Pirates, anyone?

I'm not in the sucking crowd but I can probably guess why they hated the movie.

Apathy. Most people are too hard to impress these days with anything. Everything sucks and nothing can make them happy. Don't let them bring you down, man.

I agree, it wasn't the first movie but I had fun with it.

My problems with Pirates were (and some of these may be SPOILERS):

Constantly referencing jokes from the first movie rather than coming up with new jokes for this movie

The island scene with the natives did not serve to advance the plot in any way. It was only there to put in gags. It was not explained how Jack spoke their language. The entire scene could have been cut down to Orlando landing on the shore and seeing Jack running up being chased without any loss to the story.

Two returns to a deus ex machina character; written yourself into a plot corner? There's a perfectly unexplained, seemingly all-knowing voodoo chick that can put you back on course and give you dirt that serves no actual purpose in the movie (since it's clearly telegraphed that Norrington notices the dirt in the boat and easy to figure out what he does next). There were any number of ways to solve the problems of the film without throwing in a DeM character.

Despite being really cool looking, Davy Jones didn't have much characterization. He was just mean, mean, mean, because some woman done him wrong. Barbossa's scenes in the first movie gave Rush plenty of time to emote, at least, which was made much harder by the Davy Jones suit.

There was no pathos to the scenes with Will and Bootstrap, despite it being obvious that Bootstrap's actor could be emotional about it in the first scene he was in with Jack. Bloom didn't seem up to the task of portraying a guy finally meeting the father that he thought was dead for so long. Despite his dedication to the idea of freeing him, there was little of that displayed while they were actually together.

All the characters had their personalities largely switched from the last movie; even though the changes may make sense when you think about it, it would have been better to see the changes taking place on screen. For example, Norrington's only real character trait in the first one was being noble and upright to a fault; in this one he's an opportunistic scoundrel with a chip on his shoulder and really displays nothing of his previous character at all.

What's up with the East India Company? For people that don't know the history of the India Companies in that era, it would have been useful to indicate why they're so powerful and so mean.

The beginning scene with Jack is completely unexplained besides him finding the drawing of the key. It seems to have no purpose other than as a tie-in to the video game. Just a couple of lines of exposition as to what the freaky mordor cliffs were would have been good.

At the end, why did everyone agree to go to the ends of the earth for Jack? The entire point of Jack is that only Will and Elizabeth actually like him, and maybe the first mate. Why would all the other pirates so easily agree to risk their lives when they're finally out of hot water? Because the deus ex machina told them to, that's why.

The movie did not resolve a single one of its own plot lines. Everything was a setup for the sequel.

I dunno, S. You make some valid points, but that's the kind of thing I could let go (especially the lack of explanation on Jack's intro. I don't really care how he got in there or got that map.)

Posted my take over at my movie blog. http://averyslave.blogspot.com

I rather liked the vodoo chick.. and laughed alot when Jack said" Lookie I got a jar of dirt" to jeer Davy Jones.

I personally had a lot of fun with it. IT wasn't as inspiring as the first was. but as Neal put it- you had never seen a pirate movie like that before. It would be silly to ask them to make a totally different genre of pirate movie with the same characters..

and cmon "What do you have in exchange?" BANG "Undead Monkey" That is CLASSIC!!!

After a bit of my own research - because I was so young, i wouldn't have been able to see this for myself, I found out that there was another trilogy where everyone hated its sequel - despite gargantuan box office numbers at first. It felt a bad taste in all movie goers mouths and left them years until the resolution of their story. Is it blasphemy to say this film aloud? Empire Strikes Back originally left people feeling sad and cheated. People questioned almost everything in the film, and they hated that one of their heros was gone (Han) and that another was mortally wounded by his supposed father. Looking back - people weren't just a tad displeased ... they were PISSED. It has since become the Geek mecca.

And here comes the onslaught - everyone who steps up and says "How Dare You Compare These Films To Star Wars!" Why not? WHY THE F NOT?! At least Gore Verbinski won't come back years down the road and make special editions and fuck up what we were given. The attraction to pirates according to the director isn't the special effects, but Sparrow himself.

The movie has its faults - there are faults in all great trilogies (and we won't even discuss the Matrix trilogy.) So why the immense backlash? Because it didn't live up to the first? Did Temple Of Doom? Not liking the movie is one thing. Saying that it's bad is quite another.

Backlash on this film is merely another example of Geeks having too much power. Next, people will start picking apart its technical flaws - someone has already gone so far as to compare Jar Jar Binks and Davey Jones.

It's not LOTR - thats a given, but dismissing it after setting up for what is to be an interesting 3rd film - is just plain dumb.

I had fun with the movie. And thats what it was meant to do. Be fun.[/b]

Well:

A) Empire isn't my favorite movie in the series, as it is with some folks, so even a clear parallel wouldn't necessarily change my opinion of Pirates 2.

B) Do you remember the half hour scene where, on the way to Dagobah, Luke stops on Kashyyk (sp?) and nearly gets killed by the angry Wookies before escaping to go on to Yoda, all without having done anything that forwarded the main plot? Me either.

C) In ESB, Yoda could very easily have been set up as a character of unquestionable power and wisdom. Instead, he was portrayed as having physical weakness, lack of patience with Skywalker, and, in fact, being completely wrong in his estimation of Luke's ability to save his friends. No deus ex machina there to bail the plot out of a hole that didn't really exist.

D) ESB - one climax... led up to by good pacing.

E) R2D2 gets eaten by a swamp monster and spat out. I'm not sure how that's relevant, but I bet it was hilarious to first time filmgoers. Monsters can't digest robots!

EDIT: http://www.the-editing-room.com/?script=pirates2

This is neat, though:

http://adisney.go.com/disneypictures/pirates/games/piratesDice/index.html

They have the game at barnes and nobles.