Aaaarrr!

[malsperanza]

Of course I loved it, and of course it wasn't as good, as complete and perfect and charming, as the first movie.

The Black Pearl was a stand-alone movie, with a perfect arc and just the right balance of character development and action. Dead Man's Chest is a middle-of-the-trilogy movie, and as such is a damn sight more successful than most (The Two Towers and most of the Star Wars series come to mind as signal disappointments). It did have too many longish action sequences mucking up an already somewhat incoherent plot (which will only become complete and perfect after the third film), & not enough time was spent with any of the principal characters: a bit too much jumping about and exploding things and not quite enough time talking, or even merely bantering. OK, those are the negatives.




On the plus side ... well, apart from the OBVIOUS *coughdeppcough*, of course: Lots of good dark-turning of all the main characters. Even the indispensably shallow and simple Will had a nice growth of character, and the others all did very well indeed. A tip of the tricorne to the screenwriters Elliott and Rossio for managing to keep Jack completely mysterious and compelling while still letting us have a bit more of him. That was the thing I was most worried about: that Jack would get Explained, or would Turn Out to Be [fill in the noun of your choice]. But our boys have read their Joseph Campbell and know their work, and did a lovely job of keeping the adventure tale and the hero's journey balanced.

They also managed to work in nearly every possible mariner's tale and bit of sailor's lore in the canon, from the Flying Dutchman to the Krakken to the unfortunately rather racist South Sea cannibals.

Two hommages I particularly appreciated:

1) Jack Sparrow's hommage to Withnail, when he says quizzically: "I feel ... unusual." Yay for Withnail references. No screwball movie is really complete without one. (Not to mention movies of Hamlet, of course.)

*runs off to invent Jack Sparrow/Withnail fanfics*

2) The witch Tia Dalma is, I am convinced, modeled on the character of Bocca Dorata, the mysterious Caribbean witch and seer of Hugo Pratt's tales of the pirate Corto Maltese. Corto Maltese is famous in Europe and known to all serous students of the graphic novel--not to mention anyone who is a fan of pirate tales. I am sure Rossio and Elliott know the books. Because I have been a huge fan of these for many years, I was thrilled.

And how on earth did Hollywood manage to keep the surprise ending a sekrit? Or am I just so completely out of the loop that I am the only person on the planet who didn't know about it? I knew the rumors that we will meet Jack's own father in the person of Keith Richards, and given the theme that has now nicely developed about true and false fathers, I would expect no less. But this? Caught me totally by surprise.

I was sorry not to see Annamaria turn up, and hope that she will surface in the third film, perhaps to provide a love interest for Norrington.

Comments

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

the unfortunately rather racist South Sea cannibals

They're everywhere! As soon as we saw them, my son and I both wondered when Kong would show up.

And do you suppose they swiped Jack's escape from where ever that was in the beginning from the Count of Monte Cristo?

That was the thing I was most worried about: that Jack would get Explained, or would Turn Out to Be [fill in the noun of your choice].

I'd like to read more of what you thought about Jack as far as him being in the middle of a hero's journey. I agree with your statement quoted above, but I agree because I don't think his character developed or progressed at all in this movie. I got the the sense that it was Will who was settled firmly on the hero's path, and Jack was revealed as possibly a gatekeeper or trickster or other stock character the hero will inevitably encounter on his journey. It seemed to me almost like the writers really used up their cache of clever Jack-isms in the first movie, realized they couldn't actually do anything with the character without ruining his appeal, and so just rehashed.

(Which is not a bad thing, and Johnny Depp can pull off Captain Jack in his sleep, it was just kind of weird.)

So I'd be very interested in seeing Jack interpreted from your perspective....

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

The hero's journey belongs to Will and Elizabeth. Jack is not on a journey because Jack is not the romantic hero of the tale. Jack does not, and should not, change or develope. I think you have it exactly right: Jack is Trickster, Coyote, the Magickal Fool, the motive force that brings about all the stories in the world. What does happen in this episode is that we see a little more of Jack--frex, that even though he has the Black Pearl, and with it Freedom, his heart's desire, he is still restless and aimless. He has the Compass That Points to What You Want Most, and every time he opens it it points in some other random direction. We see this for the first time in this movie (though we suspected it before).

More on this later... I don't want too many spoilers when lots of people haven't seen the film yet.

And do you suppose they swiped Jack's escape from where ever that was in the beginning from the Count of Monte Cristo?

