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1. The Kraken.
Man, in the last movie, they had that long action sequence of blasting its tentacles with cannons and setting off all the gunpowder in its face and Jack Sparrow probably stabbed it a little before it swallowed him. I wonder how they’ll defeat it in the third movie, when it survived all that!
Whiiiiiich brings me to number two…
2. Barbossa
Hey, remember that really cool explanation we got for why he’s back? No? Well, at least he’s an untrustworthy villain, so there’s automatic tension between him and the heroes, who can all trust each… oth… er…
3. Norrington
He’s a kind of honorable guy, but then again he betrayed them in the second movie, and now he’s working with the bad guys. I wonder how this’ll all end up. I bet it’ll be something cool!
Or, he could be pussy-whipped by Elizabeth some more and die pointlessly to resolve a minor plot hiccup. (Speaking of, given that we’ve established that Tia Dalma can bring people back to life so long as ‘they not at peace’, why doesn’t Elizabeth just ask her to bring Norrington back?)
4. Keith Richards
Finally, the rumor is coming true and they’re going to bring Keith Richards on to play Jack’s father! I bet he’ll do something cool! He’s Keith Richards!
Or he could pointlessly clarify an obscure bit of legal jargon. That’s fine too.
4a. Chow Yun-Fat
Okay, I know they wasted Norrington and the Kraken and Keith Richards (they didn’t even call him Jack’s father on-screen!). But it’s Chow Yun-Fat! Tequila himself! There’s no way he won’t get something cool to…
And now he’s dead so that Elizabeth can be Pirate Lord, and later PIRATE KING, without doing anything whatsoever to earn it except being mistaken for Calypso. Fuck you movie. FUCK. YOU.
5. Calypso/the Brethren Court
So there are these two storylines about uniting the Pirate Lords against the British Armada and resurrecting Calypso so she can hit the baddies. So you’d think there would be a big crisis about dealing with Calypso and a huge fleet-to-fleet battle between the Rebel Alliance… I’m sorry, the pirates… and the East India Trading Company.
Or the whole point of this plot could just be to provide a cool backdrop for the final battle. Why not just say “set a course for the Mutara Nebula” and be done with it?
6. Will holds the Idiot Ball for the entire movie.
Let me share with you Will’s brilliant plan. He’s going to betray his pirates and Jack, who he has at least some reason to trust in a devil-you-know kind of way, to Sao Feng, who he has no reason to trust, so he can captain the Black Pearl. And then he’s going to use the Black Pearl to kill Davy Jones.
Now, what exactly did he think the others were going to do once they got the Pearl back? Go to Cuba and smoke cigars? No! They were obviously going to deal with Davy Jones and the East India Trading Company. He’d have to be a complete idiot to betray his friends to get what he already has. And, apparently, he is. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.
7. Davy Jones’ locker.
And here the movie just falls flat on its face on several fronts. I mean, Jack licks a rock-that’s-really-a-lobster, so it gets all its friends to help him move the Black Pearl out of Purgatory. Do I really need to go into detail on this?
We all knew Jack was coming back, but the Black Pearl was destroyed. I mean, we saw it go down. But the writers want it to be the new Millennium Falcon, so it’s somehow magically repaired. I never really felt that much of an attachment to it, seeing as I still associate it from the first movie with zombie pirates, but as you will. And Jack goes slightly crazy and it really only leads to some bloviating about immortality and whatnot. I realize the writers were trying to do a theme, but when it has its roots in this totally pointless sequence, I find it hard to care that Jack eventually passes up his chance at being captain of the Flying Dutchman (which he was never that keen on in the first place) for his friend.
8. The foreshadowing
Every time someone mentions “the Dutchman needs a captain,” either the movie cuts to Will getting a foreboding look on his face (at one point they even follow it up with Tia Dalma looking at him and saying “a touch of destiny…” WHAT COULD IT POSSIBLY MEAN!?) or they have Jack loudly discuss the possibility of becoming captain of the Flying Dutchman. So you just know Jack will not be captain of the Flying Dutchman and Will’s going to die.
9. The epilogue
This is where it just gets irritatingly writerly. You kinda get to sympathize with Davy Jones a bit, but then he drops into a maelstrom with no closure. Okay, fine. Then Will has to be captain of the Flying Dutchman for ten years, and online it says that then he gets to be with Elizabeth, or maybe not (you can tell they put a lot of thought into this). Then Jack’s ship gets stolen again by Barbossa and isn’t it wonderful how we’ve come full circle yet the adventure continues blah blah dismissive wanking motion.
So now Barbossa has the Black Pearl and Jack’s in a little dinghy and Will’s separated from Elizabeth… good grief, what was the fucking point of the first movie, then? That was the only good one, you had to go and undo everything about it?
10. The third act
Actually, I have no complaints here. The script finally stops padding itself out with the betrayal/counter-betrayal un-intrigue and gets down to business. Except was there really any reason for Jack Sparrow to gloat a bit before killing Davy Jones, giving the villain the chance to kill Will? It would’ve been better if Will had been stabbed and then Jack had come upon them. At least that way you wouldn’t spend the rest of the movie thinking “One job, Sparrow, you had one job…”
Man, in the last movie, they had that long action sequence of blasting its tentacles with cannons and setting off all the gunpowder in its face and Jack Sparrow probably stabbed it a little before it swallowed him. I wonder how they’ll defeat it in the third movie, when it survived all that!
