Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest — Weekend Movie Night Reviews

Disclaimer:

The film I’ll be reviewing today is rated: PG-13.

Be warned there are some gruesome images included in this review.

So as it were, despite the fact the first Pirates film was intended to be a one-off, with the onslaught of praise and admiration it got Disney decided to throw a bunch of money at it and turn this blossoming franchise into a trilogy with the next two films shot back to back. Unless you’re Lord of the Rings I don’t have a whole lot of faith in that. I will give this first sequel a bit of credit that it does have some fun moments and humor reminiscent of the first film, but the plot is still very bloated and hard to follow a lot of the time. The writers even end up retconning some of the charm that was present in the original film for the sake of turning this series into something way more complicated than it needs to be.

What’s kind of frustrating about this whole idea as well is that a movie like this could’ve worked a lot better if they kept the focus more on Jack and his crew getting into all manner of danger and hijinks on increasingly wacky yet dark and twisted adventures. Instead they bring back characters and plot threads that were equally pointless in the previous film for the sake of creating continuity between them. Even with all of these things considered, when I was younger I really enjoyed the film. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it, much like the previous one, and I’m curious to see how much my stance has changed on it. In case y’all didn’t know I prefer to write these introductions before I watch the movie again to give you a better sense of how my thoughts develop over time, so without any more beating around the bush let’s dive right in.

Look out for that Kraken because we’re off to settle our debt with Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest!

One thing that’s kinda funny is how they start the film by showing the Jerry Bruckheimer logo without confirming it’s the Jerry Bruckheimer logo as if they expect everyone to just know what that is. Even the Disney logo still confirms its the Disney logo and they’re definitely a company that’s more capable of getting away with that!

Ah, of course! The first thing that comes to mind when I think of pirates is 18th century English tea sets. Why did you show that?!

Yeah no kidding, now these two are back for no reason! Their story is already over and they were the least interesting part of the last movie so this already doesn’t bode well for the rest of the film at all. It doesn’t get any better when they introduce proto-Norrington called Lord Cutler Beckett (played by Tom Hollander) who has both Will and Elizabeth (pointlessly played by Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley again) arrested for helping Jack escape at the end of the last movie. Considering how pretty boring and one-noted Norrington was in the last movie, Beckett is essentially a puff of smoke in comparison. He has absolutely no substance to him and is completely boring to watch unless you’re high as a kite.

Also look at that face. Isn’t it easy to see Dr. Doom from the *Fantastic Four* films giving a similar smirk?

After mentioning Jack Sparrow -

Okay fine! After mentioning Captain Jack Sparrow they cut to a shot of Gibbs (played again by Kevin McNally) on the Black Pearl drinking rum by himself only to immediately cut away from him and show us even more fun things like -

Either way, despite this front-loaded opening we do get another pretty good Jack intro.

He paddles his way back to the Black Pearl with the help of his coffin-mate and seems to be acting a bit odder than most would expect. Jack (played again by Johnny Depp) presents the crew with a piece of cloth depicting a weird-looking key and he’s very vague on what exactly it is he wants to look for (if he’s looking for the key itself or whatever the key unlocks or whatever is inside whatever the key unlocks) in an awkwardly comedic moment. Sure in the first film Jack had a weird way of speaking that tended to confuse a lot of people, but here it just feels forced and random. The crew eventually concludes that Jack is worried about something, but I don’t think it justifies the sloppily written humor we just heard. Eventually the crew ends up setting off on their shaky adventure without even fully understanding where they’re going and we cut back to Will with Beckett. Because that’s what I want to see right now.

What gets me the most about this is how everything they say can pretty much be summed up in 5 words:

Instead it takes them a solid 2 minutes to get to the point. 2 minutes may not sound like a lot, but when it’s just boring plot exposition from 2 very boring characters, it feels so much longer. We’ll get to the whole thing about Jack’s compass a bit later when they reveal more about it, but in the meantime add it to the list of retcons this movie gives us. Eventually we cut back to the characters we care about with Jack trying to figure out where he wants to go until he realizes he doesn’t have rum. On his way to get some we’re introduced to a…familiar face?

Yes, the same person everyone said looked just like Will from the last movie.

*It’s the spittin’ image of our Bootstrap Bill; come back to ‘aunt us!*

I’ll give the movie some credit that you could argue Bootstrap (played by Stellan Skarsgård) does look like Will but his face is just covered in crap and his body has somewhat decomposed already. Where I won’t give the next movie credit is how when he returns to normal he still doesn’t look like Will! Like I said before though, add it to the list.