Undoubtedly. There were dozens of swipes from almost every famous pirate or swashbuckle movie in the lot. The most visible one was when Will slides down a sail by plunging his knife into it and cutting a tear down it. That is from Burt Lancaster in The Crimson Pirate, which swiped it from Errol Flynn in eitherCaptain Blood or The Sea Hawk. These weren't illegal swipes: they Hollywood acknowledging its own. Disney cannot possibly make a pirate movie--swiped from its own iconic theme ride--without acknowledging that the theme ride itself was an amalgam of bits from a whole genre of classic B movies made on the backlots of Burbank and Anaheim.

Oh, but one of the things I was most pleased by in Dead Man's Chest was the night lagoon with the fireflies. That is my very favorite bit from the original ride in California--it's truly beautiful (and I speak as one who despises all things Disney). But of course Jack's trip up the river to find Tia Dalma's mysterious lagoon is itself a citation. Recognize it? It's from Lord Jim--both the Peter O'Toole movie and the great Joseph Conrad novel that was the source for the movie. And which was imitated to extraordinary effect in Apocalypse Now--another pirate movie, of sorts.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Racism even aside, the cannibals really bothered me because they were designed as Amazonian, clearly weren't Polynesian, and by that point in history, all the natives of the Caribbean had been wiped out and replaced by the descendents of European slaves. So they just didn't make sense.

I thought that whole bit wasn't really necessary, anyway. Tia Dalma was neat, though and I'm looking forward to more of her.

Anamaria isn't on the cast list for 3 (yet, anyway); Keith Richards is. I'm not sure how I feel about Jack having a father.

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

Ah well, these movies never pretended to be very accurate about history--no one wears the same period clothing, exactly, and the ships themselves are not all from the same period, which in fact is not precisely identified. It's not altogether clear in that moment in the movie that anyone is *in* Polynesia--which would have taken what? 2 years? to sail to from Port Royal in any case. So Amazonia works a bit better (even though the landscape did look a bit like Easter Island). And Tia Dalma's lagoon is clearly meant to be Amazonian, even though her house was the spitting image of the French colonial family's house on the Mekong River in Apocalypse Now (the Redux version). Because, see, the Exotic Other is one big international mangrove swamp, into which white sailors wander and are Changed.

So me, I'm not too troubled by errors of period or seamanship or whatnot. These movies would be ripe for a History_Sporking if they weren't already sporking themselves so well. I just think it's time to bury the "Dumb Cannibals See White Man, Make Him God, Then Eat Him" trope. It's tired and offensive and not very funny (fruit kabobs aside). One can't help thinking that the real story there is a tragic one--that canard about cannibalism was taken up by colonizers to demonize the peoples they were exploiting and destroying. It should be dropped at this point.

OTOH, I rather enjoyed the idea of the East India Company as the Enron of its time--which is, in a way, quite accurate. Although I am so tired of the Multinational Corporation as Evil!Badguy, which has been subbing for the old USSR as ultimate badguy in American movies for nearly 20 years now.

I'm not sure how I feel about Jack having a father.

Exactly. Jack the Trickster is born of himself and cannot have parents or family or home in the normal sense. I have some faith in the screenwriters' knowledge of this. But look at all the fathers in this story--real ones and spiritual ones, good ones and bad ones. (Typical Disney: no mothers ever.) My guess is that when Keith Richards does show up, he and Jack will scarcely do more than say Hi.

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

The 3rd film is in the can, so I guess no more Annamaria. Too bad.

[azdaja-dafema.livejournal.com]

Corto Maltese sounds interesting, and I've not heard of it, even though I'm fond of graphic novels. I lvoed the film, especially Tia Dalma. Worth looking more seriously into?

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

You can learn a bit more about Corto Maltese on Wikipedia. The Corto Maltese stories are wonderful booklength comix, beautifully drawn and written in the 1960s & 1970s. Most of them are currently available in hardbound color editions in French and Italian (the original language) from FNAC online or other European booksellers & sometimes used copies pop up on Bookfinder and Amazon. Some of them were translated years ago into English but I think those are hard to find now & the translations are so abysmal they aren't really worth it.

American pop culture has mostly overlooked them, but the influence of Pratt is everywhere in European graphic novels. I did catch one small hommage in Frank Miller's Batman books, and in the first Batman movie, where the photojournalist Vicky Vale mentions that she has just come back from covering a war "in the Corto Maltese Islands." There are no such islands; Corto Maltese is the name of the pirate protagonist.

[azdaja-dafema.livejournal.com]

I'm in London, but, may search out the abysmaltranslations, or borrow a french friend :)

Thank you very much, I'll definitely look into those.