Pirate of the Caribbean, parts 2 and 3, really need to be taken together as a single story in order to best understand them. I'm not going to address Pirates 1, The Curse of the Black Pearl, because Todd Alcott already did an excellent analysis of it here, but also because the story moves so far away from it's beginnings in the next two movies.
Pirates 2, Dead Man's Chest, starts out not long after Curse of the Black Pearl. Elizabeth and Will are getting married, Jack is off pirating, and Norrington is missing in action. The drama starts immediately as, just before Elizabeth and Will's wedding, a mysterious man comes to arrest the pair, as well as Commodore Norrington who, the governor tells us, has resigned his post and vanished.
The man we meet, Cutler-Becket, is a strange man. On the one hand he seems to be a government official. He comes carrying warrants, he commands soldiers, he's dressed as a military man. But he states that he's working for the East India Trading Company. I'm not familiar with the history of the British Empire in the Caribbean, but the East India Company seems to be a quasi-governmental institution which gives it's employees government level power, without government level restrictions on it's use. This is a theme we'll see mentioned here and there in these two movies. It's a dangerous institution, and seems to act only for it's own benefit. At any rate, Becket releases Will with the promise of a full pardon in exchange for finding Jack Sparrow, and trading for the compass we first saw in Curse of the Black Pearl. He leaves immediately.
Now we see Jack Sparrow, escaping, via coffin, a dangerous island that looks to be a prison of some kind. His crew is getting antsy. They'd endured storms and attacks, with no treasure to show for it. Jack has been in this position before, when he was last captain of the Black Pearl, and was mutinied against. He quells the rebellion in his crew, and sets about finding out what his next step is. He's accomplished his first, finding a drawing of a key, but doesn't seem to know what to do next. His compass is no help, changing direction whenever he looks at it. We'll find out later that the compass points in whatever direction of what the holder really wants. The reason it isn't working for Jack is because he does not know what he wants. This asks the question, why? Why doesn't Jack know what he wants? We'll come back to that question. But it's about now that Jack finds out he's being hunted by Davey Jones, and an old friend, Will's dad Boostrap Bill, is working for him. This leads Jack running panicked, to the first island he comes to, an island of cannibals.
Now, this scene on the island is fascinating. It's beautiful, adventurous, dangerous, and exciting. It's wonderful to see, but what actually happens here? From a plot and a story perspective, not much. Jack loses half his crew, but conveniently enough the half that seemed to want to mutiny, and Will finds them and gets onboard the Black Pearl. I could write another post about this scene on it's own, but I'm more interested in why it was included in the movie in the first place. There's a lot here that we simply don't understand. Why was Jack made the chief? In the first film, before Jack and Elizabeth meet, he's talking to some soldiers, and he mentions that he's made chief of some group. Now here we see him actually chief. What are the odds that Jack becomes chief of two aboriginal tribes? We never find out how, or how Jack learned their language, or what happened when the crew explored the island. We do quickly see Will find them, and rescue the crew, giving Jack time to escape as well.
This scene could have been done other ways. Will could have found the ship at Tortuga, much as Elizabeth would later. The crew could have attempted to mutiny and Will might have saved Jack and the loyal crew. But instead we get this beautiful, but ultimately pointless scene. We never get to see this tribe again. I don't know, but I think it simply was for the beauty. We're meant to see the enormity of the Pirates of the Caribbean world, in a way that's simply fun. It's entertainment for the sake of entertainment. This is a huge risk on the part of the filmmakers. Sure, the scene is fun, but if we're not given anything serious to show for it, they risk losing the audience's interest. Fortunately, we get back to the drama quickly. We'll see more as Jack begins to play puppet master of his friends, Will and Elizabeth.
No comments:
Post a Comment