Some random thoughts about PoC III

[nenena]

I saw Pirates of the Caribbean 3 tonight. I can't sort out my thoughts about it properly yet, but I will say one thing:

Barbossa RULED this movie. He just did. The whole darn movie was basically two and a half hours of Barbossa being awesome, and that was just fine by me. It was about five minutes into the movie that I realized that Barbossa had suddenly catapulted himself to the status of my favorite character, and he stayed that way all the way through to the end.

Other non-spoilery bits:

Elizabeth was about 300% more awesome in this movie than in the previous two.

DOGGIE! Seeing the return of the shaggy dog literally made the entire movie for me. Those of you who know me know that I have this gigantic hang-up about dogs in movies... As in, if a dog dies, I bawl uncontrollably for hours. I mean, I bawled when a dog died toward the beginning of Jaws. So when I saw the end of PoC II and the poor dog's fate was left hanging in the air... Well, I was kind of beside myself. I've been angsting about that poor dog for an entire year, hoping that maybe his fate would be resolved in PoC II. And it was. And that made me very happy. Yay!

Okay, that's it for the non-spoilery bits. Maybe a longer post with spoilers later.

Oh, and one final thing: PoC III = More, and more egregious, retcons than X3 and Spiderman III combined. Okay, granted, it's kind of hard to top "Your uncle's REAL killer!!" and "She had multiple personality disorder this whole time!" as far as egregious retcons go. But Pirates comes darn close. Those of you who have seen or been spoiled for the movie, you probably know what I'm talking about.

Edit May 28th: Oh yeah, and icky, icky race issues. I heard - and I can't confirm where, but somehow I doubt it's not true - that the producers actually but Chow Yun Fat in yellow face because he didn't look "exotic" enough. And Tia Dalma especially was a big giant Magical Negro.. Well, at least she was until the very end. Without spoiling too much: In the end, instead of helping out the white characters, Tia Dalma basically gives them a giant epic supernatural "Fuck you!" Which was kind of awesome.

Comments

[aster-dw.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. Barbossa is just unbelievably awesome! I basically loved every second of his screen time. To be fair, even in the Dead Man's Chest, which I thoroughly enjoyed even before that, his surprise appearance just made my day, because he's...just very cool. His "rivalry" with Jack was also very amusing, and just highlighted the fact that you can compete with style.

As for retcons, I'm not too sure how this can be communicated w/o spoilers, but... are you talking about random new info on characters' motivations or the sheer weirdness of the Tia Dalma storyline? Come to think of it, there were so many that it is really kind of hard to choose.

[nenena.livejournal.com]

The Tia Dalma storyline, actually, I halfway predicted in the second movie. Well, I predicted her relationship with Davey Jones. I didn't predict her True Identity, which I would count as one of those pesky retcons, but...

The biggest one, for me, was that Jack Sparrow just happened to be one of the Nine Pirate Lords (WTF?) and that Barbossa just happened to be another one of the nine!

[aster-dw.livejournal.com]

Oh, I was talking only about the "identity" part of Tia Dalma storyline. The Davy Jones part was foreshadowed more than sufficiently.

Pirate lord stuff was silly (and kind of odd, because I thought the "lordships" were kind of spread out by regions, so having two Caribbean pirates was kind of illogical. I suppose, Jack has influential (and very menacing) relatives, though... That could help with being elected.
I was more retconned by the mere existence of the Pirate Council and the related stories. It was comedy gold, but it didn't exactly follow from anything in earlier films. But, the massive plot-twisting council scene has become a plot coupon for everything epic, so I shouldn't be surprised, really.

[nenena.livejournal.com]

Those were my thoughts exactly. The simple fact of the existence of the Pirate Council, and the fact that both Jack and Barbossa were members of it, was a liiiiiiittle bit hard to swallow considering that there had been no mention of any of this in the previous two films.

It also directly contradicts a lot of the backstory in the first movie. If Barbossa was a Pirate Lord before he signed up as Jack's first mate aboard the Black Pearl... What the hell? Would Jack really be stupid enough to accept a fellow Pirate Lord as his first mate, and NOT expect said Pirate Lord to lead a mutiny and steal the Pearl at the first opportunity? Of course, it's possible that Barbossa was named a Pirate Lord sometime during his brief stint as the Pearl's captain. If so, that's quite a feat, because it would mean that he impressed another Pirate Lord enough for said Pirate Lord to choose Barbossa as his successor. I wasn't aware that cursing oneself with a chest full of evil Aztec gold was all that impressive of a feat. ;)

[meiousei.livejournal.com]

Barbossa made me so happy in that movie.

Elizabeth was pretty awesome, but I think it's kind of a stretch that she goes from "pirate geek noblewoman" to "awesome expert swordswoman" in the space of what? Two years? Three? Maybe I would have believed it if she had been secretly taking fencing lessons from Will in the first movie, or something.

[starstruck272.livejournal.com]

Barbossa and Jack's rivalry is hilarious *___* Especially with the length of the looking glass? *snickers*

The only thing that annoyed me was the fact with Elizabeth and Sao Feng? It seemed so forced just to give her a status.. Meh.

[goldenflames.livejournal.com]

Pirates III has to be one of my favorite movies. The ending came kind of out of the blue, although, the idea of Orlando Bloom doing what he did is utterly romantic (I'm being vague so I don't give away the ending).

[nenena.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I adored the ending. I think it was absolutely perfect. And really, Will's story probably couldn't have ended any other way.

[novel-tea.livejournal.com]

Poor Will. :\ But it was nice to see a Disney movie ending that wasn't...you know...Disney-fied.

First Pirates movie still tops the others by far, but I did have fun at this one.