Pirates: On Stranger(er) Tides

[Magus]

I have no idea if this actually is based on the bestselling book by Tim Powers. I've had a hard time finding an affordable copy and the credits decided to say "Suggested by" the novel as opposed to based on. So I'm actually guess that the comparisons go as far as having Blackbeard, zombies, and the Fountain of Youth in common and that's probably it...

So anyway! I found this film to be pretty exciting and entertaining. I know, I know. Everybody on the internet hated it. Well, guess what: everybody on the internet hates everything. Yes, it is disjointed. Yes, character motivations don't make a lot of sense. BUT there are some really cool action sequences and fantastical elements occurring. I liked it.

Heck, there was a flamethrower on the front of Blackbeard's ship. I can forgive a lot of problems with the plot if I get stuff like that.

This is easily the best Pirates movie since the first Pirates movie. Take that as you will, of course, but there was something about the plot of the third one especially that was so completely confusing I was very quickly befuddled. At least this film never reaches that level of confusion.

Jack Sparrow seems to be even more...mincing than usual in this movie. I think there was some point in time where the character morphed from being a riff on Keith Richards to actually being an actual homosexual character? I mean, some of the lines with that Penelope Cruz character kind of point to this, since he implies that sleeping with her is something he wouldn't do ever in a million years ("I'm pregnant with your child!" "I don't remember that!" "You were drunk!" "I've never been that drunk, love"). If so, I'm not sure that Jack Sparrow brings homosexual characters to some new height, but at least there are gay pirates in our entertainment culture now. There weren't before, after all (uh, notwithstanding Pirates of Penzance, I suppose...)

If he is still just supposed to be...Keith Richards-y, I think they are doing it wrong, but hell, it's Johnny Depp's character at this point, he must be the best at figuring out what the hell he's supposed to be channeling.

One possibly valid criticism of this film is that Sparrow is now the character we are expected to relate to, as opposed to the straight-laced Will, with all the other characters being the odd or zany ones. Which means that comparatively the other characters are now odd and zany as hell. It's not a bad thing, but it's not a great thing, either. They need another "normal" character in the film for us to root for and play the straight man to Sparrow's zaniness (the young missionary character in this movie made a good attempt, but seeing as how his storyline kind of...disappeared, I'm not really sure now that he actually was the character we were supposed to relate to? Another confusing aspect of the film that detracts from it).

[rpgdemon]

I saw it today, and thought it was pretty decent. Not great, but I liked it.

I think the line that Jack said was in regards to being too drunk to remember something, not the act itself.

[Mondt]

Heck, there was a flamethrower on the front of Blackbeard's ship.I giggled like a little girl at this.

Not exaggerating.

[Melfice]

I think that bit where Sparrow said "I've never been that drunk, love." just means that he's built up a great resistance to alcohol at that point.
He can get drunk, but never so drunk as to do stuff he'd normally not do.

Also, I think Sparrow is more likely to be bi-sexual (which is still gay, for all points and purposes), since he DID fall in love with Elizabeth Swann in the second film(and he had "stirrings" for Cruz's character, if you've remember).

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Haven't seent he movie by why would you put a flamethrower on the FRONT of your ship. That's ridiculous. To be in range of anything you will be so close you won't be able to avoid ramming into them and then not only do you have ram damage you have, Oh shit now I'm on fire too damage.

[Melfice]

Yeah, but putting fuses in your beard is an accident waiting to happen as well, and I don't see you complaining about that either. (Blackbeard)

Anyway, since you've not seen the film, I'll just tell you that it's no problem for Blackbeard's ship and leave it at that.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

There is no way I'm going to see this film so I demand a full mechanistic drawing of how a flamethrower on the front of the ship works.
And would it even fling flame that well in the same direction you are going? There all kinds of logistics issues there.

[Melfice]

Blackbeard can directly control every aspect of his ship with his sword. Don't question it in a film series where you have squid-men (Davy Jones) and a literal skeleton crew (first film).

