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).