Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Generally, the sequel to a massive box office hit gets approached in one of two ways. Either you remake the original film with a larger budget or you blow up and expand the universe of the first movie, filling in the backstory, adding a new villain and an entirely new dimension to the story. Ghostbusters 2 goes the first route while Gremlins 2 opts for the second. Jewel of the Nile goes for the former while Back to the Future 2 aims for the latter.

The follow-up to Disney's ride-based smash hit Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl incorporates both standard sequel elements, rejiggering the plot of the first film into a much larger, more epic-scale story with the pirates' immortal souls at stake.

Coming as it does from uber-Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, it's not surprising that Dead Man's Chest crams just about every well-known pirate trope into a 2.5 hour smorgasboard of spectacle. J Brucks is a guy who doesn't know when to say when. He seems to view a film's quality as proportional to its length and cost to produce.

What is surprising about Dead Man's Chest is how well it all comes together despite the cumbersome running time, largely uninteresting supporting cast and the somewhat senseless, chaotic set pieces. The rare sequel that improves on the original film, Dead Man's Chest reminded me at times of the classics of the swashbuckle and adventure genres, in particular Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It's not quite as good as that, granted, but this is about as close as modern Hollywood gets. (It's the only even passable entertainment offered thus far in Summer 06).



Star Johnny Depp won all the praise the first time around, garnering an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of the fey and self-obsessed Captain Jack Sparrow, and he's once again fun to watch in the role. Director Gore Verbinski smartly gives him some room, lets him stretch out in the character and take some peculiar chances. He sashays and daintily skips his way through the movie, providing for some measure of entertainment value from even the most dry of expositional sequences.

Having said that, I think Verbinski deserves the lion's share of the recognition this time around. Like the original entry, this film is about a 20 minutes too long, but the pacing is better. Though the climax is arguably larger than the ghost ship seige and subsequent battle that closed out the first film, it's more tightly coiled and intense.

Additionally, the Industrial Light and Magic special effects have improved from the already-impressive first movie. The villainous Davy Jones (Bill Nighy, unrecognizable behind heavy-duty make-up) commands a crew of mutant sea creatures, pirates who have traded in their souls in exchange for 100 years of immortality. Actually, not to get sidetracked, but an interesting case could be made for this entire franchise being an extended guilt metaphor. This is the second film in a row in which characters are forced to make up for the sins of Jack Sparrow's past. In the first film, they help him weasel out of a curse he should be under for stealing gold. This time around, they're helping him weasel out of a deal he made with a Devil-like sea captain. Likewise, all the villainous pirates suffer for some horrendous evil in their background. The endless searches for these artificats, the hardships endured at sea in order to undo the crimes of the past, it's all part of a larger redemptive quest for all involved. There's even the further implication that Will fights to make up for his father's poor judgements and Elizabeth fights to atone for her father's prissy cowardice.

But anyway, back to the effects. Each individual monster has different deformities - Jones peers from pale human eyes but has a squid face, Bootstrap Bill (Stellan Skarsgard) has barnacles growing out of his body, others resemble mussels or clams. The amount of work that must have gone into designing this group of phantoms boggles the mind, but was totally worth the effort. (Again, their hideous physical features mirror their fatal misjudgement - choosing the lonely life of the sea instead of a life spent in a community with other humans. Magic forces them to own up to their errors.)



Verbinski and his screenwriters, Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott, stumble occasionally as they move along this rather unlikely trilogy. I honestly can not figure out why they felt the need to bring back so many characters from the first film. It would seem like an ongoing franchise focused on the many adventures of Captain Jack, the only truly popular character from the first film, would be the wisest strategy.

Keira Knightley, beautiful though she may be, adds nothing to the movie as the headstrong Elizabeth. Am I the only one who notices that she plays every scene in every one of her movies in exactly the same way? Stare off into space hazily 90% of the time. Every once in a while, suddenly snap to attention, curl up her lip into a snarl and say something headstrong to the nearest male. Then stomp off. Orlando Bloom likewise brings very little to an adventure franchise. They're both dull actors and their scenes together are lifeless. (Wisely, I don't think there's a single sequence in the entire film featuring just these two, leading me to believe that Verbinski knows how boring they are on screen and just needs a requisite amount of attractive young people in his movie to bring in the teenagers.)

If they had stopped with bringing these three back, that would have been fine with me. Maybe not advisable, but fine. But why bring back Jack Davenport as the snobbish Commander Norrington? I watched the first film not all that long ago and had still forgotten this character even existed? Lee Arenberg and Mackenzie Crook return in their underwritten, stupid comic relief characters from the first movie and continue to flail around in the hopeless pursuit of cheap laughs. Tom Hollander as well returns as the scheming Cutler Beckett, who has pretty much nothing at all to do in the story and whose presence is totally unneeded considering the menace already presented by Davy Jones and his ghostly ship The Flying Dutchman.

I mean, with all the big action beats Verbinski has designed here - including a few fights with Jones' dreaded sea beast The Kraken - and all the creative new characters, there wasn't any need at all for this much continuity. The supernatural mythology of this universe has been deepened to such an extent that continuing to focus on the governmental authority in Port Royal feels superfluous, is what I'm saying.

I've heard two different complaints from friends and customers about the movie in the past week. Some, including Ari of The Apsect Ratio, argue that the first hour lacks punch and takes forever to get going. Others feel that the ending, which strongly hints at the direction of the third film, At World's End, is unsatisfying and leave the audience hanging. I disagree on both counts.

I felt like the movie kicks into high gear right away. In fact, the opening passages moved more swiftly than the first time around. Instead of a long sequence in which Will (Bloom) and Elizabeth (Knightley) are arrested, we get a brief montage ending with them behind bars. When Will sets out to find Captain Jack, rather than the expected "search sequence," Verbinski cuts to the chase and delves right into one of the film's most inspired action scenes, a frenzied pursuit by kill-crazy cannibalistic islanders.

Likewise, the ending felt like fair game to me. The story of Dead Man's Chest, in which Jack, Will and Elizabeth team up to steal away the secret of Davy Jones' magical powers, comes to a downbeat conclusion, but it's a conclusion nonetheless. Really, it's as if this movie ends and then we get a two-scene preview of the next movie at the end, a little pre-teaser teaser. If that next movie's as good as this one, I'll be sorry to see this series come to an end.