So, as far as the ramming goes, Blackbeard simply puts the ship in a full stop and/or reverse.

As far as the actual workings of the flamethrower... use your imagination. Again, in a series where the kraken and mermaids actually exist.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I can accept skeleton crews and ancient curses come true but I demand realistic chemical engineering!

[Shyria Dracnoir]

There is no way I'm going to see this film so I demand a full mechanistic drawing of how a flamethrower on the front of the ship works.
And would it even fling flame that well in the same direction you are going? There all kinds of logistics issues there.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v206/OmartheFalcon/SCA/Documentation/flamethrower-greek-fire.jpg

The Greeks figured this out a long time ago, Smarty. It doesn't matter how many cannon, bullets, or arrows the other guy can get in you at that range, fire is an automatic death sentence for an enemy ship. The sails go up, the rigging go up, the tar sealing the planks goes up, and god help you if it gets to the gunpowder armory and booze stocks.

[Lumenskir]

The Greeks figured this out a long time ago, Smarty. It doesn't matter how many cannon, bullets, or arrows the other guy can get in you at that range, fire is an automatic death sentence for an enemy ship. The sails go up, the rigging go up, the tar sealing the planks goes up, and god help you if it gets to the gunpowder armory and booze stocks.
No, pretty sure he realizes this, hence why he's baffled at why you'd put that same destructive power in a place where it can easily backfire on you. Like, literally. Even your own drawing has the fire at the rear end.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

"Greek fire" wasn't even usedby the Greeks but by the Byzantines. And they tend to have handheld tubes so they could move it around to the best place to use it.
Ohand it was also a pretty pathetic weapon, it didn't really work except in perfect weather conditions and the enemy coming real close to you but somehow not killing you. Once the Muslims worked out how it work (ie after the first few time) it did fuck all. These problems are amplified massively by placing it on the front of the ship.

Just put a massive ram on front of your ship. Saves fuel, is more effective.

[Magus]

Blackbeard appears to be a wizard (or his sword is magic, anyway), he can control his ship and others by just using his will, controls zombies, even has a scene with a voodoo doll it probably isn't that big of a deal to control the flames his ship shoots out to prevent it from burning him. Or it is magic fire. Or else the Queen Anne's Revenge has special fireproofing...stuff. Which is also magical somehow.

As for exactly how it works, it fires two big flames out of two tubes near the waterline on the front bow of the ship. That's pretty much all that is explained about it, so I'd jot this up as not being "realistic", just cool. He even straight up sails straight forward while firing it and it still maintains a steady stream of fire in the forward direction with no backwash, so...wizardry.

[synkr0nized]

There were a lot of things wrong with this film. This review is pretty fair in my opinion (http://www.somethingawful.com/d/current-movie-reviews/pirates-stranger-tides.php). The author, like me, seems to have enjoyed the few Barbosa/Jack moments we got and some of the action but similarly felt the movie never really knew what it wanted to be or do.

A friend of mine posted to FB during the movie, "Well I think a good word for that is souless." I was hesitant to be that harsh at first, but I think that's a little fair, as well, given the performances we saw and the focus on a fairly bland Jack.


However it was easy to enjoy it more than the third movie, but I am not sure if that's a road worth going down in this thread.

[Fifthfiend]

I feel like the people who make these movies never understood at all why the first one was so good, which is amazing because it's not really difficult to understand at all.

[rpgdemon]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v206/OmartheFalcon/SCA/Documentation/flamethrower-greek-fire.jpg

The Greeks figured this out a long time ago, Smarty. It doesn't matter how many cannon, bullets, or arrows the other guy can get in you at that range, fire is an automatic death sentence for an enemy ship. The sails go up, the rigging go up, the tar sealing the planks goes up, and god help you if it gets to the gunpowder armory and booze stocks.

That dude with the fire cannon looks so smug.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

There's a reason why Greek Fire was such a feared weapon and kinda revered (for lack of a better word) in history's weaponry tech, for the very above reason. They could arc the burning liquid a fair distance with a clever bellows system. Also burned on the surface of the water..which incidentally made it that much more dangerous since it floated, spread, and burned for a pretty good length of time.

