PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST

"I've Got a Jar of Dirt!"


When Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl came out in the summer 0f 2003, it was a completely unexpected hit. It costed over $140 million to produce, so it doesn’t seem like much of a surprise to think that it would more than quadruple that in worldwide receipts. When it came out, however, almost everyone expected it to be a bust. It’s headlining star was Johnny Depp, who had never been a box office draw and usually avoided large-scale projects. He sported mascara, and fluffy, goofy costumes in a flamboyant, feminine “hero” performance. The story was a period piece, which usually suffer, and it was about pirates, another lackluster genre. When one adds all of these factors up, it would seem that Pirates would be a bust, both commercially and artistically.

The reasons why Curse should have been bad turned out to be the reason why it was great. Depp brought an odd, corky approach to his character, and was rewarded with a much-deserved Academy Award nomination. He turned Jack Sparrow into a household name, the name that the marketing campaign for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was built around.

“Captain Jack is Back” has been the slogan for the mega-sequel. Along for the ride again is Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom as Elizabeth Swann and William Turner. The film starts off with a shot of Elizabeth thinking quietly on her own on the morning of her wedding. She gets an unexpected surprise when Will turns up in shackles, accompanied by Her Majesty’s army. A deal is made to release both of them; if they retrieve a compass in the company of Jack Sparrow, then they are free to go, and he will receive a full pardon.

Jack himself is in a lot of trouble, the audience soon finds out. It seems that he owes Davy Jones (played by Bill Nighy, in the same motion-capture process Andy Serkis underwent in The Lord of the Rings and King Kong) his soul, unless he retrieves the Dead Man’s Chest for him. I am thinking now though that I am wrong. I could be completely as far from the truth as possible actually. I suppose this is the right time to point out I didn’t have much of a clue as to what was happening for most of the movie, other than the bare basics.

Here inlies Dead Man’s Chest’s problem: it is far too ambitious for its own good and bites off way more than it can chew. It wasn’t much of a surprise to me that screenwriters Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot got cocky after the monumental and unexpected success that Curse of the Black Pearl had. This film introduces too many characters as well as bringing back characters that were unneeded, and suffers from spreading too small an amount of subject matter to all of these characters and turning the film into a bloated 150-minute mess that could have easily been a half hour less.

The reason I loved the original was because of its originality, really, along with being absolutely first-rate entertainment. It was over-the-top to be sure, but every moment was fun from the beginning to the end, while this isn’t. The corkiness and comedic moments that made the screenplay so sharp and the performance by Johnny Depp so amazing in the original are gone, they simply aren’t present. During one of the last of the far too many sword fights, a thought crept through my head that I honestly had not want to think off; ‘this movie is annoying’.

While I didn’t like Dead Man’s Chest, it wasn’t bad enough to hate. I was disappointed. It isn’t bad enough to hate, but its nowhere close to being good, especially when the source material is considered. Oh well. The third will be coming out next summer, and I do have to admit that the ending to this film made me anxious to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.

C-