Pirates 2 2.
Jul. 22nd, 2006 08:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
whathoI went to see Pirates again today.
It's still racist. This is deeply saddening. I was half-hoping I'd accidentally spent the first reel in a different cinema. But on the plus side (and how appalling does that look? It's like saying 'This is Racist Bob, who I actually fancy like crazy'), the non-racist parts of the story do seem to make considerably more sense on second viewing. Many of them are no less irrelevant, but thematically speaking I can see what it's doing now and I found answers to a lot of my outstanding questions. I think it's fairly clear precisely why the compass won't focus when Jack's holding it: not so much that he has everything he wants now he has the Pearl or is scared of the sea or anything along those lines, but because of what I would've heard Elizabeth saying had I listened properly the first time round. Jack doesn't know whether he wants to be a goodie or a baddie and so it wavers between the two options. It only settles when he finally realises he wants to save the Pearl and its crew more than he wants to run away. It's a moral compass! Ha. Gag, you know. And it does the same for Elizabeth: when it points to Jack, it's not, reckon, so much that she loves him but that (and Jack says this out loud too: apparently I missed all the exposition last time) she wants, sometimes, to act entirely selfishly.
What was the other thing? Ah. What the heart does. Again, this is me not listening properly...Woodface who's stuck to The Flying Dutchman says that stabbing the heart will destroy Jones and thus release the crew (which is what Will wants), but it's won't, according to Jack, destroy the Kraken (which is what Jack wants). So the sense in which it allows the holder to control the seas...I'm assuming that means that it gives him or her leverage over Davy Jones because he or she gets to say 'send the Kraken away from me and over to there or I stab your heart and that's you'. Is that about it?
And Norrington's entrance remains utterly fantastic. His voice. And Bill Nighy is very very good indeed and had wonderful brows and is entirely Bill Nighy even when he primarily is a squid beast. And wheeeeeee.
It's still racist. This is deeply saddening. I was half-hoping I'd accidentally spent the first reel in a different cinema. But on the plus side (and how appalling does that look? It's like saying 'This is Racist Bob, who I actually fancy like crazy'), the non-racist parts of the story do seem to make considerably more sense on second viewing. Many of them are no less irrelevant, but thematically speaking I can see what it's doing now and I found answers to a lot of my outstanding questions. I think it's fairly clear precisely why the compass won't focus when Jack's holding it: not so much that he has everything he wants now he has the Pearl or is scared of the sea or anything along those lines, but because of what I would've heard Elizabeth saying had I listened properly the first time round. Jack doesn't know whether he wants to be a goodie or a baddie and so it wavers between the two options. It only settles when he finally realises he wants to save the Pearl and its crew more than he wants to run away. It's a moral compass! Ha. Gag, you know. And it does the same for Elizabeth: when it points to Jack, it's not, reckon, so much that she loves him but that (and Jack says this out loud too: apparently I missed all the exposition last time) she wants, sometimes, to act entirely selfishly.
What was the other thing? Ah. What the heart does. Again, this is me not listening properly...Woodface who's stuck to The Flying Dutchman says that stabbing the heart will destroy Jones and thus release the crew (which is what Will wants), but it's won't, according to Jack, destroy the Kraken (which is what Jack wants). So the sense in which it allows the holder to control the seas...I'm assuming that means that it gives him or her leverage over Davy Jones because he or she gets to say 'send the Kraken away from me and over to there or I stab your heart and that's you'. Is that about it?
And Norrington's entrance remains utterly fantastic. His voice. And Bill Nighy is very very good indeed and had wonderful brows and is entirely Bill Nighy even when he primarily is a squid beast. And wheeeeeee.
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no subject
Date: 2006-07-22 08:13 pm (UTC)(Friended you, btw!)
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Date: 2006-07-22 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-22 08:26 pm (UTC)I have no other PotC icons. Woe. Willy Wonka will have to suffice.
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Date: 2006-07-22 08:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-22 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-22 08:27 pm (UTC)It's a moral compass
Bwahaha! But quite true, yo. This is why I want awfully to see what it would do in Norrington's hands. It stayed pretty straight in the first movie, and it would be love if it did the same even in the second :)
Is that about it?
That's what I got from it all. And to bring the point yet again to Norrington, if he really did believe in all of that, he still cared more about getting his position/respectability back than controlling all the sea. Which, again, fits my take that he's desperately and irrationally clinging to that shadow of his former self, and he's going to have to let go of it come POTC 3.
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Date: 2006-07-22 08:31 pm (UTC)And I'm tremendously keen to see what's going to become of Norrington.
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Date: 2006-07-22 10:59 pm (UTC)Listening! Apparently it's a good thing to do. I was more sort of watching the first time, which has great value in it to be sure, but listening seemingly tells you a bit more about what's going on. I'm a fan of it now.
I wonder what happens on a third viewing.
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Date: 2006-07-22 11:07 pm (UTC)You wrote sense with an s in up there. I am applauding. I actually did clap seven times there, in the spirit of reading comments out loud. Hurrah.
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Date: 2006-07-22 11:12 pm (UTC)