It Be Time to Talk About The Pirate Films

 

As I sit here finally writing about the Pirates of the Caribbean films on September 19th, "Talk Like a Pirate Day"...

I'm realizing the down side of having posts planned out this far in advance for proper timing of them.

The main trilogy was done before I started blogging, and it's hard to talk about the other two without referencing back to the films I didn't have any posts to reference back to.

That made more sense in my head.

But these are fun! 

The movies are a good representation of why the ride is still my favorite Disney attraction. They're a mix of adventure, horror, suspense, humor plus a few other things, and they look fantastic.

The first film captured all that and gave us a bunch of amazing characters that caught our attention and made us want to follow them. 

One general note, most action movies, both the hero's and villain's themes are marches. The forces of good stride purposefully into battle or to rescue others, those on the dark side tend to be militaristic in nature, assembling huge armies.

The Pirate music is frequently waltzes. 

These are people dancing through life from one altercation to the next.

The Second and Third films had the same problem in every franchise I've ever seen where they filmed two of them together. (Except Jackson's Middle Earth pictures, likely because those had an outline in novel form.)

Dead Man's Chest had a lot of great stuff but also was set up heavy, and felt padded in places.

At World's End was very long but was also very full. I feel like if they made them one at a time, Chest would be tighter, and take on some of the stuff in World's End to make them both flow better. The finale of the trilogy is awesome and epic though. Plus it delivers on just about everything from the first two.

The fourth film, On Stranger Tides, showed that while Captain Jack is a fantastic trickster archetype, he probably shouldn't be the main character. Then again, it introduced the very cool Anjelica, and a dangerous villain in Blackbeard. Plus the interplay between Barbossa and Jack was fantastic in this one. It was nice seeing how their relationship as Captain and First Mate must have been before there was any bad blood between them.

Oh, and while Jack is a better man, albeit the personification of Chaotic Good (trickster!) Barbossa shows time and time again, he is a far better pirate and Captain. 

Dead Men Tell No Tales ignored far too many rules and precedents (including the timeline) of the original films. But, dang, it was great to see Will and Elizabeth together (briefly...we really need more of Elizabeth Turner, Pirate King) and that offset some of it. Jack and Barbossa got some more outstanding moments as well, both individually and together. Plus the idea of Hector's daughter and the Turners' son being Pirates The Next Generation could have worked.

Well...
Nine months of delaying this post, and that's all I've got.

Sometimes movies don't need to be analyzed, they simply need to be enjoyed.

Which I do with these, frequently.

"Now

Bring me that horizon

...really bad eggs. Drink up me harteys, yo ho!"