Last night I spent my last day of vacation watching Pirates of the Caribbean, At World's End, which my awesome wife got me for Xmas. My over all impression? Disney, you owe me three hours of my life. I want it back.
The movie, which could have been good, suffered from becoming a vehicle for CGI and Disney wanting to sanitize everything. Characters searched for their (cajones, shhh, don't say that) motivation all throughout the movie and seemed to be searching for a clue (as in "Pat, I'd like to buy a clue, please"). There were scenes that had no other purpose than to show Neat Things(tm). Some shots went on way too long. The actors mostly existed only to yell "Fire" or some other deck command and wear the costumes well. Seriously, this movie gets a WTF Was That For award. Things were unnecessarily complex. Off the top of my head, I can think of three or four whole scenes that could have been cut and not altered the movie. And worse, motivations changed, objects changed their histories, the two pirates (and you know who there are) wander through the movie like brain dead R2D2 and C3PO, the two british guards (and who know who they are) change sides so we can root with them at the end (totally worthless), characters actions were unbelievable, I could go on, but I think you get the point. This goes beyond me yelling "Just shoot the SOB already" at the TV, which I do a lot these days when I'm watching.
Disney, you killed a perfectly good movie franchise. I hope you're proud. And I'm serious, you owe me.
There is only one reason to watch this movie. As a writer, it's like reading slush. You learn the reasons why you need to edit and why you need to kill your darlings. Really, the only reason is to see why you should do what they didn't.
7 comments:
I didn't like that one either. But somehow, just watching pirates do pirate things will lull me into a quiet place. Kind of like watching Westerns.
As long as Keira Knightley looks as good as she does in Chinese garb, I'll watch and not complain. :)
The funny thing (to me at least), is that a.) this movie pissed you off as much as it did, and b.) you maintained that level of pissed off overnight until you got around to posting this. Did you type it with your fists?
And don't go making any corrections. Its perfect like it is.
a WTF Was That For award--funny. That would be a WTF WTF Award :-)
I haven't seen it yet, and after part deux I'm not really excited about it either. Part two was okay, I guess, but sometimes reality isn't all that bad a place to shoot from, and a lot of the scenes in part two were CGI landscapes that couldn't possibly exist in the Caribbean. Maybe in the South Pacific. I will and can suspend disbelief for a movie, but if it's based on planet Earth I would at least hope it would look like it was.
Ken, that's pretty much what the movie was, pirates doing pirate things. Not much story. And for my old-dirty-man money, she looked far better in the corset dress and bedroom "going to sleep before the pirate attack" scene from the first movie. Not that I noticed. :)
Nathan, yep. I'm still pissed that I spent 3 hours watching it, hoping for it all to gloriously make sense. And it didn't (well, it did, but it was stupid sense). I had to type softly because I'm at work.
Heck, they could have cut 1) Davy Jones pays a visit to Calypso, 2) Captain Jack says hi to his brother, 3) the poisoned well on the island (heck, most of that section could have gone away). These 3 scenes could have been cut without affecting the rest (these stay in my mind, I'm sure there's more). Much of the crap seemed to revolve around the question of "now how to we get this character here so we can have this scene." Much of that could have gone away with a good rewrite.
Matt, I was in such a state I missed that it would be the WTF WTF award. Ha. I crack me up.
Unless you really need to see it to have completion, don't bother. It really is just a vehicle for CGI. You have the characters gawking at the CGI, then a closeup on the CGI so you can see the little bitty thingies. Yick.
Yeah, me too. Bleh. But I saw it in the theater - in the company of a bunch of ten year olds (son's birthday, fun, oh yeah).
But, what Ken said - there worse things than having to watch three hours of Keira Knightley...
Jim, well, sure, and with those hair extensions she looks even better. But, you know, that's just the dirty-old man in me.
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