Even used a little hand held thingy kinda like a caulking gun..but with liquid burning death. Hell, the Chinese did this too. They also had bamboo tube flamethrowers, which they used to devastating effect. The longshort: flamethrowers have been around for a longass time, both on land and sea.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

It was not aparticularly feared weapon at all. It only stayed around in culture because everyone is like "That is soo cool". While it would mess your shit up it was fairly easy to avoid and again it only worked when the weather played ball.
Muslims didn't really give a shit, they were too busy kicking the shit out of the byzantines pretty much all over the park.

[Archbio]

They need another "normal" character in the film for us to root for and play the straight man to Sparrow's zaniness

See, I haven't seen this film yet, but I can't imagine sharing that impression. I mean, as afar as lamenting Will Turner's loss goes; to me he was just the perfect placeholder character, and not something I'd want to see more of.

As long as the characters aren't all zany in the same way, of course.

---

Muslims didn't really give a shit, they were too busy kicking the shit out of the byzantines pretty much all over the park.

Wikipedia has an Effectiveness and Countermeasures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire#Effectiveness_and_countermeasures) section:

Although the destructiveness of Greek fire is indisputable, it should not be seen as some sort of "wonder weapon", nor did it make the Byzantine navy invincible. It was not, in the words of naval historian John Pryor, a "ship-killer" comparable to the naval ram, which by then had fallen out of use. While Greek fire remained a potent weapon, its limitations were significant when compared to more traditional forms of artillery: in its siphon-deployed version, it had a limited range, and it could be used safely only in a calm sea and with favourable wind conditions. The enemy Muslim navies eventually adapted themselves to it, by staying out of its effective range and devising methods of protection such as felt or hides soaked in vinegar.

Certainly doesn't sound like "the Muslims didn't give a shit" and had an immediate response that neutralized the weapon's effectiveness to the point where it was inconsequential.

And Wikipedia also notes that "it provided a technological advantage, and was responsible for many key Byzantine military victories, most notably the salvation of Constantinople from two Arab sieges, thus securing the Empire's survival." Which seems to be quoting from this article. (http://www.reference-global.com/doi/abs/10.1515/byzs.1977.70.1.91) I mean it's a bit of a vaguely sourced claim, but it seems as though the general idea is that they used it because it kind of worked for a while. Imagine that.

The timely appearance of Greek Fire undoubtedly contributed to Byzantine naval victories, which saved the City from capture in the sieges begun in 674 and 717, and from the threat of a similar siege in 941.

This statement, in an article written partly by this guy (http://www.princeton.edu/history/people/display_person.xml?netid=jhaldon) (who is apparently a specialist on Byzantium and wrote Warfare, state and society in the Byzantine world, 565-1204 (London 1999),) mentions the import of Greek Fire as a factor almost as a given before the article apparently moves on to questions about specifics of the weapon itself.

It seems a far cry from "it was also a pretty pathetic weapon," so it's probably not the academic consensus on that or anything, if there's one.

Edit: But yes, putting a flamethrower to the front of a wooden ship is probably a problem that can only solved through the application of infernal magicks such as Ian McShane's.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I'm going to be nice and just give you clue-an article written in 1977 before a good deal of arab primary sources were published/made available is pretty much worthless on this topic as is an article dealing with mostly European accounts which were pretty much all made up and hearsay. According to those accounts Muslim armies were populated by wizards and I'm reasonably sure that is not the case.

[Archbio]

However it was easy to enjoy it more than the third movie, but I am not sure if that's a road worth going down in this thread.

Well, as a point of comparison, a pirate movie centered around a big naval battle in which there's no big naval battle is probably not very useful, being so low on any scale.

---

I'm going to be nice and just give you clue-an article written in 1977 before a good deal of arab primary sources were published/made available is pretty much worthless on this topic as is an article dealing with mostly European accounts which were pretty much all made up and hearsay. According to those accounts Muslim armies were populated by wizards and I'm reasonably sure that is not the case.

