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.

Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (2005)

Director: Paul Schrader

Cast: Stellan Skarsgård, Gabriel Mann, Clara Bellar, Billy Crawford

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: Here’s a confession: For my money, Lankester Merrin (Skarsgård) is one of the least interesting characters in the original The Exorcist (1973), and for that matter, William Peter Blatty’s novel, as well. He wanders throughout the film’s opening scenes encountering vague portents of what is to come (or to the reading of a post-Spielbergian moving going public, accidentally unleashed Pazuzu). He then disappears for the nearly the entirety of the film, only to show up to be just about the only thing that the demon is apparently afraid of.

Hence, hinging a whole movie on the idea thrown around in the film that Merrin once engaged in a protracted exorcism, apparently of Pazuzu, is a bit of strain. Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) tried—seems like the wrong word, let’s go with “flailed”—to truck in the same area.

The history of this version is notably fraught. Exorcist: The Beginning (2004) resulted after this version was deemed as too dull and unexciting by the studio, which in turn was too stupid,  needlessly bloody, and fundamentally unwatchable, necessitating the release of this film which by all rights would have been otherwise lost…

And he’s another confession (priests will have that effect on people): I’m not sure I disagree with Warner Bros.’s assessment* that this version is a little turgid. It reckons with some serious themes like morality and faith, but it’s not reaching for anything that the original film didn’t very nearly perfect. Letting Renny Harlin have at the film likely wasn’t the right answer to remedy the film’s problems**.

*For me to ever even dream of admitting that Warner Bros. made the correct decision where a controversial sequel is truly a strange turn of events.

**I took a quick look at the plot summary for The Beginning and determined that it did sound pretty dumb. Just not The Heretic level of dumb.