“Pirates 3″ lousy reviews
The reviews are just starting to trickle in but Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End has a 40% positive Rotten Tomatoes rating thus far. My favorite trash quote is from a review by the Philadelphia Weekly‘s Sean Burns, to wit: “Such a tangled thicket of overwritten, labyrinthine mythology, backstabbing betrayals and mixed motivations that a massive chunk of the running time is devoted to characters standing around on boats, trying like hell to explain the plot to one another.”
You should just turn this site into a movie version of Drudge by linking to other people’s reviews. It’s well on the way there, anyway.
You realize reviews of this thing are meaningless, right? It’s no longer a matter of quality, it’s a matter of inertia. Whether it sucks or not, it’s going to be huge and you can’t stop it.
Save yourself the trouble of monitoring the Tomato pulse and go outside. Go to the beach or something. Oh here’s one: go to a movie. You’re at Cannes for chrissakes.
“You should just turn this site into a movie version of Drudge by linking to other people’s reviews.”
But wouldn’t that just make this RottenTomatoes?
I like the At Wit’s End appellation from Village Voice. I hadn’t pegged At World’s End to be one of those titles to shy away from, but clearly it was.
So, I saw a sneak of this movie, and I won’t lie, I am a fan of the series. I will say that the last two got a bit clunky. However, these critics, who I assume are educated men and women, who have trouble following a plot that all of Jeff’s mouthbreathering red staters can follow and my 5 year old nephew understands just boggles my mind. If 14 year old boys can understand these movies, why the whoosafudge can’t the critics? Bash it for it being too long and as another bloated, special effects money-grabber, but if you can’t understand these last two movies, film criticism is a profession you need to leave.
Critics have trouble when a movie they expect to have no plot suddenly turns out to have a lot of plot.
Isn’t it funny how so many think they have a handle on David Lynch’s 3-hour Inland Empire, yet get confused by Pirates 3?
There’s only one thing in Pirates 3 that doesn’t quite make sense to me, but it’s a bit of a spoiler so now isn’t the time to mention it.
wow, what a fucking shock! the critics hate Pirates 3!!!! Wow, I am in awe!
I can’t wait till this movie makes a billion dollars!!!
Every time I think I’m out, they pull me back in! By the way Jeff, in 2004 Gore Verbinski dropped 100 dollars on the street and it was picked up by the Bush campaign.
I don’t think they’re saying they were confused by the plot as much as they didn’t care about it.
No, many have already said this plot is confusing just like they did with Dead Man’s Chest. I wonder if Pulp Fiction came out this weekend if these same critics would be confused by the non-linear narrative and Travolta’s death even though he’s in the last part of the film. Oops, if none of you have seen that film yet. Like someone said earlier about the billion dollars: if this movie truly was that confusing and had that in depth of a narrative, it wouldn’t be making a billion dollars. Same with Spiderman 3. Peter Parker’s “dark” side isn’t too deep. It’s just annoying. You can’t blame the Pirates filmmakers for milking this thing for all it’s worth, so they put out a 3 hour (almost) movie.
Let me rephrase: DMC was never confusing in the sense of ‘I don’t know what’s happening’, but it was confusing in the sense of ‘what’s happening is silly and pointless and I don’t see why I should pay attention’. Pulp Fiction’s convolutions are for a reason; DMC’s weren’t.
(I mostly liked DMC by the way.)
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“You can’t blame the Pirates filmmakers for milking this thing for all it’s worth, so they put out a 3 hour (almost) movie.”
That makes very little sense. A three-hour movie, by design, can’t fit as many showings per day as a two hour movie. If they were really milking this thing, they would force Verbinski to cut an hour of the movie so they could squeeze out an extra showing per day.
Or better yet, don’t greenlight two 150+ scripts.
“If they were really milking this thing, they would force Verbinski to cut an hour of the movie so they could squeeze out an extra showing per day.”
I’m surprised this argument still gets made. Let’s forget about the fact that many of the biggest grossing films of all time (starting with Titanic are Lord of the Rings) are LONG.
This isn’t 20 years ago when your local mall had 4 screens. Now your local AMC has 30 screens and it will play something like this on 10 of them so they really don’t have to worry about “squeezing out an extra” showing. And there’s another AMC 15 minutes away doing the same thing. There are shows at 12, 12:30, 1, 1:30, 2:45…how many more showings can you have in one day?
It’s a total anachronism, in my opinion.
I would rather undergo several botched root canals and a half-successful castration attempt than see “At World’s End.”
You realize reviews of this thing are meaningless, right? It’s no longer a matter of quality, it’s a matter of inertia. Whether it sucks or not, it’s going to be huge and you can’t stop it.
Save yourself the trouble of monitoring the Tomato pulse and go outside. Go to the beach or something. Oh here’s one: go to a movie. You’re at Cannes for chrissakes.
It doesn’t matter how many screens it’s on; the shorter it is, the more showings it can fit. If it is on a billion screens, it will still make more money if it can get more showings.
But my point was that the movie isn’t 3 hours long because the filmmakers are trying to milk the film for everything they can get from it. The movie is 3 hours long because Verbinski has no budgetary constraints, and no suits are telling him to shave an hour off because the movie is bond to make oodles no matter what. The movie is three hours long because the director is being completely indulgent and unrestrained. The plot is a convoluted mess because noone felt the need to tell Gore that it would be a much better ride if a few extraneous plot threads were snipped.