Yes, I'm sure that John Haldon, professor of Byzantine History and Hellenic Studies at Princeton University wrote articles taking European sources about Byzantine History at face value to the point that he could have reported ludicrous things such as wizards as facts. Because is was 1977, and there were Giants in those days.

The other section of Wikipedia I've cited (the one that says that Muslim navies eventually adapted to the weapon, implying it took some time and creditting it with some effectiveness,) on the other hand, is pulled from a different work: Pryor, John H.; Jeffreys, Elizabeth M. (2006), The Age of the ??????: The Byzantine Navy ca. 500–1204, Brill Academic.

Here's an article from 1992, Secrecy, Technology and War: Greek Fire and the Defense of Byzantium, 678-1204, (http://www.jstor.org/pss/3106585) that also appears to credit naval siege breaking effect to Greek Fire, same as the other article.

Now, I'm sure that there's some primary sources that were made available for the first time about Byzantine/Muslim wars between 1992 and now. So I'm just going to say that I'm not going to take your word for it that among those there happens to be material that establishes "Greek Fire was a pathetic weapon" as incontrovertible fact, contradicting every bit of work expressing a different view before that.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

It's more that you do this everytime, you come into something you know nothing about and I have to go dig up all my references from undergrad days and it takes fucking forever and you you do it in evrey single topic I post in and you never read my responses, you never read my sources, you always strawman my arguments and this time I can't be fucked. But yes, we have a lot more sources since the 70s, including ones which show that Muslims had their own forms of Greek fire but they decided to not to use it because they didn't find it effective enough to be worth the effort.
We have sources showing that Greek fire was only used in a handful of battles across a 1000 year period because as I stated it could only be used in highly specified conditions.
We didn't have all these sources in the 70s. No way he can make accurate conclusions. It doesn't matter who the person is, the information is simply not there.
That later quotation doesn't contradict what I said. Again you are strawmanning my argument. Yes of course Muslim navies adapted to Greek fire- read my first post- I said greek fire was incredibly effective when they didn't know it was coming. I said the first few times it was used it basically wiped out the Muslim navy. But pretty much all later accounts of it only refer to these few battles because after that the Muslim navies knew how to counter it and once you knew that it wasn't that dangerous. It wasn't like a cannon, even if you know how cannons work on a ship its hard to shut them down. Greek fire you attack at theright angles, you attack on stormy days, you make your ship fire-repellant it is worthless.

This is all I have to say on the topic.

[Marc v4.0]

Why didn't they just use lasers like civilized savages

[Archbio]

Laser is a really pathetic weapon. After you save the planet a couple of times with it, they just invent Holtzman generators, while not giving a shit. Not to mention sandworms.

Edit: That's a sarcastic metaphor for the "Greek Fire was a pathetic weapon" thing, obviously. My thinking is that secret weapons don't count as pathetic if they save the capital city of your empire more than once, and that over the span of several generations. Which is something both the 1977 and 1992 sources I've provided agree on.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

The problem with lasers is more that the most powerful ones are invisible. Hard to aim.

[Lumenskir]

I feel like the people who make these movies never understood at all why the first one was so good, which is amazing because it's not really difficult to understand at all.
It's the Matrix effect. You give someone two automatic sequels to a hit and they start to believe that the first one was something more special than it actually was, and then they feel like the sequels have to continually top it while building up the 'mythos' no matter how retarded it gets.

The worst part is that the more you openly insult your audience with your ridiculously convoluted for its own sake plot, the more they'll bunker down and defend it as something worthy of respect. (See, e.g., Anybody who quotes these words and attempts to 'explain' how Pirates 2 + 3 make any sort of sense/had actual stories).

