PIrates 3

[rm]

This is a really good action movie with a lot of fascinating ideas in it often buried under just a bit too much "and stuff explodes now." Which is a shame.

So you all know how action movies work. I'm going to skip that part and talk about the weird things in it that interested me.

There's an exchange early on, about how the world has gotten smaller, and someone replies, "No, there's just less in it." Discuss.

While it makes no sense on its surface, isn't that exactly what the proliferation of lots of stuff and the ability fo do everything quickly has wrought. It's not that the world is smaller, there's just so much less undiscovered. I know I romanticize times and places and ways of being that were brutal. I know this. Truly. I like penecilian and the Internet. I understand. But there is, I think, less in it, it being the modern world or the modernizing world. I was moved.

Oh, hey speaking moved. The beginning? Darkity dark dark dark. Ballsy dark. The hung teh kid! Awesome. Awesome awesome awesome.

Okay, moving along. Elizabeth's big speech to rally the pirates to fight? Actually worked! Which is interesting considering how often that great, critical speech moment doesn't work in films (I'm looking at you Colin Farrell in Alexander or you, Leonardo DiCaprio in Gangs of New York). So why does it work here? Is it the plot arc for Elizabeth? Is it that Hans Zimmer is a god and can make anything work? Is it that we like these things more coming from underdogs (giving LeoDio no excuse for GoNY)? Is it because Keira Knightly can act? Or is it because a woman knows that she has to in such a moment radiate power one might not expect from her and so both the character and the actress stepped teh fuck up? I don't know, but there's something to learn from it.

The whole moment when Will stabs the heart and Jack has to take Elizabeth away as all the men come to help cut out his heart was so well and darkly done I was beside myself. And how interesting that after being mistaken for Calypso, Elizabeth winds up in her role.

Now, about that bit aftr the credits: WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK? Is there a reason our three, _three_, heroes can't each still be sailing the sea independently of each other? I wanted to see Will and Elizabeth and their son on land, two boats tied up in the cove and the pearl, off in the distance closing in, whether for some sort of gurdge match, a new crisis or your poly fantasies, I don't really give a crap. WHAT THE HELL? I realize this sequence was more about dispelling some of the horrid (excellent!) darkness of the film rather than weakening or refeminizing Elizabeth, but come fucking on! She tried to get Norington to turn pirate, she became pirate king (not queen, you'll note), it was like we had to be left with this totally lame weak thing to make up for the fact that they actually hung a cute singing urchin at the beginning of a fucking Disney film.

Hi.

Comments

[baronalejandro.livejournal.com]

One thing I didn't like. In the first two, everybody (Barbossa especially) spoke in dialect and accent. I really dug Barbossa for that reason ("Thot's a lot of looong words, missy, and we be but humble pirates!"). In this one, it seems they skimped out on the dialect and just went for the accent and it came off hokey to me.

Overall, I thought this one sucked. Plot was too convoluted and I never did understand the 'multiple jacks'.