Bootstrap tells Jack that Davy Jones sent him to warn him of the debt Jack still has to pay. As it turns out, Jack got the Black Pearl by making a deal with Davy Jones in the past to raise it from the bottom of the ocean so he could be its captain for 13 years. Those 13 years are just about up and since Jack seems unreceptive to Bootstrap’s warnings, Bootstrap adorns Jack with the Black Spot which causes the Kraken (controlled by Davy Jones) to be drawn to any person who has it. Yeah, they really could’ve just cut all this out.

I’m not saying I’m against this idea, what I’m saying is that the movie barely makes any sense of it. The Black Spot is supposed to draw the Kraken to anyone who has it, but it’s very fickle and inconsistent in its rules. At one point the Kraken is drawn to Jack’s hat of all things, at another point Davy Jones uses the Kraken to attack another ship entirely which doesn’t even have Jack on it, at the end of the movie the Kraken goes after the Black Pearl but seems completely uninterested in Jack and even then Davy Jones had to awaken the Kraken himself instead of it just going after Jack on its own like you would expect. Why is this so complicated? If you cut out the Black Spot you wouldn’t miss anything, it’s just making everything harder to follow, so I’m going to move on.

Will goes to find Jack so he can get his compass (there’s a scene before this with Will going to see Elizabeth in jail but I don’t care) when he eventually finds the Black Pearl washed up on the shore of a seemingly deserted island.

Despite the problems so far, that is a pretty impressive set piece.

When he doesn’t find what he’s looking for, Will goes into the jungle where he comes into contact with the native Pelegostos tribes people of the island. As you can see, he handles them super well.

*Come on! Who wants it?! I can do this all day!*

This is why you’re no one’s favorite character, Will.

As it turns out, this whole sequence on the island with the cannibalistic Pelegostos people is pretty pointless in the grand scheme of things. Honestly the movie could’ve just cut to Will finding Jack at sea and kept the script more focused that way, but at the same time, this sequence on the island is one of the most legitimately fun moments in the movie. This is what makes me think: What if the movie started here? Instead of having all this crappy exposition for 20 minutes we could’ve been reintroduced to the characters we know through this funny sequence filled with clever slapstick, visual intrigue, and creative action to get our blood pumping in the theatre. The way I see it the movie should’ve started with Will asking around about Jack until he makes his way to the island because at first we wouldn’t know it was Will asking around until one of the Tortuga girls slaps him in a funny reveal. Will would then make his way to the island where there’s plenty of creepy buildup to the reveal of the Pelegostos tribe being cannibals until Will is captured and we see Jack like this:

While the Jack intro earlier was also good, this one is just as attention getting if not more so.
Also, doesn’t looking at this image just spark the question “Jack, what’d you do this time?”

Not only that, but as the movie currently plays out it’s actually more confusing this way. How did Jack and his crew go from out at sea to captured by the Pelegostos in about 7 minutes of them being off screen? If this was where the movie started, it would make much more sense since you could reasonably assume that all of this just happened in-between movies which gives the audience much more of an opportunity to fill in the blanks themselves. That and Will just repeats exposition we’ve already heard (twice!) anyway, so it would hit a lot harder if this was the opening. This sequence also has some good dark jokes and visual gags.

*Aww…eunuchy…*
They said that like they were *really* looking forward to eating *that* part of him!
That and you can see some of the tribes people are wearing items I can only assume they got from their previous meals.

*These cages we’re in…weren’t built ‘til* ***after*** *we got here.*

I’d love to show you more of this humor but there’s literally too much of it to cover in this review, you’ll just have to watch the movie yourself if you want to see it. Eventually Will leads the crew in just as wacky of an escape as you’d expect while Jack ends up saving himself and they make their way back to the Black Pearl. At one point during this sequence they cut to Elizabeth escaping from jail with the help of her father which would’ve been more surprising if the movie started at the Pelegostos’ island. That and this Mercer guy (played by David Schofield) isn’t in the movie for very long, but he tries his best to be a big villain.

