Spidey vs Pirates I

I shall be continuing some musings on ancient warfare, but elsewhere.

In this post, I'm going to be a bit ambitious and seek to provide a short review on two movies, and compare them. These two movies are Spiderman III and Pirates of the Caribbean III.

Mandatory Warning: Spoilers ahead. But I imagine you'll read on anyway, right?...

First, Pirates. In a nutshell, one of the most disappointing movies I've seen. The first movie was clever and interesting; the sequel didn't really live up to the first, but had still managed to tell a decent story. The only thing even vaguely pleasant about the third movie were the sunny Caribbean beachlines.

The movie played like a pirate-version of a Greek myth. There were moments of pointless randomness (such as the Pearl run by a crew of Jacks ... even this had potential for far more humor than it had, but the producers added the macabre element of purely pointless shootings and stabbings, and ruined both the scene and the idea). There were a lot of "what in the world?!" moments (did Calypso really have to be in the movie at all? and why did she disintegrate into crabs instead of doing something a bit more spectacular, like calling down tornadoes? is there a point to killing off rather important characters right and left? and why on earth did they transform Will into an undead, inevitably brutal captain of a cursed ship? oooh, my head ...). There were moments of completely unneeded risque "humor."

The tone of the worst things about this movie were set in the very first scene ... hundreds of people hanged, culminating in the hanging of a small boy. From scene one, the directors broke one of the primary rules for movies which are supposed to be entertaining and humorous: never kill senselessly, and never kill children! Scenes depicting pointless killing are "appropriate" in movies like Schindler's List, where they are painted as horrible crimes and the mood of the movie is meant to be solemn and grim. The same kind of killing is not appropriate for a Pirates movie!
The world of the third Pirates is one in which good and evil do not exist, frankly (or else the message is that everyone's evil, but there are some evil people you can like, and others your supposed to hate ...). "Hero" characters murder senselessly and cruelly. Will's dad, who in one scene evokes sympathy, in another scene cuts down Norrington in cold blood. Sau Fang, who from the trailers and "hype" from the movie is apparently a "good" guy, coldbloodedly kills whoever he wants and attempts rape. Davy Jones is often painted as a "tragic" character who your supposed to both detest and pity. Will, who began in the first movie as one of the more noble characters, degenerates into a selfish, vengeful lout in this film, and ends up taking Davy Jones' place as the harvester of sailor's souls. Jack shoots and stabs "himself" without too much thought (seeing as its just hallucination, its not much of a crime, but its hard to laugh at someone being stabbed because he didn't tie a rope right). Will and Elizabeth are angry with each other most of the movie, then have a rather pathetically ridiculous wedding in the middle of a war zone - its not so much a warm "true love" moment as its a choreographed sword fight ending in a kiss. Ugh.

At the end of the movie, there really isn't any useful lesson learned, no action taken that seems admirable and noble, no redemptive characters ... just a group of bad guys that get gruesomely killed, and a group of "good" guys (and girl) that managed to survive the movie, usually by backstabbing (literally), lies, brute force, betraying others, and getting to the end regardless of the means.

This ain't no Christmas movie. It actually ain't much of a movie at all. I rarely go away from a theater utterly disappointed with a movie (The Fountain was another recent one), but Pirates managed to seize this (dis)honor.

The next post will deal with Spiderman, and in a more favorable light ...