Like many I was really looking forward to seeing the PIRATES sequel. So you can understand my disappointment when I went to see it and it turned out to be just a 2 1/2 hour trailer for PIRATES 3. Gone is the magic of the first film. Gone is the originality. You know a sequel is in danger when it has to recycle the jokes from its predecessor.
Like the MATRIX sequels, PIRATES seems to only have enough story for one new film, but not two. Only MATRIX blew all its new stuff in the second film where as (I hope) PIRATES is waiting to end strong. DEAD MAN'S CHEST opens with the interruption of the rain drenched wedding of Elizabeth Swan (Keira Knightley, PRIDE & PREJUDICE) and Will Turner (Orlando Bloom, LORD OF THE RINGS). During the ceremony, they are arrested by Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander, THE LIBERTINE) for freeing known pirate Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp, FINDING NEVERLAND). However, Beckett is interested very little in justice and more in blackmail, sending Will out to retrieve Sparrow’s compass in an effort to save Elizabeth.
Meanwhile, Jack gets an ominous message from Will’s father Bootstrap Bill (Stellan Skarsgard, GOOD WILL HUNTING) that Sparrow’s debt to the octopus-like man Davy Jones (Bill Nighy, UNDERWORLD) is due. With Jack searching for a mysterious key and Will in search of Jack, Elizabeth finds a way to get free and search for Will and Jack. Returning for the sequel is Elizabeth’s former fiancé Norrington (Jack Davenport, THE WEDDING DATE), her father governor Weatherby (Johnathan Pryce, BRAZIL), Jack’s second-in-command Gibbs (Kevin McNally, DE-LOVELY) and the pirate comic relief duo of Pintel (Lee Arenberg, WATERWORLD) and Ragetti (Mackenzie Crook, THE BROTHERS GRIMM). A mysterious new character appears when Capt. Jack goes to visit the voodoo mistress Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris, TRISTAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY).
The film does a good job of setting up its conflicts. I liked where it went with the characters, however it didn’t go that far. We can see all the characters’ motivations going into the next film, but we don’t get the sense of a closure in this chapter, which made films like EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, KILL BILL and the LORD OF THE RINGS films work as stand-alone films. What those films have and PIRATES 2 doesn’t is small arches that are resolved within the advancement of the larger arch of the series. DEAD MAN'S CHEST really feels like an unfinished story.
KILL BILL was unfinished, but the final battle gave some closure and the new revelation at the end helped push us forward to the next film. After VOL 2 came out, VOL. 1 looks only like set up, but at least it was fun and was nice introduction to the characters. DEAD MAN'S CHEST, for the most part, places characters we already know on a treadmill with little to do, but set up easily established emotional conflicts for the third film while they careen from one drawn out action sequence to the next. An entire 20-minute chunk dealing with cannibals could have been cut and it wouldn’t have made a bit of a difference.
However, like many sequels, a good bad guy can save the day. Davy Jones and his crew are a marvel to behold. As we see with Bootstrap, they transform slowly from humans to an amalgamation of various sea creatures. The visual effects artists are the stars of this film — I smell Oscar not day old sushi for them.
In the end, the film is really hard to review. It doesn’t work on its own. Most of its bloated running time fells like filler. Yet when it decides to deal with its characters, it sets them in interesting directions. It’s kind of like the STAR WARS prequels where we have to wait and see. DEAD MAN'S CHEST is the first act of a bigger tale. I might enjoy this story more when I see the rest of it next May. So people who like to see films on the big screen should go out to the theaters to see the spectacle of DEAD MAN'S CHEST while everyone else should rent it right before next Memorial Day and then go see PIRATES 3 for the conclusion of this theatrical mini-series.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