[Ryanderman]

I enjoyed Pirates 2 & 3, and expect I'll enjoy this one. Sure the plots were overly convoluted for no good reason, but I was able to follow them fine (except what, exactly, Calypso was trying to accomplish there, and the point of her at all. That will forever defy all logic and rationalization)

I think though, the majority of my fondness for these movies comes from the grin I wear on my face all through them, due to Hans Zimmer's sound track.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

The problem with the pirates sequels is that they overdid Jack (not that I particularly liked him in the first movie but I can see how he is the draw). He worked in the first one because he wasn't the main star, he could just do what the shit he wanted and it didn't really matter. But when you make the zany charaacter more and more prominent it means either they have to calm down a bit to do plot necessaryt hings or your plot goes all over the place.
As I understand it he is even more prominent in this which could cause more problems.

[Archbio]

It's the Matrix effect.

Do the Pirate sequels actually contradict the basic premise of the original in order to function, though? What afflicts them actually seems like a much more benign sequel syndrome: they're just a poor imitation of the first one.

Or are am I missing something about them?

[Fifthfiend]

I think you can reasonably use the same name even if the sequels weren't quite the same kind of bad.

Like a movie with two totally fantastic sequels could be referred to via the "Back to the Future Effect" even if they didn't involve, say... Christopher Lloyd.

edit: whatever the fuck that scene was with Jack and the boat full of crabs in the third one, was at least as terrible and full of itself in its own piratey way as anything in Matrix 2/3.

edit: I mean shit the fights at the end of Pirates 3 / Revolutions were disappointing in pretty much the exact same way, except with ships instead of Smiths!

[Archbio]

See, other people who've seen the third (I had to struggle with myself not to use another word, there) Pirates movie seem to sometimes imply that there was an actual fight at the end of it, but I really just recall only two ships going at it in a whirlpool while others just sit at the horizon.

Maybe the movie was so bad I was hallucinating.

Also: I thought the crabs worked better than the cannibals in the second one. However, maybe this new one can do without questionable cartoon interludes altogether.

[Fifthfiend]

See, other people who've seen the third (I had to struggle with myself not to use another word, there) Pirates movie seem to sometimes imply that there was an actual fight at the end of it, but I really just recall only two ships going at it in a whirlpool while others just sit at the horizon.


Did you not see the end of Revolutions?

...not that I'd blame you.

[Archbio]

I think I blanked out of my memory the part with the many Smiths but only one of them fights and went straight with the other fight of the movie: the one where the squiddidlies assault Zion repetitively. You're right that the former is actually bad just like the Pirates one is bad, while the latter is bad in its own special way. And I don't mean it's bad because EMPs don't quite work like a Greek Fire analogue in the siege of Zion. Because that would be weird.

In a sense, maybe I'd blame less Matrix Revolutions for the let down because they might have painted themselves in a corner with Neo's fluctuating power levels and the groundbreaking fight scene stuff that the scene would have needed for them to come up with so it would be done right.

While Pirates had ships all along and I'm sure the filmmakers know how ships move and fight. They just needed to put a few of them together at the same time, the lousy bums.

[Magus]

I remember thinking that I liked the second Pirates movie back when it came out, but then realized that since it and the third were inextricably linked plotwise my enthusiasm was somewhat lessened.

Basically the films should be stand-alone like the first and now this one if they are going to keep making them.

[Krylo]

I don't remember anything about any of the Pirates movies after the Will/Jack/Whazzisname the drunk ex-admiral or whatever fight in the water wheel.

I think I've blacked out the entirety of the third one.

Though they were still better than the matrix sequels.

[Fifthfiend]

While Pirates had ships all along and I'm sure the filmmakers know how ships move and fight. They just needed to put a few of them together at the same time, the lousy bums.

I guess this could maybe be explained based on budget but honestly I don't even think anyone can seriously claim that the Pirates didn't, or that anyone expected they wouldn't, make back enough to justify the expense.

[Melfice]

Meh.
Good movies, bad movies.

I only measure in entertaining or non-entertaining movies. A good movie can be entirely non-entertaining and vice-versa, where a bad movie can be highly entertaining.

The entire Pirates series is entertaining to me.