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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Cert 12A

Steve Rose
Friday June 30, 2006
The Guardian

Bill Nighy in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Bill Nighy in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

If any recent blockbuster left movie-goers wanting more, it was the first instalment of Pirates of the Caribbean, even though it pulled off the sort of trick you can only really get away with once. Somehow it struck that balance between knowing send-up and rousing spectacle, and half the delight was seeing an expensive studio product transcend its unpromising theme-park origins before our eyes, with a wink, a nudge and a hearty "ha-haaar!" Second time round, it was never going to be plain sailing.

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The good news is that this follow-up does recapture some of the high-seas high spirits of the first movie, but it requires an awful lot of momentum-gathering to get there. It would take the rest of this page to explain the convolutions the story goes through in order to split up all the characters then bring them together again: there's a key to acquire, a chest to find, a magic compass, a voodoo fortune teller, some signed letters, a mythical sea beast, and more. Added to which, virtually everyone from the first movie reappears at some stage, which can get mighty confusing after a few years away. They'd have done well to provide a "previously on Pirates of the Caribbean" prologue. Oh yes, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley were about to get married, weren't they? But their nuptials are immediately disrupted by slimy British envoy Tom Hollander, who arrests them all for helping Johnny Depp escape, then sends Bloom off to find him.

And where's Johnny? Having taken control of both the ship and the movie so effortlessly in the first Pirates, Depp's Jack Sparrow seems unsure where to take either here. His crew are waiting for him to set a course, and we're waiting for him to do something funny. It can't have helped that Russell Brand has poached Depp's nautical dandy style in the interim, but soon enough he's rocking a new look, as chief of a politically suspect tribe of "primitives": eyes painted down his face, his head stacked with haberdashery, accessorised with a necklace of human toes and a feather duster. It'll be on the catwalks by autumn, rest assured.

It takes a tortuously long time to get all the narrative plates spinning, but things fall into place once the real villain of the piece is unfurled. This is Davy Jones - of locker fame - and if that sounds like a clichｸJ・too far even for a camp pirate flick, Jones, played by Bill Nighy, and his crew are to this film what Depp was to its predecessor. They're like a bad acid trip at the sealife centre. They sail in a living wreck and have bodies composed of aquatic lifeforms: one has the head of a hammerhead shark, another has cheeks like a pufferfish, and Jones himself has a giant lobster claw for a hand, and a wonderfully slimy octopus head with a prehensile beard of tentacles, through which he barks the fruitiest Scottish brogue this side of the Simpsons' Groundskeeper Willie. It's a triumph of special effects that this cephalopod creation is both unnervingly freakish, yet unmistakably Bill Nighy.

After flirting with Looney Tunes comedy, Hollywood pastiche, Peter Jackson-style grandiosity, and seafront pantomime, it eventually becomes clear what course the Pirates franchise has really plotted: a packed universe of characters; epic action; strange lands; freakish monsters; a curiously sexless central couple. This isn't an updated swashbuckler, it's a backdated Star Wars! The comparisons are too plentiful to put down to coincidence. Not only does the narrative arc parallel that of the Empire Strikes Back, but virtually every character here has a Star Wars equivalent. Mackenzie Crook and Lee Arenberg are the substitutes for R2D2 and C3PO, commenting from the sidelines, while Naomie Harris's swamp-dwelling prophetess is a Yoda surrogate. One wonders what George Lucas's reaction will be when he watches the movie.

Unfortunately, the Star Wars connection applies to Orlando Bloom, too. He's a Mark Hamill in the making. He's simply too boyish to conjure any sort of heroic authority. Perhaps it would be better for everyone if Keira Knightley turned out to be his sister, and there are hints that Depp's Jack Sparrow has the potential to do a Han Solo.

A new Star Wars - or perhaps Sta-Haaar! Wars - is exactly what the movie world wants, and possibly needs, and Pirates is now more primed than any other product to step into the breach. Unlike other recent contenders, such as The Matrix, Pirates knows its mythology is pure cod. Where others have imploded in their own pomposity, Pirates' self-awareness sees it through. Despite all the fits, starts, and flaws, there's enough invention and energy here to make you want to see the next instalment.