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POTC 2 e 3 (spoilers)

por johnnydeppflog em 22/11/05 - 11h:25m

First Look: 'Pirates: Dead Man's Chest'

We visit the set of the new 'Pirates of the Caribbea.'

Oct. 27, 2005
Beware! There be spoilers here!

Studios often go to extreme lengths to keep the story line and imagery of an anticipated movie secret. Such is the case with "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," the first of two sequels featuring the return of Johnny Depp as the immensely popular Captain Jack Sparrow (oh, and two nobody's named Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley). So, imagine my surprise to discover that a Universal Studios Theme Park tour van picks up park goers every day right in front of one of the production's busiest sound stages. MSN was lucky enough to attend a set visit for the film. Here's a peek at what those park goers weren't supposed to see.

The visit was arranged for select members of the press, and before we even enter the stage area, we see actor Stellan Skarsgard walking out of the set. Skarsgard plays legendary pirate Bootstrap Bill, and his costume is covered with barnacles and a few strands of seaweed. His eyes are red and his skin is blue grey. As his fellow actors appear behind him in similar attire, it's clear they're unlike any sailors we've seen before.

Entering the stage, we set foot on part of the pirate ship The Flying Dutchman. Strangely, the ship looks like it has been sitting on the floor of the ocean for decades. That the ship is even seaworthy can only be attributed to its captain, Davey Jones, who is Captain Jack's new nemesis. You see, The Flying Dutchman's seaworthiness is all due to another one of those pesky curses. Thankfully, John Knoll, visual effects supervisor, sheds more light on the situation.

"Once he [Jones] collects the souls of sailors who die at sea -- and the longer you serve on the Dutchman, the more you gradually become of the sea -- so, somebody who's recently joined the crew still looks fairly human and somebody who's been serving on the crew for 200 years doesn't really even have a face any more," Knoll says.

Knoll speaks the truth, because we've seen some of the conceptual drawings for Jones that will keep the team at Industrial Light and Magic very busy. Jones appears to have multiple squid tails coming out of his face and a crab leg that functions as a peg leg. It's one of many reasons why this has twice as many CGI shots as the first "Pirates."

"Last time, we had to figure out the look of the skeletal pirates, how to do those transitions, how to do convincing ship-at-sea shots and a variety of matt paintings to establish the locations," Knoll says. "And here there's just more. There are more locations, more ships, the characters are more complex. It's all harder than the first one."

Knoll isn't complaining. He gets to help create the Cracken, a half-squid, half-octopus monster that attacks the Black Pearl. Who could say "no" to that?


More 'Pirates' Set Visit

Shooting two "Pirates" sequels (the third movie will be released after "Dead Man's Chest"; the date is unknown) back-to-back is a tremendous undertaking. Although it's a Disney film, sound stages are being used on both the Universal and Disney lots. Plus, there have been weeks of shooting on the sea in St. Thomas. Leaving Universal behind, our party heads over to Disney Stage 2 where a beautiful bayou set has been created.

A few days before, the cast filmed a scene here where a soothsayer, played by Naomie Harris ("28 Days Later"), warned Captain Sparrow of a dire future. The set, which resembles an Indian river in Dominica, features multiple huts and incredibly realistic trees constructed completely of plaster. It contains a three- to four-feet deep "river" that boats can sail through. The set is so fun to walk around that you wish you could bring it home. Credit this stunning creation to one of the few new additions to the "Pirates" creative team, Oscar-winning Production Designer Rick Heinrichs ("Sleepy Hollow"). He admits that although the new films have a broader scope than the original, the practical sets have been less challenging than having to build boats from scratch.

"We're building boats that actually work on the water," Heinrichs says, noting another upgrade on this production. "The Black Pearl's built on top of another boat. It's got twin diesel engines and can have quite a bit of a bow wave this time. [That's] something [director Gore Verbinski] really wanted to do. He felt that in the first movie, all the boats felt a little turgid, and they were basically barges that were being dragged behind another boat. This time we actually built the boats so they do have that feel of reality to them."

