Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)

Director: Gore Verbinski

Cast: Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Stellan Skarsgård

Have I Seen It Before: I remember it ending. I remember Keith Richards. I had to have been here.

Did I Like It: It’s the same plot-gorged drudgery that weighs down a lot of trilogy closers. So many people are switching sides, seemingly at the drop of a hat, that the screenwriters are seriously over-estimating our desire to keep up with these matters. That might be enough to treat simply as white noise, but the real let-down here is the complete surrender to CGI. Did any of us realize that the secret sauce of these movies up until this point was not Johnny Deep looking like a lunatic, but in fact that in a year beginning with the number 2 a major studio would have any interest in—or the negligence to—allowing a movie to shoot on the actual ocean. Those days are long since gone, even by the third movie. I mourn when I might actually watch the following films.

We’ve all spent some time re-evaluating Johnny Depp, and rightly so. He’s maybe/probably not guilty of everything he’s ever been accused of, but he does seem like a lot, and that he’s long since lost whatever spark made him unpredictable in these films, and legitimately great in stuff like Ed Wood (1994). You know who’s not talked about enough—especially since he was almost completely absent from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006)—in these films? Geoffrey Rush. Even when things were far better than they had any right being—in the first Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), all the way through any future films with which we might be threatened by this series, he never looks like he is having anything less than fun. These movies might have always been a bit beneath him, but he will never, ever let us know. I admire that much at least.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)

Director: Gore Verbinski

Cast: Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Stellan Skarsgård

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) was such a surprise experience, one couldn’t help but be far more curious about the sequel. Far more curious than anyone was about the original when it first came out. Throw in the decision to produce this and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007) together, a la Back to the Future - Part II (1989) and Back to the Future - Part III (1990), I was certainly sold.

Did I Like It: Even at the time, I couldn’t help but be disappointed. There was just something missing, and it is only at this viewing that I am making any kind of effort to decide why. The simplest explanation is that, while most of the creative team is back, Hans Zimmer has replaced Klaus Badelt as composer. Zimmer is one of the all-time great film composers, but there was a special magic to Badelt’s score that only re-appears here as quotes of Badelt’s motif. It is a mercenary job, and a great example of just how important a film’s score can be to its total success.

But I think the problems will go deeper than that, and it goes back to that quality of anticipation. Not only was I anticipating another entry in the series, the directors and shareholders of the Walt Disney Company were, too. Verbinski and company could no longer fly under the radar, and so we’re left with a film that—like so many other sequels both before and after it—that echo moments that tested well from the original. It’s less a movie one might ever be surprised for, and more of a cinematic interpretation of a marketing report. Had Dead Man’s Chest been the first film, we might have been mildly entertained, but we would have been a very far distance from saying that a film based on a theme park ride has any right to be this good.

The Ring (2002)

DIRECTOR: Gore Verbinski

CAST: Naomi Watts, Martin Henderson, Brian Cox, Amber Tamblyn

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE: Never.

DID I LIKE IT: It is an odd experience to take in a horror movie not in anticipation of some future podcast discussion, but this one has been a bit of a blind spot on my radar for a number of years.

The images are certainly evocative, I’ll give it that. And there’s a weird undercurrent of nostalgia to see a movie about a print journalist (Watts) fixated on a VHS tape. When she makes use of a payphone in at least one scene, it’s almost like watching a period piece.

But there’s one problem that may have as many as three explanations.

Those image might just be a bit too iconic. I’ve seen that little girl crawl her way out of that well so many times, there’s just no hope of surprise when I finally took it all in with context. I can imagine The Blair Witch Project (1999) will elicit similar response to the uninitiated, but this film doesn’t have anything resembling that earlier film’s unrelentingly unnerving last few minutes.

There may be just a bit too much bleakness in the film for the proceedings to ever really ramp up to genuine terror. Ari Aster has the same problem for me, although in his case it’s virtually impossible that misery porn buffet is not the filmmaker’s absolute intention.

On the other hand, my horror callus might be too rough for anything to ever properly hit a vein. It’s a reality that has to be confronted at some point. But then again there is the hope that the next film around the corner will manage to surprise. Unfortunately, this isn’t that film.

The whys are probably incidental. What we have here is a perfectly competently made film that failed to leave any kind of resonance, or draw out any kind of reflexive response from.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

Director: Gore Verbinski

Cast: Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightly

Have I Seen It Before?: Oh, sure. If you hadn’t seen it by fall of 2003, you were way behind the times. I even managed to stick around for the sequels, although for the life of me I can’t think of why I might have done this.

Did I like it?: I’ve often been struck by the difficulty to view a movie without measuring it against the context of the anemic sequels it spawned, or how we all feel about the star of the film. Given that this film legitimized the continuing of both long past the point we should have allowed, it’s hard not to reflexively judge the film as a mistake. Had this film tanked or not resonated with an audience, we’d probably not have to brace ourselves for more big budget missteps from Depp, or really have to hear about him at all.

But the film does resonate, though. The idea that a theme park ride could create such a singularly watchable film is further evidence that pretty much no one knows what they’re doing when they go about developing a big budget motion picture. The Lone Ranger (2013) should have been great on spec (and has much of the same creative talent), but wasn’t, and if anyone thought this would make great spectacle before the movie premiered, they would have been deemed a lunatic.

That’s because the movie is only occasionally interested in its source material. A shot here or there is taken from what visitors to Disney parks had seen for decades, but the movie is really about a character perpetually outmatched by the world around him, singularly possessed by a quest to regain the best parts of himself, using only his wits to win the day.

There’s also a love story with Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly (Natalie Portman?)… You know, for the kids.

If only the sequels could have understood what made the first film work. If only Depp could have avoided letting this level of movie stardom go to his head. Maybe we would have gotten another movie approaching the fun displayed here, but, as I indicated above, getting even one film this good was more than we could have hoped for.