Pirate rewind
The main problem with sequels, particularly those in the middle of an Actual Trilogy (one part then a bigger sequel cut in half) is trying to figure out what it was in the first film that worked, that gave it the boost which made your terrifying opportunity possible. Some filmmakers keep it together (Back To The Future), some completely lose the plot (Matrix, of course).
Gore Verbinski has gotten around this by making Dead Man’s Chest an extended 12″ remix of the first Pirates of the Carribbean film. The fundamental groove remains the same, though it would appear that we may have something of a breakdown on the er, B-Side. The new elements - Voodoo, Cthuhloid monsters, David Schofield as a particularly nasty representative of the East India Trading Company - flourish. And some of the old hooks are polished in the mix (was Jack Davenport really this good as the second villain in the original?). Fights, effects, the central three characters, all build on the original, suggesting that the first step was recognising it as one of the best put-together action films of the last twenty years. A solid foundation, not the sort of thing that you could just chuck, eg, Chow Yun-Fat into and hope for the best.
In other news, Chow Yun-Fat’s in the next one.
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FT's pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør on August 12th, 2006
i am annoyed i forgot BttF3 was on — i only saw the train stuff at the end
(my sorry plan was to write up the trilogy from a CAMPAIGN FOR REAL TIME perpective)
xyzzzz__ on August 12th, 2006
“Some filmmakers keep it together (Back To The Future)”
A friend of mine would disagree simply bcz its a time-travel movie and he’d go one forever and ever about how time-travel doesn’t exist and its impossibility of getting any good movie out of this subject etc etc. *sigh*
FT's Pete Baran on August 14th, 2006
So the ends of the earth = China then!
DV on August 14th, 2006
I need to undergo some kind of psychiatric treatment to see what is holding me back from going to this film, as it plainly has all the elements of the second greatest film ever made (the greatest being the third one, assuming they don’t fuck it up, as it will have Chow Yun Fat in it).
FT's Steve Mannion on August 14th, 2006
A lot of people thought BTTF2 was rubbish/losing the plot, didn’t they?
OTOH I really really like Matrix Reloaded, and not just to be contrary - honest.
Really though I have only recently adopted this somewhat obvious view that the middle act is always the most interesting, even if not always the ‘best’ film of a trilogy.
Andrew Farrell on October 5th, 2006
The second has the benefit that it doesn’t have to have a happy ending, is the most striking feature to me.