However, that is one of the major problems with this movie: the fact that they feel the need to show us literally everything that happens whether it’s necessary or not. As a result, there’s a lot of padding in this movie and scenes that could’ve been cut making the film a lot shorter and easier to digest. I will admit that even with the first film’s longer running time there were still plenty of fun moments to balance out the slower moments that made it much easier to sit through, but that’s not here. Here it feels like forever before crap actually starts happening and it’s a long way until you can officially get to it. There are a few moments here and there that kinda make up for it, but for the most part it’s just boring. For instance, Elizabeth makes her way to Beckett’s quarters and threatens him to give her the full pardon court documents he prepared earlier while also repeating the same exposition for the fourth friggin’ time! How ADHD is this movie that it feels the need to repeat stuff 4 times in the span of less than half an hour?! Not only are they repeating plot threads that we’ve already heard several times at this point, Beckett is just not a good antagonist as I said before. While it’s kind of a fun image seeing Elizabeth take charge and hold a gun to Beckett’s head, Beckett himself is so forgettable.

Elizabeth escapes and we even see her stowaway on a merchant ship, because we’ve established this movie just likes to show stuff for no reason, and Jack, Will, and the rest of the crew set out to find the same key Jack mentioned earlier. First things first though, Jack needs to visit…her.

Yeah, you know, this person we’ve only just been introduced to:

This is Tia Dalma (played by Naomie Harris) and while she’s also not in the movie very long, I think she makes more of an impression than Elizabeth, Will, Norrington, and Beckett combined (Granted Elizabeth is the one pulling all the weight in this lineup). Tia Dalma has a clearly defined personality as she seems sly, untrustworthy, wicked, and fun all at the same time. She even starts flirting with Will for a second until Jack interrupts which is kinda funny. Either way, the reason they’re here is because Jack needs info on where to get the key and Tia has just the info he needs. I should also point out that this scene is different from most other scenes in this movie since it’s the only scene where the writing is doing two things at the same time. Namely because Tia talks about how Davy Jones fell in love with a woman, cut out his heart, and locked it in a chest for her only for us to find out in the next movie that Tia is the one he fell in love with. Most of the other exposition in this movie is just ‘this is this’, ‘go do this’, and ‘macguffin is this’, there aren’t really any layers to it which is part of what makes this movie so boring to sit through. The important thing to take away from this scene however is that Davy Jones carries the key with him at all times. That and a jar of dirt.

To the movie’s (little) credit though, it does start to get cool when Tia sends them off to find the Flying Dutchman which is the ship Davy Jones is said to captain and Jack sends in Will to find the key for him. How did you think this was going to be a slip-in slip-out situation, Will? Right on cue, the Flying Dutchman bursts out from under the waves and everything about it is absolutely awesome!

They can pop out of places like that? Dope!

*Down on your marrowbones and pray!*
Okay, that guy’s kinda weird, but they can’t all be winners.

After Will goes out like a wimp again (seriously dude, I thought you were supposed to be good at this!) we finally get the reveal of Davy Jones himself, and I have to warn you: he’s the best part of the movie.

The effects on Davy Jones (played by Bill Nighy) are legit impressive and really hold up. At the same time it’s not perfect, I still think Gollum was a better effect than Jones, but I will give credit for good CG effects when I see them because they do exist. I’d also like to take a second to talk a bit about the legend of Davy Jones in history. When I was getting ready to do this review I was really curious about how Davy Jones came to be a part of nautical folklore to begin with, and I was surprised to find out that even most historians don’t have a legitimate answer to that question. There are several things that could’ve influenced the creation of Davy Jones and his iconic locker that I found including one man who sailed the Indian Ocean in the 1630s by the name of David Jones. Historians believe that it’s unlikely he was an influence on the legend though since he’s fairly unknown even during the time he was active. My personal head canon though is that Davy Jones was based on a man of the same name who owned a British pub and got his patrons so drunk that he would lock them in his ale locker (Davy Jones’ locker) and sell them into slavery. Eventually when his pub went belly-up he ended up becoming a ruthless pirate himself for a short period of time who decapitated most of his crew and locked them below deck before his ship sank. Whatever the true inspiration for this icon is, the general idea among sailors is that Davy Jones is the Satan of the sea.

This movie and the next one however focus on the interpretation where Davy Jones is the captain of the Flying Dutchman and is responsible for ferrying souls who died at sea to the next life. He can only set foot on land once every 10 years and when he fell in love with the sea Goddess Calypso, he returned to land after a decade to find that she’d left him (Also yes, Tia Dalma is Calypso). As a result, Davy Jones’ weakness in this movie is talks of romance and the reminder of Calypso which we’ll see later, but for now Will manages to save his own life by telling Jones that Jack Sparrow sent him to settle his debt. So Jones pays Jack a quick visit.

