We Saw "PotC 3" and It Did Not Suck

[drwex]

Thanks to dreams_of_wings's kid-sitting we got to go out to a movie last night. We saw Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't as good as the first one, either.


The Cap used to be a severely decripit place. It's come up somewhat in the years since I stopped going regularly. They now have real/fresh popcorn and you can get actual butter on it if that's your thing. Also, Richardson's ice cream is pretty good. Tickets are $7 instead of $10.

On the other hand, the screen was tiny, the projector was off-center leading to a keystone effect probably nobody but me noticed, and the sound system was seriously sub-par. That, plus the excessive accents affected by some of the characters made some of the dialog harder to understand than necessary.



Among the awful affected accents I found Chow-Yun Fat's to be one of the worst. Since he speaks very good unaccented English as well as at least one dialect of Chinese as a native language I can only blame the director for insisting he speak in that ridiculous fake Fu Man Chu style. Also, his character died too soon. He was way more interesting than any of the other new characters in this part of the story.

The movie was too long, again, with lots of bits that could have been elided. At least there were no egregiously racists bits and the set-up for the sequel was nice. Many of the spfx were outright stupid, particularly the sail-as-parachute thing, and Depp/Sparrow spent too much time swinging on ropes. Yes, we got it and the "Do you think he plans it or just makes it up as he goes along?" line was very good. But enough already.

Likewise the final destruction of the ?Endeavor? (the triple-decker flagship of the armada) is just awful. Verbinsky is not a Wachowski and he should stop trying to use that style.

Depp and Knightley both gave good performances, though I deeply resented the scriptwriter's move that turned Swann from an awesome pirate queen to a mooning love-struck heroine with a sword. All that stuff about trust and betrayal? Eh, let's forget all that so we can watch Knightley and Bloom smooching. In my not-at-all humble opinion, Swann should be standing on the railing of a pirate ship giving more rousing speeches and not standing on a beach barefoot and trying to look wistful. She looked WAY hotter in those boots than Bloom did, anyway.

Geoffrey Rush also did very well as Barbosa, but the surprise award goes to Mackenzie Crook as the one-eyed pirate Ragetti. From comic relief to Greek chorus to key one-liner he steals nearly every scene he's in.

The plot was... well, weak, but at least it was there and more or less unified. Better than last time, at least.


The number of goofs and gaffes in this one was irksome. There was a lot of the "person gets pulled from the sea but is perfectly dry" and hair up/hair down between cuts-type errors. I can't possibly be the only person who paid attention to Kiera Knightley's hair, can I?

Also? Guys? There are NO mountains in Singapore. Nor any close by, iirc.

I do realize that's what people expect hangings to look like but the trapdoor style execution platform is US Western-frontier era stuff. And you can't hang a child because he doesn't weigh enough to pull the rope tight. Hangman's rope is thick and doesn't slide easily.


I expect they'll eventually make another one, since this one made buckets of money and Hollywood is nothing if not a factory for sequels and franchises. I will probably even go see it.

Comments

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

> At least there were no egregiously racists bits

dreams_of_wings and I were talking about this in the living room before she left. She pointed out the black woman in rags all tied up thing. She seemed very bothered by the racist bits and may have a list for you.

For me there was a lot of racial caricaturing especially among the pirate lords.

[drwex]

All the pirate lords were caricatures. And yes, there were racial overtones, particularly in that character and how she was visualized. However, when compared to the "island of dark-skinned stupid savage cannibals" from PotC 2 this wasn't egregious.

[okelle.livejournal.com]

The large screen at the Capitol is still a thing of beauty. They put the latest films (to the theater) there. I saw PHC in that theater and it was lovely -- appropriate, too, since the movie itself deals with the closing of an outmoded venue.