July 20th, 2006
I watched Curse of the Black Pearl a few months ago to appease the incredulity of me having “not seen it yet?” I was really surprised, most of the hype was warranted and Disney seemed to have reclaimed their lost talent of making films that both appeal to adults and children (albeit, towards the teenage than toddler end).
Most of the Pirates acclaim is down to Depp’s presentation of the leading pirate Captain Jack Sparrow. It has been widely publicised that he models the character on the Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, so much so in fact that there are rumours of a cameo appearance from said guitarist in Pirates 3. To those of you who have seen Depp in action, I hope you appreciated the Jack Sparrow-ism in that last sentence.
The directors weren’t sure at first with Depp’s perpetually-sozzled camp pirate, but it definitely paid off. Nearly every woman or girl I know will attest to that. In Dead Man’s Chest Sparrow is back incorrigible as ever, and possibly more so. Though after seeing his flouncy running I’m not sure it is a case of “every woman wants to be with him and every man wants to be him”. Personally I don’t think I could get away with the eye makeup: I’d either look very tired, or homosexual.
It would seem then that Depp’s appeal is that he’s uncompromising, he hasn’t conformed to the stereotypical male action model, the following extract sums it up:
Well, there was a great book I [Depp] read…What was it called? Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition. A very interesting book. I wasn’t exactly going for that with the character. And Keith is not flamboyant in his actions. Keith is pretty stealth. But with Jack, it was more that I liked the idea of being ambiguous, of taking this character and making everything a little bit…questionable. Because women were thought to be bad luck on ships. And these pirates would go out for years at a time. So, you know, there is a possibility that one thing might lead to another.
–”Johnny Depp - The Last Buccaneer” - Rolling Stone Magazine Interview
One of the things I liked about Black Pearl was its opening sequence, Dead Man’s Chest follows admirably by starting off on another high, however now that I’ve seen it all I think they could have made some cuts in the cannibal scenes so that the main story gained a little more momentum earlier on.
The only reason I say this is because the main story allowed for a surprisingly lot of scope. I won’t go into specifics, but they have to obtain the heart of Davey Jones (Bill Nighy) from his locker. Davey Jones was the perfect villain, from his amazing CGI generated tentacles, to his intriguing background story that I’d have liked to have seen a little more of.
In Dead Man’s Chest the characters are spread farther apart than in Black Pearl. However this does mean you get to see them in different circumstances, which is quite nice: Keira Knightley gets to do a bit of swashbuckling as Elizabeth and Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) is put on yet more dangerous tasks in the pursuit of her love. Though I found the “recap” scenes, where certain characters ask questions blatantly for the audience’s benefit to make sure everyone understands what’s happening, annoying at times. Nevertheless I suppose to some these are quite useful when trying to ascertain where certain characters are and why there are there.
I think it’s hard for any sequel to match, yet alone surpass, the original. Dead Man’s Chest didn’t make such a big impression on me as Black Pearl did. Perhaps if they tightened up the main plot a little, and cut it down to two hours then it would have been in a better position to do so, but it was definitely not a disappointment: Dead Man’s Chest was a very entertaining spring-board to the third Pirates film that will be out next year.