Saw Pirates last night with a fistful of peoples. I loved the first one, and was really looking forward to this.

SPOILERS!!!
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So, in terms of how I felt about it, that sort of breaks down into two viewpoints. As a standalone movie, I thought there wasn’t a really good, overarching story arc. There were too many set pieces, and not enough time spent with just the characters. All these “blockbuster” sequels, from Hollywood’s perspective, seem to nead “more.” More villains, more action, more explosions, bigger effects, etc. I wish they’d just ignore all that, and make things that are appropriate to the story. It may end up that things are bigger, and more exciting, but it almost always feels like an effort to just have more for the sake of more.

In terms of other things I found disatisfying, Davey Jones’ crew was simply too uniform, in terms of color, and overall visual “noise” levels. They were really interesting in concept, but in practice, aside from Hammerhead-guy and Conch-head, there was little way to distinguish one brown, spikey guy from the next. The other thing was that Jack Sparrow, I think, worked better when he was a Captain only in his mind, or in search of a crew.

That said, I actually rather liked the movie. But that’s largely because it’s clearly the first half of a larger film, where they’ve set up plot points that are clearly not going to resolve themselves until well into the second movie. I liked a lot of the story of this movie – the realization of Davey Jones and his locker in particular. Just seemed like a really interesting character, and am really interested in seeing how the three major factions play off each other. There were a number of details that I really liked, like the Kraken-summoning mechanism, Jack’s multi-eye makeup, etc. There was a little too much in the way of nods to the audience (Will getting slapped, the dog, the comments about “rum,” etc.)

So, in terms of the first half of a five+ hour epic, I really liked it. As a standalone entertainment experience, somewhat problematic. Oh, and Jack’s last moments on-screen in this movie were incredibly well done. I wish I hadn’t had that particular plot point spoiled for me before, but ah, well – what’s done is done.