Dead Man's Chest... What's Right and What's Wrong

Rating: 7/10 (7 July 2006)

You know, while this applies to Pirates of the Caribbean, I have a list of beefs against sequels in general
Flaw 1) "Hey we did that last movie, wouldn't it be cute if we did it again?" When it's done right, you get Indiana Jones reaching for his gun to shoot the two swordsmen (like he did against the 1 in the previous movie) only to find out it's not there.
When it's done badly, you get "cute" repeats of lines you enjoyed the first time so forced that you can't help but feel hammer used to slam it into the script. The "Dog with the keys" bit was used not once, but THREE different ways.
Flaw 2) More-itis More-itis is when creators believe that they need essentially the same story, but all the "cool" points need to be enhanced to the power of two. This isn't addition or multiplication we're talking about, but exponential.
Might I lay the most brain-hurting example in recent memory: The Mummy and The Mummy Returns: Hey, you had one undead villain before, NOW WE HAVE TWO! Before he was a face of sand, NOW HE'S MADE OF WATER! They flew in a biplane before, NOW IT'S A ROCKET POWERED BALLOON! They fought a bunch of mummies before, NOW IT'S A WAR ON AN EPIC SCALE! It gets old quick.
You imagine people around a table saying "You know, those undead skeletons in the first movie was cool, how can we top it? Let's have them all sea creature mutants! Each one more weird and deformed than the last!" Sensory Overload is an increasing problem in Special Effect movies. In this movie, there was so much slimy sea-human body parts flying around you don't know what's attached to what.
An even worse offender is Captain Jack's Great Escape. We all loved Captain Jack's miraculous escape from Norrington's guards at the beginning of the first movie. You know what made it work? NO CGI! It was all traditional stunt work done in prime fashion. Not so here... So many parts of the Great Escape are clearly CGI that you can no longer buy the idea it's actually happening.
Flaw 3) Good Guys Don't Kill Good Guys At one point in the movie you have Captain Jack, Norrington, and Will Turner fighting one another for the key to Davy Jones' locker. It is, in fact, the big climatic sword battle of the movie.
Only it doesn't quite work for me, because you KNOW nobody is going to get hurt. You know Captain Jack and Will Turner are good guys (well, more or less) and as a result will NOT kill another good guy. Norrington is the only "maybe he'd go bad" character, but since his opponents are Jack and Will, again there no real danger.
Jack and Will's first duel in the first movie was exciting. In part because you didn't know these characters or where this might be going. Maybe one of them really would get hurt? Not likely but you didn't KNOW one way or the other. Also, you're willing to go along with that if it's a non-climax battle. But this happening at the climax you're thinking "What's the point? Nobody is going to DIE in this battle!" I couldn't help but be aware of this throughout the battle, and it makes it drag.
Flaw 4) TO BE CONTINUED You know, this is pretty standard. Empire Strikes Back did it, Lord of the Rings did it (well, you couldn't avoid that, really), The Matrix did it. You make #2 in such a way that you absolutely MUST have #3. There's only one problem here. This was the WRONG movie to use this technique on! All those other movies have some kind of grand story arc involved that intends to climax with the downfall of the Evil (whatever) and good to triumph.
How the hell does that apply here? Captain Jack is going to destroy the East India Trading Company? Yeah, Davy Jones is going to croak, but so what? It's the wrong technique for the wrong storyline. Is Davy Jones going to destroy the world? If so it's news to me! Had I had a bit of warning maybe it wouldn't have bugged me as much, but as we got on the 2 hour mark I was wondering where climactic battle with Davy Jones would be, only it didn't happen! It wasn't till it was clear the Black Pearl was going to sink that I felt the beginnings of To Be Continued creeping up.
Flaw 5) Obey Your Own Goddamn Rules!!! Okay, look, it's not that hard to follow. The cursed Aztec gold made everyone who took it into cursed undead, right? The only way to undo the curse for everyone is for everyone to put the gold back. EVERYONE. Otherwise it doesn't work, right? So why is the monkey still undead? If he's undead, why are the Bumbling Pirate Duo alive? Did the monkey swim to the island and take a fresh coin after the curse was broken? And of course it doesn't even begin to explain why Captain Barrbosa is still alive? He died. We saw him die.
Oh wait, I know! The curse is broken the monkey swims to the island and takes a coin, thus restarting a fresh curse. Then he goes over and puts a fresh coin in Barbosa's dead hand (sure, it'll work with dead people, why not?) thus making him undead and healing his wounds. So Barrbosa is also undead, too, because if the monkey is undead the new curse can't be broken (unless they both put the coins away, breaking the curse and then the monkey took a coin AGAIN to restart a third curse just for himself! Stupid damn monkey) By the way if I'm right I'm going to beat myself over the head with a shovel, because it's weak.