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Monday, 06 June 2011 19:46

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 4 when franchises loose their steam

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 It's been a good run kid... Famous words, if ever spoken, have never been so true to describe the latest venture of Jack Sparrow (sorry, Captain) and his merry crew of cut throats a thieves.

I came to discover the whole Pirate franchise in one glorious summer day in 2006. I went to the movies and wanted to see what all the hoopla of a new pirate movie that stared Johnny Depp was all about. Based on the Disneyland ride, and having heard the worst from the previous Disney ride movie - The Haunted Mansion - with the hauntingly unfunny Eddie Murphy I was in no way expecting anything out of it. Besides, I thought,  it's a  Wednesday at 5 PM I'll have the whole theater to myself... and oh my God... Once I entered it was packed. Something was going on. Well to make a 2 hour plus movie short - it was a success. Me and the theater laughed at the right cues, the story was fun and with every character working very well through out the film. It was well produced,  fun, big and loud. In short Pirate movies were back!

The success of the pirate movies when analyzing it comes down to two main things a very rich script, with a good plot engine,  characters that had real believable motivations and actors who played their parts to perfection. Maybe the only weakest link was Kiera Knightly but her beauty kinda evened things out.

Disney wasn't ignorant to this so Pirates 1, 2 and 3 came out. With of course 3 being the lesser of them, but in all entertaining. So we come to 2011 and mama (Disney) needs a brand new bag... so we got Pirates 4.

And here's where the trouble comes in. For some reason they spend a good amount of money (200 million, 100 million less than Pirates 3) but it didn't seem as grandiose or funny or inventive as the other three. Many said Pirates 3 had it's holes and some didn't like it at all. But it had great popcorn moments, like the pirates fortress and the maelstrom at the end sequence. But POC on Stranger Tides just didn't do it for me. Yes they had jungles, they had blue oceans, dark looking pirate ships but no real threat. They had mermaids... yeah large fishy girls with spiky teeth and Zombies that were just brutes with large swords, hardly both of them a big menace.

Johnny Depp is now almost comical in his Jack Sparrow rant and not as amusing as other times but the problem was not Depps girly pirate manerisms, it's that the movie wasn't as intriguing or at larger scope of ambition as the others. Big sea monsters, a Ocean goddess and evil curses are great for fantasy but a race movie to the fountain of youth??? - Yawn. And once you get there the end fizzles like stale cola - double yawn.

So we know what the pirates do and what they're about but as fans we want a great adventure not Jack sparrow running errands at the mall. We want monsters, crazy stuff that can snatch you from the trees and things that will eat your heart out while you're still alive. This movie compared to the others is just plain silly. I do really think they just made it so 10 years olds can see Jack Sparrow scream and fall in different ways. I know it's hard to make a great script but if you were able to squeeze out three semi decent action movies why didn't you do it on a fourth... Also of all the hot, fun and good actresses out there Penelope Cruz is probably in my top 10 - starting from the bottom of me list of 100. No real acting on her part (latinas in real life always get mad so acting furious is not a stretch for her) and not that she's a bad actress, she's just not cut out for popcorn movies. In spanish dramas she shines, in American comedies she doesn't. Also I was very surprised that a great talent like Ian Mcshane had such a small part in this movie. Small you say ? He was the main villian! I say small in the reference of his threat - He was supposed to be the meanest pirate of them all but the toughest intro we got was that his beard was smoking and his only real threat was a magical sword that can make the ships ropes choke people... ho -hum.

So I don't know if it was laziness, Bruckheimer's and Disney's greed to get this into production or other unseen reason but it just seemed rushed. I would have placed the writers in a room with all the starbucks they wanted and don't let them out until they got something really fascinating. Maybe even pulled a Steve Jobs ala iPhone and throw to the wall  the On Stranger Tides script with a proclamation "It's not ready yet". What ever it is it's not enough. We have been so bombarded with high marks in entertainment that sometimes we're trapped by our own success. The Pirates franchise is the same case.

If I was Bruckheimer I would take a breather, let the franchise rest a couple of years and work on a nice script for say 2015 and wow everyone back before people get bored of Jack Sparrow and loose the franchise for ever... or they could do a reboot with a teen Jack Sparrow... oh wait - bad idea!!!

Read 1601 times Last modified on Wednesday, 05 August 2015 16:16
Published in Front Page Item - old
Mark Sevi

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