Not anticipating any sequels, the studio destroyed a number of sets from the original movie. This has given Heinrichs the opportunity to recreate different sections of the Black Pearl. Walking onto the sound stage version of the Black Pearl's cannon deck was quite a thrill. It seemed incredibly realistic down to the rusting of the cannons themselves. But, then again, are cannonballs supposed to be light enough to toss back and forth?

Our last stop was the Captain's Quarters on the Black Pearl. Although it looks similar to the first one, Heinrichs has gone all out using real (and expensive) mahogany wood. Funny, it seems a bit too nice for Jack Sparrow. It definitely is more Barbosa's style... but too bad he was killed off in the first movie.

So, with a wave goodbye from our friendly Disney publicist, the sneak peek at "Dead Man's Chest" ends with Depp, Knightley or Bloom nowhere in sight. Of course, one of them was around during our visit to the sets of the third "Pirates" movie, but that's a tale for another time.

2005 POTC 3 (spoilers)

Latino Review (Major spoilers...plot points revealed!I admin.)

Howdy Folks the most Dangerous Dominican in Hollywood El Mayimbe here!

Dealing with these crazy ass Halo fans I decided to take the week off and hand the script reviewing chores off to EL CHAVO who did us justice on the Punisher 2 script!

This week he takes a look at Pirates of The Caribbean 3!

Onto the review…

First things first: there’s no way to even talk about the plot of Pirates of the Caribbean 3 without spoiling the second film, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. The events of the third movie seem to pick up right where the second one left off, and by the time this movie begins lots of big things have happened to the characters. So if you’re afraid of having almost every part of the second Pirate movie spoiled, don’t read this!

Pirates 3 begins in the Orient, where Elizabeth Swann, Keira Knightley’s character, is taking a prisoner to the dread pirate Sao Feng. We soon see that she’s in cahoots with Barbossa, the evil ghost pirate from the first film. The spoilers are already beginning! The plan is to exchange the prisoner, who is hooded, for some charts Sao Feng has, but the whole thing is a scam. The prisoner is actually Will Turner, Orland Bloom’s character, and the heroes make off with the charts anyway.

It turns out that the charts are to help them find Davey Jones’ Locker, where Jack Sparrow went after he died in the last film. And again, the spoilers. The Black Pearl sank; it seems, with Jack on board. Jack is not in heaven or hell, though, but in Purgatory, which for him is a desert filled with weird crabs.

Jack is rescued, but things keep getting complicated as characters keep betraying one another and selling each other out. I don’t know what happens exactly at the end of the second film except that they fight a Kraken and everyone stops trusting each other.

Eventually the story builds to the gathering of a pirate armada, which will battle the armada of the Dutch East India Company, and the summoning of Calypso, the Goddess of the Seas. Along the way some characters from the first film will die, get married and others will become immortal.

The script that I have for review reads a little overstuffed and undercooked. There’s a lot going on, right from the first page, but it’s all too quick to mean much. The characters don’t get a lot of time to shine, and it was the characters that made the first film such a pleasant surprise. I have to wonder if much of Jack Sparrow’s stuff seems thin because it’s being left up to Johnny Depp to invent on the set.

The biggest problem with the script, though, is the comic relief characters of Pintel and Ragetti, who are always saying and doing dumb things in order to get a cheap laugh. Their antics may translate better on film, but on the page they were endlessly tired and lame, doing things like tying themselves to the mast upside down before their ship capsizes so that they’ll be right side up when it has rolled over. Hilarious.

The scope of the story is huge, and much more fantasy-based than the first film. Magic is everywhere in the script, as are monsters and other extra bizarre characters. We also meet the other pirates who are out there, including the infamous Blackbeard, who appears at Shipwreck Island, the pirate’s secret hangout. In this film the pirates feel more like a friendly motorcycle gang than separate bands of rampaging criminals.

For those who were excited to see the first Pirates extended into a trilogy – expect a fourth film! The ending of POTC 3 leaves things very wide open for yet another sequel, with the continued quest for immortality as a hinted at storyline. In fact the film has very little closure at all, leaving many of the characters exactly where they were at the beginning of the first film, or in some cases even worse places.

POTC 3 is a bigger story than the original, and even more buckles will be swashed. There are elements that don’t seem to work as well in the script, but since director Gore Verbinski is still tinkering with the script for this film on set, perhaps many of these problems will be addressed.