twelve minutes of credits before that scene. There were many cries of distress and “Arrrgh!” before we gave up. As we passed the concession stand, we saw a crowd of angry pirates confronting the poor teenaged workers (why is it that the managers of movie theaters are never visible?). Apparently there had been some problem with the film balling up, and it wasn’t remediable. So, alas, I still have no idea what constitutes the epilogue scene, though I have heard that everyone’s favorite monkey is not involved.

Anyway, aside from that frustration, I was highly entertained by Pirates 3. The reviews have been pretty bad—perhaps not quite as bad as the reviews for Dead Man’s Chest—but, then, I expected they would be. Silly fun doesn’t seem to be appreciated by serious “feeelm” critics. Their biggest critique? The “bloated” (seriously, if I read that word in one more review, I’m going to scream) plot. The movie is almost three hours long, and I admit that there were parts I would have cut (namely, most of Captain Jack’s hallucinations, as they really don’t make sense once he’s out of Davy Jones’s Locker—Jack Sparrow is so much more fun when we don’t know what’s going on inside his head). But, for me, lack of conciseness is hardly one of the deadly sins of moviemaking, and so I didn’t really mind, because the movie made me laugh.

Unlike the other Pirates movies, it also made me care about young lovers Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann. I’ve always been more into the witty hijinks and silly slapstick of the Pirates movies, and the romance has been an afterthought (perhaps because I don’t seem to be susceptible to the charms of Mr. Bloom). But this movie actually made me feel a level of epic-level heartache for them, as well as for Commodore/Admiral Norrington, who has always been a great character.

I was a little disappointed that the third Pirates film didn’t have the amazingly inventive duels that were one of my favorite aspects of the first two. Critics may have complained about the giant hamster wheel in Dead Man’s Chest, but it was one of my favorite scenes. Pirates duels are up there with the classic duels in The Court Jester and The Princess Bride, in my opinion—two films with which the Pirates movies have a lot in common, though critics don’t seem to notice it. There are some great fight scenes in Pirates 3, but they’re more on the level of battle rather than personal duel.

Silliness, good fight scenes, and a score by Hans Zimmer (lots of new musical themes in this one, in addition to the old favorites): with those three things, a movie would have to try pretty hard to make me unhappy with it. Sure, I’ve got minor quibbles and things I would have done differently, but I’ll happily take those for the sake of laughter and swashbuckling joy. Pirates 3 is slightly darker in tone than the previous two movies, which is appropriate for the conclusion of a trilogy. And, please, Disney, make it the conclusion. I love my Pirates, but that means I don’t want them to be exploited for profit.

P.S. I’m fascinated by Porpoise’s reactions to the Pirates films. He wasn’t impressed by the first or third, while he really liked the second one, which had by far the worst critical reception. This is because the aforementioned lack of conciseness is for him the cardinal sin of moviemaking. This got me thinking: what is the cardinal moviemaking sin in my book? I can definitely say “bad dialogue” is my main pet peeve, but I have a hard time defining what makes dialogue bad for me. Take Star Wars, for example: the main thing that gets my goat about the Star Wars dialogue is that it slips in and out of different registers (formal, informal, contemporary, faux-medieval) without any apparent awareness on the part of the writer. Pirates dialogue switches registers with abandon, of course, but the difference there is that the writers are totally aware of it and use it for comic effect. So maybe earnest, un-self-aware dialogue drives me nuts? (in addition to preachy dialogue, which is also earnest, but too self-aware.)

There’s a great line in Pirates 3 spoken in reference to Captain Jack Sparrow’s feats of foolhardy derring-do: “Do you think he plans it all out ahead of time, of does he just make it up as he goes along?” Anyone who has listened to the commentary on Dead Man’s Chest knows that this line is also the screenwriters (Ted and Terry) referring to their own process of writing the screenplays for Pirates. Our fellow moviegoers seemed to know it too, because they greeted the line with much laughter. Pirates may flout all the rules of what makes a “good” movie, but its joy as tramples “feeelm” conventions is contagious.

UPDATE (SPOILER INLCUDED):

I have heard that the Pirates 3 epilogue features Elizabeth and a child (say, 9 or 10 years old . . . hmmm) looking out to sea, waiting for Will’s return. It’s apparently implied that since, unlike Calypso, Elizabeth has been faithful to the Dutchman’s captain, the curse will be lifted, and he will be free (does he get his heart put back in?). I’ve heard, though not confirmed, that dialogue explaining these conditions (which would have applied to Davy Jones as well, had Calypso been there at the end of the ten years) was originally present in the movie, but was cut (the only thing that was cut????).

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