Pirates of the Carribean 2
August 16th, 2006 at 17:34
Last night I went to see Pirates of the Carribean 2 with JD, Nikki and Craig. I was expecting it to be terrible for the following reasons:
- Its a Disney film
- Its a kids film
- My sister who’s seen it said that it is rubbish
- My dad claimed that it is rubbish
- I’m an intelligent student and not a slack jawed moron.
- I havn’t seen the first film
Surprisingly, I was only half right.
I’ll start with the positives: the special effects were spectacular. It was genuinely impossible to tell what was CG and what wasn’t- although common sense dictates that huge tentacles obviously wern’t created by Jim Henderson. The main bad guy, who has a face with tentacles on, is entirely computer generated. Spectacular.
There’s also some impressive sequences involving Johnny Depp’s character pole vaulting across a large gorge. The budget must have been huge, as practically every shot must have had some form of expensive post-production, even if it was just keying in a CG ship.
Unfortunately, the plot doesn’t live up to this. It’s something about a thing, that does something, leading to something else. Basically some faux-colonial bollocks and monster pirates, who despite being a band of ugly monsters who have a ship that works underwater and answer to no one, they seem to respect maritime ettiquette and speak like pirates.
I’m sure there was some historical inaccuracies too. I mean, aside from the pirates, magic and giant tentacles. I might be wrong, but didn’t the East India Trading Company, erm, operate in India?
I think my main problem with it is that I want to hate this film more than I did. Since the first film, I’ve made a point of complaining about the franchise, primarily to piss off my friends. I’m not a massive fan of glorifying pirates in films- back in the day, they were essentially terrorists. Yes, they might have a hilarious repertoire of catchphrases and symbolism, but so do Al Quaeda. Instead of “Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum”, its “Death to the infidel”, and instead of walking the plank they car bomb a nightclub. I think I’ve said it before: in 200 years time, will terrorists of today be suitable characters for childrens films?
Yeah, so overall, and I say this through gritted teeth, it wasn’t bad. Maybe this is because I had such low expectations?
Snakes on a Plane is going to blow it out of the water.
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