Pirates of the Caribbean and the Curse of the Sequel Posted by: Kim Lance, Editor

Three years ago Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, and Orlando Bloom thrilled and entertained audiences as adventurous swashbucklers in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. The humor, excitement, and adventure from the first Pirates flick made the film very popular with summer audiences, so, it was no surprise when it was announced that the story would be made into a trilogy.

This year the sequel, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, became one of the most highly anticipated movies of the summer. But, the question resting in movie-fan’s mind remained… Will the second film live up to the reputation of the first? The truth is, the sequel went the way of many sequels in movie history – while it was very entertaining, it just couldn’t compare to its predecessor.

One of the things I truly loved about the first Pirates movie was how funny it was. Johnny Depp was a riot as Captain Jack Sparrow, gaining even an Oscar nomination as a result. In Dead Man’s Chest there were still humorous elements, but the acting was far from Oscar worthy. And Knightley lost a lot of her feisty, rambunctious attitude in this second film as compared to the first. Bloom gave a strong performance, but I hope the final film in the trilogy brings out more in all three main characters.

Also, one word of advice before seeing this Pirates of the Caribbean sequel – refresh your memory by watching The Curse of the Black Pearl first. This is one of the big flaws of Dead Man’s Chest, they refer far too much to the first film. If you haven’t seen the first film (or the last time you saw it was its theatrical release, ahem, three years ago) then many of the character histories and associations will not be explained to you in the sequel. This leads to some confusion and distracts from the story as you are trying to figure out how the history of the characters intertwine. A sign of a good sequel is that it is enjoyable to loyal fans as well as people learning the story for the first time. Dead Man’s Chest fails to fill in the missing pieces for those who haven’t seen the first film in the series.

But, like I said before, despite its flaws, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was a very entertaining film. It was exciting, adventurous, and creative (although some of those Davy Jones crew creatures were a little too creative, a bit frightening in fact). I would definitely recommend you summer movie action lovers go see it, but don’t expect it to live up to the first…they usually never do.