After three record-breaking weekends, it would appear the other shoe is never going to drop for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. The continued adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow and a whole lot of commotion in the Caribbean remained atop the North American movie box office for the third straight weekend, liberating $35 million from the film-going public and lifting its total to $321.7 million after just 17 days.
Chest has already passed the $305 million domestic total that 2003's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl accumulated in its entire theatrical run.
Despite a dismal 54% rating by the nation's film critics as collected on the Rotten Tomatoes site, Chest keeps rolling to record after record, and by now the critics can't claim they haven't had a chance to "warn" the public yet. The public just doesn't seem to care much about what they have to say - a few examples from the cinematocracy:
"Gone is much of the humor and originality of the first movie"; "Rum, monotony, and the lash"; "It's often unclear what's going on, beyond a zillion dollars of splashy effects washing over the screen"; "This Disney movie isn't a follow-up to the first Pirates of the Caribbean so much as its empty-calorie clone"; "Although there are memorable bits and pieces, the new Pirates of the Caribbean is a movie with no particular interest in coherence, economy or feeling."
And frankly, the critics aren't all wrong. Compared to the original Pirates, there is a lot more action and crazy CGI, less wit and character development, less nobility on display, and an even more complex but less clever plot involving Sparrow's soul-debt to Davy Jones (Bill Nighy), Will (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) and issues with the East India Trading Company, ex-Commodore Norrington (Jack Davenport) seeking to "get his life back," cannibals, a voodoo queen, a humorless kraken, and an undead monkey.
Article comments
1 - DJRadiohead
Ahoy, EO! Sorry. Had to do that. TWTWIM and I were bitterly disappointed in 2. We, like your family, loved the first. This one? Well, you diagnosed it beautifully. The plot was more complex but not more compelling and plot isn't what sold the first movie. The emphasis on effects and action took away from what made the first movie work: Johnny Depp. The scenes with the natives were useless and bloated a film that was too long.
I hope they get the mojo back with 3.
2 - John Guilfoil
Maybe the moral of the story is, movies don't have to be good...as long as there's pirates...
I was quoted in the Wall Street Journal on Friday talking about the extreme length of the movie, but Pirates has defied all critics and logic.
Good for them...sure, that's it...
3 - Kay Diego
This movie is cinematic excellence! It deserves to be performing as well as it is. Screw the critics - they don't make make up our minds for us, and the numbers prove it!
4 - Eric Olsen
there's the range of critical opinion in three comments!
5 - Mark Saleski
i haven't seen this movie...or the first one, for that matter.
...just thought that we needed a comment from the movie luddite section.
6 - Nancy
I suspect a lot of the charm of Pirates #1 was its element of surprise: you never knew what to expect from most of the elements, not least Capt. Jack, but even the Commodore was a surprise: a decent, honorable, likeable man, even tho at first glance you were sure he was going to be the heavy by being such a prig. Ditto the governor. Ditto the Girl. Ditto the villain - who'd'a thunk he had such wit ("we named the monkey 'Jack'") & was capable of restraint...even manners, on occasion. With this movie, that element of surprise is gone. We know what Jack is like, ditto the Girl, ditto the Hero, even ditto the monkey, so the best part of the edge is off #2, which meant the plot had to be even better, to take up the slack. IMO it suffices just fine. A little long, could have been a little tighter in the telling, but I liked it just fine.
As for critics, they're a bunch of self-satisfied, self-important, self-appointed airbags anyway, who don't seem to like anything unless it's Deep & Meaningful - and usually an art house or foreign film. As #3 says, critics don't make up my mind; if anything, whatever they say they dislike I figure I'll generally like. Poop on them.
7 - Eric Olsen
Mark, check out the first one - I'm almost positive you'd enjoy it.
Nancy, though I'm a bit less negative toward the professional critics than you, your assessment of the he movies and the differences between them is brilliance!