Solid Block of Ise

2007 was the year of the triples. Three major franchises were squirting out their third installments; Pirates of the Caribbean, Shrek and Spider-man was scheduled for the third time around the flagpole.

I’ve seen all three now, and boy… what a waste of time and money. Of the three, the Shrek-one was the least crappy even though it failed to be as funny and fresh as the previous two. At least it was funny and exciting part-ways through.

But the others didn’t have that benefit. I was very doubtful when bad reviews started pouring in about how the third movie featuring Peter Parker was essentially filtered crap. How could it be? It was the same director, same actors, same everything as the two previous ones - and those two were awesome. It wasn’t until I’d seen it that I agreed with most others. It just wasn’t very good. There were too many villains, too much plodding. The movie spread itself out very thin and everyone in it had to fight for screentime. As someone who had read the comics I felt somewhat cheated about the extreme over-simplification of the black suit/venom-subplot. Sure, I also agree with Ann-Sofie who said that for someone who hadn’t read the comics it didn’t matter.

Even so, I felt that it was a thin movie in every department except an overload of special effects.

Which brings me to the really big disappointment: the third Pirates of the Caribbean-movie, with the subtitle “At Worlds End”. If anyone can be called a waste of time combined with an overload of special effects it’s this movie. Golly gee, It’s been three days and I still cannot believe what a turd that thing was.

The first POTC was great fun. It brought back everything that was great and silly with the old swashbucklers of the 30’s and combined it with modern special effects. The characters were fun, fresh, and even though there were some superstitious stuff this was mostly a traditional pirates-and-swords affair. I had a blast with it, and I’ve seen it several times.

The second one expanded on the first, and started the descent into crapitude with the introduction of a confusing supernatural plot. I got a huge kick out of Davy Jones, and Bill Nighy was exellent in that part. Johnny Depp was crazy as ever. The plot was, well, acceptable and even though it got a little weird at times I still thought it was a decently enjoyable affair.

Oy vey. The third one. Again, I’d read some really harsh reviews when it opened but I assumed that there was some personal vendetta from the reviewers and that they were exaggerating. I was wrong. It was exactly as bad as they said it was. In fact, in my opinion it was even worse.

The third movie featuring Johnny Depp in pirate/drag-outfit is a complete shipwreck, pun intended. Somewhere along the line whatever shred was left of the story got lost in a psychotic explosion of supernatural gods and extremely confusing relationships between everyone and everything involved in it. The tip of this crazy iceberg for me was when Keith Richards sits down in a chair, in full pirate-regalia and STARTS STRUMMING A GUITAR. It was bad enough that he even went through with his little cameo, and even though I’m a bit impressed with him actually managing to say his lines I still say that GOOD GOD MAN, SHOW A LITTLE DIGNITY.

The first half of the film is like having your intestines dragged out of your body by an old dog while you’re still alive and conscious; It’s slow, it’s painful, and somehow it’s extremely boring at the same time. I mean, what was the reason behind having multiple Johnny Depps chasing peanuts and dragging ships through a white desert?

The second half of the film loses the viewer in some strange maelstrom of absurdity, with storms and jamaican goddesses and half-man-half-octopus-creatures screaming, shouting, dying and doing a hell of a lot of handwaving while trying to provoke anything more than a yawn from the viewer. The ending didn’t come soon enough for me, and the only good thing was that the viewing had to be interrupted by phonecalls from actual people. Thankfully, otherwise I might not have managed the onslaught of watching At Worlds End.

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