Whiiiiiich brings me to number two…
2. Barbossa
Hey, remember that really cool explanation we got for why he’s back? No? Well, at least he’s an untrustworthy villain, so there’s automatic tension between him and the heroes, who can all trust each… oth… er…
3. Norrington
He’s a kind of honorable guy, but then again he betrayed them in the second movie, and now he’s working with the bad guys. I wonder how this’ll all end up. I bet it’ll be something cool!
Or, he could be pussy-whipped by Elizabeth some more and die pointlessly to resolve a minor plot hiccup. (Speaking of, given that we’ve established that Tia Dalma can bring people back to life so long as ‘they not at peace’, why doesn’t Elizabeth just ask her to bring Norrington back?)
4. Keith Richards
Finally, the rumor is coming true and they’re going to bring Keith Richards on to play Jack’s father! I bet he’ll do something cool! He’s Keith Richards!
Or he could pointlessly clarify an obscure bit of legal jargon. That’s fine too.
4a. Chow Yun-Fat
Okay, I know they wasted Norrington and the Kraken and Keith Richards (they didn’t even call him Jack’s father on-screen!). But it’s Chow Yun-Fat! Tequila himself! There’s no way he won’t get something cool to…
And now he’s dead so that Elizabeth can be Pirate Lord, and later PIRATE KING, without doing anything whatsoever to earn it except being mistaken for Calypso. Fuck you movie. FUCK. YOU.
5. Calypso/the Brethren Court
So there are these two storylines about uniting the Pirate Lords against the British Armada and resurrecting Calypso so she can hit the baddies. So you’d think there would be a big crisis about dealing with Calypso and a huge fleet-to-fleet battle between the Rebel Alliance… I’m sorry, the pirates… and the East India Trading Company.
Or the whole point of this plot could just be to provide a cool backdrop for the final battle. Why not just say “set a course for the Mutara Nebula” and be done with it?
6. Will holds the Idiot Ball for the entire movie.
Let me share with you Will’s brilliant plan. He’s going to betray his pirates and Jack, who he has at least some reason to trust in a devil-you-know kind of way, to Sao Feng, who he has no reason to trust, so he can captain the Black Pearl. And then he’s going to use the Black Pearl to kill Davy Jones.
Now, what exactly did he think the others were going to do once they got the Pearl back? Go to Cuba and smoke cigars? No! They were obviously going to deal with Davy Jones and the East India Trading Company. He’d have to be a complete idiot to betray his friends to get what he already has. And, apparently, he is. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.
7. Davy Jones’ locker.
And here the movie just falls flat on its face on several fronts. I mean, Jack licks a rock-that’s-really-a-lobster, so it gets all its friends to help him move the Black Pearl out of Purgatory. Do I really need to go into detail on this?
We all knew Jack was coming back, but the Black Pearl was destroyed. I mean, we saw it go down. But the writers want it to be the new Millennium Falcon, so it’s somehow magically repaired. I never really felt that much of an attachment to it, seeing as I still associate it from the first movie with zombie pirates, but as you will. And Jack goes slightly crazy and it really only leads to some bloviating about immortality and whatnot. I realize the writers were trying to do a theme, but when it has its roots in this totally pointless sequence, I find it hard to care that Jack eventually passes up his chance at being captain of the Flying Dutchman (which he was never that keen on in the first place) for his friend.
8. The foreshadowing
Every time someone mentions “the Dutchman needs a captain,” either the movie cuts to Will getting a foreboding look on his face (at one point they even follow it up with Tia Dalma looking at him and saying “a touch of destiny…” WHAT COULD IT POSSIBLY MEAN!?) or they have Jack loudly discuss the possibility of becoming captain of the Flying Dutchman. So you just know Jack will not be captain of the Flying Dutchman and Will’s going to die.
9. The epilogue
This is where it just gets irritatingly writerly. You kinda get to sympathize with Davy Jones a bit, but then he drops into a maelstrom with no closure. Okay, fine. Then Will has to be captain of the Flying Dutchman for ten years, and online it says that then he gets to be with Elizabeth, or maybe not (you can tell they put a lot of thought into this). Then Jack’s ship gets stolen again by Barbossa and isn’t it wonderful how we’ve come full circle yet the adventure continues blah blah dismissive wanking motion.
So now Barbossa has the Black Pearl and Jack’s in a little dinghy and Will’s separated from Elizabeth… good grief, what was the fucking point of the first movie, then? That was the only good one, you had to go and undo everything about it?
10. The third act
Actually, I have no complaints here. The script finally stops padding itself out with the betrayal/counter-betrayal un-intrigue and gets down to business. Except was there really any reason for Jack Sparrow to gloat a bit before killing Davy Jones, giving the villain the chance to kill Will? It would’ve been better if Will had been stabbed and then Jack had come upon them. At least that way you wouldn’t spend the rest of the movie thinking “One job, Sparrow, you had one job…”
