AndrewBloom
CONTAINS SPOILERS6/10 4 years ago
[6.1/10] The glory of the original *Pirates of the Caribbean* movie is that it took itself just seriously enough, without taking itself too seriously. There was enough action and drama for there to be stakes, but also enough humor and levity to make it a fun romp of a film. It left room for more stories, but it also worked as its own thing, with scenes and motivations that built on one another.
*Dead Man’s Chest* throws all of that out the porthole. Suddenly, the *Pirates* franchise now has epic lore involving souped up versions of the antagonists from the last movie, with grave implications for every new development. The humor is reduced to the broadest of shtick and takes a backseat to tedious speechifying about destiny and the “true nature” of this or that character. And the movie is a fifteen-car-pileup of plots and callbacks and character beats, stopping not because the film’s reached any kind of natural endpoint or even intermission, but because that’s just where director Gore Verbinski and his team happened to hit the pause button.
About the only good element that survives from *Curse of the Black Pearl* into *Dead Man’s Chest* is the production design and effects. Say what you will about the movie’s contrived reasons for sending our heroes dotting across the map, but it at least finds some scenic locales to shoot them in. Likewise, Davy Jones, while showing a bit of age as an effect, is still a marvel of on-screen wizardry, able to move with weight and have distinctive expressions as he interacts with the flesh and blood characters. His ship shares the same realness and creativity of design, a waterlogged battleship that looks appropriately worn by both time and the sea.
And yet, even there, the visuals are hit or miss. While Jones himself is convincing and Bootstrap Bill has a distinctive look, the rest of the crew of the Flying Dutchmen feature unique designs but dodgy looking CGI realizations. The famed kraken is poorly composited into the live action sequences, making our heroes appear as though they’re fighting a big cartoon character rather than a threatening piece of calamari. What’s more, in places like the waterwheel fight or Jack’s own standoff with the kraken, the green screen effects are painfully obvious, breaking immersion.
All of that could be forgivable, especially for 2006, if trifling things like plot and character and motivation were better than “mildly passable.” In contrast to the thrill-heavy clarity of *Curse of the Black Pearl*, this sequel is convoluted and overstuffed. Nowhere is that more evident than in how many MacGuffins there are in a single two-and-a-half hour film.
There’s Davy Jones’s heart. Then there’s the chest that holds Davy Jones’s heart. Then there’s the key that opens the chest that holds Davy Jones’s heart. Then there’s the drawing of the key that opens the chest that holds Davy Jones heart. And that’s before you get to the jar of dirt that might hide Davy Jones heart, or the compass that might lead you to Davy Jones’s heart, or the letters of mark that you might be able to bargain for Davy Jones’s heart. This film has no shortage of random, mostly uninteresting objects that various characters are after in various combinations, with only clumsy throughlines for how one leads to another.
That extends to the characters’ wants and goals here. Again, in the original film, each major character had a fairly straightforward but nevertheless strong motivation. *Dead Man’s Chest*, by contrast, makes an utter hash of it. Beyond just the endless quest for the various MacGuffins, who’s trying to rescue whom or sell off somebody to somebody else, or get back into a random third party’s good graces becomes bewildering at some point.
Even for a bloated, two-movie narrative, there’s just too many characters with too many objectives here. Will Turner wants to save Elizabeth Swann again, except he gets sidetracked with a promise to his dad. Former Commodore Norrington is back despite not really having a place in the story, and is gunning for redemption or at least a chit he can use to regain his former stature. Two new villains, and their seconds, and Will’s dad, and Elizabeth’s dad, and the old pirate crew, and the voodoo priestess, and more familiar faces still each have to get their moment in the sun with jumbled up schemes and wishes. Even Jack, the last film’s agent of chaos, is torn between trying to hold off Davy Jones’s claim on his soul and pursuing Elizabeth himself.
Therein lies arguably the worst element of the film. Depp’s Sparrow was an entertaining side dish in the first movie, but here, after so much fanfare and adoration over his performance, he becomes not only the main course, but a romantic lead. Not only does his shtick wear much thinner when it’s the focus rather than one piece among many, but Verbinski and the writers feel compelled to inject a needless love triangle to ensnare Jack, Elizabeth, and Will, despite it adding nothing to the proceedings.
Needless addition is the unofficial theme of *Dead Man’s Chest*: more plots, more characters, more power plays, and more overextended (and sometimes shockingly racist) action sequences, which lack the prior film’s thrills and panache. Only the big second act set piece manages to channel the energy that drove *Curse of the Black Pearl*, including enough wry jokes and swashbuckling fun to keep things light yet exciting. That’s a rare moment though, and even it gives way to the film’s “too much, too quickly” pacing problems eventually.
If that weren’t enough, the film is awash in callbacks to the first film, constantly elbowing the audience in the ribs and trying to see if it remembers the franchise’s earlier, better effort. There’s a *Star Wars* prequel level of embarrassingly on-the-nose references to the prior movie here, and at least there, the franchise went sixteen years between releases, rather than three, before it started eating its own tail.
The real problem is that the original *Pirates of the Caribbean* was built to be a breezy, exciting lark of a film, not a franchise-starter. So when Disney and Verbinski try to reverse engineer their way into a grand tale with enough mythos and high drama to turn *Pirates* into some epic quest, the effort looks like so many boats in these movies -- creaky, haphazardly built, and full of holes. Trying to force Jack Sparrow and his cohort into that mold leaves *Dead Man’s Chest* feeling like just another disappointing, overblown blockbuster, losing the spark and glimmer of the movie that accidentally started this series, like so much sunken treasure.
