Pirates of the Carribean II

Well I finally saw POTC/Dead Man’s Chest. I’d have to say it is classically a sequel, in every way. This means that at some levels it is satisfying, because I’m seeing the same mythology and characters I did in the original, but it is also somewhat less than the original.

And yes, if you haven’t seen the movie, there will be some plot points I talk about, so if you don’t want to read about them go by-by.

There are four things that disappointed me about it. And of course, you can’t always tell if these were because of the writing, the directing, or the editing. But here goes:

1) Too long. The whole movie had a tendancy to drag, and the big action sequences had a tendency to go on for two long. I thought that both the cannibal island/rolling cage sequence and the three-way sword duel bits were about twice as long as they needed to be, or should have been in particular.

2) There were some serious continuity issues from the first movie. Probably the most obvious one is if the Curse of the Aztec Gold was removed in the original movie, and all of the original pirates affected were returned to mortal status. Yet the monkey, Jack is still undead. How’s that? Oh, that’s right, we can put some great undead gags in the second. Right.

3) It tried too hard to bring character back from the original movie. Every character of any note is back, even if there is no reason for them to be, and even if they were killed off in the first movie. There was no plot to fill all of this up, plus we had lots of new characters with screen time, so we ended up with much less time with the characters we really cared about.

4) The ending just sucked. Sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked sucked. The only reason the ending was done the way it was is that the next sequel is coming out in one year. Let’s make sure everyone is thirsting for it! Well, after, that ending, I’m not sure I’m going to want to see the third.

So it was some good entertainment, but it was just over-commercialized off the success of the original, and way too formulaic in its approach. I’m sure it will make lots of money, maybe more than the wild success of the original. But It was far smaller than the sum of its parts.