Restraint is good. When a filmaker is reigned in (by budget, by the suits, by good advice from his peers or critics, whatever), he is forced to tap into his innate artistic creativity in order to break through the boundaries imposed on him. That’s what makes a great film. When the director is completely unrestrained and allowed to do whatever he wants with the movie, you end up with a masturbatory, hard-to-watch mess like Jackson’s King Kong or Raimi’s Spiderman 3.
Don’t forget to blame Bruckheimer and not just Verbinski. He’s the higher-up on all this.
Oh yeah, and Spider-Man 3 had its problems, but ‘masturbatory’ wasn’t one of them. And both it and King Kong were better than Pirates 2.
I like the At Wit’s End appellation from Village Voice. I hadn’t pegged At World’s End to be one of those titles to shy away from, but clearly it was.
Hmmm, dragging out the lackluster Harry/Peter three-movie plot thread, turning Mary Jane into an awful nag and Peter into a whiny emo kid, forgiving Sandman at the last minute for absolutely no reason, shafting Venom’s screen time and not even giving him a name? Who else was Raimi trying to please with all that but himself? Certainly not the audience.
I doubt he was pleased by it all himself.
I’ll agree that Kong was better, but Spiderman 3 was compltely worthless.
At least the second pirate movie had all those awesome monkey reaction shots. If Raimi had cut to a pirate monkey playing with a bottle of rum after Peter punched Mary Jane in the bar, I totally would have given the movie a pass.
But let’s break it down: Harry’s thread had to happen if for no other reason than to get rid of it; Venom was imposed on Raimi by the studio; Sandman was Raimi going overboard on the ‘every villain has a motivation’ angle, which was well-intentioned; and the rest is arguably good filmmaking (in my opinion).
Bocephus, give the monkeys laser rifles and jet packs and I think you’re on to something. Put one of the little bastards in an eye patch and I would pay money to see that movie. Cash money. Or at least several bus tokens and maybe a postage stamp.
Really. Good filmmaking? This is a comic book movie, why can’t the villain just be evil? Maybe his motivation to rob banks was…I might be stretching here…to get money. Raimi wanted to do the Sandman movie, so he did, even though the character in the books is nothing but a dumb goon who works for other, more interesting villains. Raimi is obsessed with softening his villains and making them sympathetic. It was done well so it passed in the first two movies, but the sick daughter thing was just plain trite.
And what was arguably good about it? The acting was terrible, the script was poorly written, the special effects looked fake, and the characters were completely unlikeable (you know you have a problem when JJ Jameson is your most likeable character).
At least Pirates 2 had Depp, Rush, and the afforementioned monkey reaction shots.
I thought the MJ-Peter arc was good and the ‘bad Peter’ with the greasy hair was excellent. ‘Misunderstood Sandman’ was poorly executed but it was a nice attempt by Raimi to transcend the genre. It’s never a bad idea to add complexity to your characters and themes, it just didn’t work this time.
Still no monkey shots. I win!
I think Sandman would’ve been better if he wasn’t squeezed out by 2 other villains and Raimi didn’t have to make obvious short cuts in developing sympathy for the character. One compelling villain instead of 3 half-assed ones and you could’ve had a decent movie. Also: Jet packs.
Wow, a choice between Pirates 2 and Spider-Man 3? Yuck, I think I’ll pass on both.
I don’t get why people get so huffy and defensive when the pirates films get bad reviews, if you dig overplotted tangles of meaningless special effects, cool go for it, but don’t expect everyone to go along for the ride.
What irks me the most about this series is that Verbinski is talented, and the films (excluding Bloom, and Knightly) have a lively and interesting cast. This thing should work, but it seems to be case of God forbid we make a decision regarding the narrative, throw it all in!
Whatever happened to the idea that, to write a good script, you had to kill your darlings?
you’re pre-supposing these are good scripts or that the marketing people now in charge have a clue about good scripts.
i was reading the blog of a tv and film writer and he said something which shocked me yet i have learned over my years toiling in la la land: that a writer’s unique “voice” is what is being squeezed out from most spec and studio scripts these days. this rare quality used to seperate the bad from the good and certainly a few lucky souls benefit, but nowadays…well, you se the results. something to gnaw on…
Children are the beneficiaries—and also the victims—of the theater of various moments.
meanwhile, wells is kicking it cannes style.
“Adulthood” in the last generations has had very little to do with “adulthood” as that word would have been understood by adults in any previous generation. Rather, “adulthood” has been defined as “a position of control in the world of childhood.”
Ambitious Americans, sensing this, have preferred to remain adolescents, year after year.
meanwhile, american parents show their ongoing contempt for their children by turning SHREK 3 into a 122 millon dollar hit.
I don’t get why parents feel the need to spend absurd ticket prices to see SHREK 3 when they can park their children in front of the TV and let them mindlessly watch flatulence and ads for Taco Bell for free.
But I guess nowadays that observation makes me a snob.
Bocephus, give the monkeys laser rifles and jet packs and I think you’re on to something. Put one of the little bastards in an eye patch and I would pay money to see that movie. Cash money. Or at least several bus tokens and maybe a postage stamp.
I think Sandman would’ve been better if he wasn’t squeezed out by 2 other villains and Raimi didn’t have to make obvious short cuts in developing sympathy for the character. One compelling villain instead of 3 half-assed ones and you could’ve had a decent movie. Also: Jet packs.
Children are the beneficiariesâ€â€and also the victimsâ€â€of the theater of various moments.
“Adulthood” in the last generations has had very little to do with “adulthood” as that word would have been understood by adults in any previous generation. Rather, “adulthood” has been defined as “a position of control in the world of childhood.”
Ambitious Americans, sensing this, have preferred to remain adolescents, year after year.
The RT rating is now up to 56%… nothing huge, but climbing.