Another Portland Blog

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

At Wits End

[IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN PIRATES OF THE CARIBEAN: AT WORLD'S END, YOU PROBABLY SHOULDN'T READ THIS. AVAST! THAR BE SPOILERS AHEAD!]

Like most Americans, I saw the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie over the weekend. Maybe it was the cocktails I had beforehand but, about 20 minutes in, I could have used a magical compass and/or a flow chart to figure out what the hell was going on. There's enough characters, backstabbing, love triangles, subplots and random returns from the dead to fill a hundred Telemundo soap operas. After talking things over with others who have seen the movie, I still can't figure out...

...how Davey Jones hooked up with Calypso in the first place. Where does a pirate captain bag a sea goddess? At ARRRby's? In ARRRgentina? At the bar at ARRnie's House ARRR Puns? And what did he ever see in her in the first place, if all she really is an intangible spirit or a small army of crabs?

...where the, er, "magic rock crabs" came from and why they decided to haul Jack Sparrow's boat out of Davey Jone's locker.

...how escaping from the afterlife is as simple as tipping over a boat.

....why the producers decided to kill off the kraken. The kraken was at least 50% cooler than that Lord Beckett dork. Why couldn't the kraken have mysteriously returned from the dead in the movie? Everybody else did.

...Jack's a pirate lord? Since when? Who voted for him? How could a guy that daft ever get elected to high offi....nevermind. Still, since when do pirates need a governing body and/or labor union? Aren't they more like independent contractors?

...why Keith Richard's character shrunk his wife's head.

...if the "Pieces of Eight" notify the pirate lords of times of trouble, how did they find out about genocide in the Caribbean if Beckett had them all sitting in his office? If they weren't the real Pieces of Eight, why did the fake ones vibrate?

...is Davey Jones a monster, a pirate, a ghost, the Grim Reaper of the high seas and since when can he walk through prison bars?

...has there always been a Davey Jones? Who had the gig before him? Since when is tearing out your own heart and sticking it in a box a job requirement? Wasn't that a decision Jones made on his own to piss off Calypso and completely unrelated to his duties as a...whatever he is?

..whether that was Will Turner's kid that showed up after the credits or Jack's. Take note of the eye shadow. I'm thinking it was Jack's. After all, how could Turner expect Elizabeth stay celibate for ten years with Johnny Depp within arm's reach?