As much as I love everything Davy Jones in this movie, this scene is also just setting up plot threads that’ll eventually amount to nothing in the end. Since Jack agrees to give Will up to Davy Jones, Jones gives Jack the opportunity to harvest another 99 souls in the next three days to give up to Jones’ crew as well and officially settle his debt. The only problem with this is that Jack never gets 99 souls in the movie to give Jones so this just drags things out. By giving Jack a false sense of protection from the Kraken, because Jones deactivates the Black Spot on Jack’s hand while he harvests these souls, it takes away the looming threat of the Kraken and the sense of urgency associated with escaping it. Mainly because, I’m just gonna say it, you totally forget Jack doesn’t have the Black Spot activated anymore until it shows up again in the last third of the movie. All the while practically nothing of interest is going on! Speaking of uninteresting -

*No, not anymore, weren’t you listening?!*

While I’m at it, let me just make a side pot of scenes that I totally forgot were in this movie despite seeing it at least 7 times at this point:

Elizabeth disguised on the merchant ship making the crew believe her dress is haunted.

Yay, even more characters that have no reason to be here! So I guess this movie forgot it already replaced Norrington with Beckett. That and does Norrington really have anyone to blame for his current situation but himself?

*I think we can afford to give* [Jack] *one day’s head start.*
No, you really can’t.

I’d be lying though if I said I wasn’t at least somewhat interested in the “Ally of Convenience” trope. I’ve always been a fan of it because I feel like there’s something that can be explored emotionally and psychologically with characters who’re at odds with each other if you put them up against a threat that’s bigger than either of them forcing them to work together in the process if it’s done well. When it comes to Norrington though, he’s always been a single-noted character with few layers to him and even when putting him in a situation allowing him to become something more than what he is, they still do nothing with his character! He’s still just the same stick in the mud with a chip on his shoulder he’s always been, now he’s just…dirtier. Ooo!

So in a drunk rampage, Norrington starts a bar fight and tries to shoot Jack until he gets knocked out with a bottle by Elizabeth only to be thrown in a pig pen and comforted by Elizabeth. Girl, you literally just conked him on the back of the head with a bottle, now you care about him?!

*I just wanted the pleasure of doing that myself*!

*James Norrington…what has the world done to you?*
Pick a lane, girl!

It does get interesting again when we cut back to Davy Jones’ ship. Granted if the movie was just Davy Jones and his crew I’d be satisfied, but that’s where I think it’s worth mentioning that this is really Davy Jones’ movie. While The Curse of the Black Pearl was more Jack’s movie, Dead Man’s Chest is definitely Davy Jones’ movie. Not only does he steal the show every time he’s on screen, but most of the subtle visual characterization in this film revolves around him and he’s the one who appears to have the most depth as well. While we don’t see his relationship with Calypso here (she isn’t even mentioned by name until the next one), we at least see the effect their relationship had on Jones in several small moments done through clever prop work, musical clues, or subtle facial expressions from Bill Nighy. Speaking of which, Davy Jones’ theme is also really awesome and it gets better with this image:

While it is melodramatic, it also fits in pretty well with other gothic monster stories like *Phantom of the Opera*, *Frankenstein*, or *The Hunchback of Notre Dame* (the original, not the Disney version)

Also remember what I said earlier about starting the movie from the Pelegostos’ island? If we did that, imagine if this was the introduction we got of Bootstrap Bill.

*My son…he’s my son*.
Wouldn’t that be so much more surprising?

While that would be a lot more interesting to me, I will admit that Bootstrap Bill is pretty pointless in this movie in the long-run. Now I’m not saying I don’t like Skarsgård’s acting, I truly believe based on his acting alone that he’s a protective father trying to keep his son safe in the face of certain danger, it’s just that in terms of the script Bootstrap is nothing more than a Will-shield. His only purpose is to keep Will from getting himself killed. I will give him credit though, he does have his work cut out for him. Also, watching Will get whipped is so cathartic for me.

Side pot:

Barnacle Ship Boy talking about the Dead Man’s Chest.

Now we’re back with Jack and his crew as Norrington and Elizabeth join forces with them. This is when the truth about Jack’s compass is revealed: the compass isn’t actually broken (which is something that adds to Jack’s likable oddball persona), instead the compass points to what you want most. You clearly made that up just for this movie. You know what, I’m just gonna move on. What’s next again?

Side pot:

Governor Swann meeting with Lord Beckett.

Come on, movie. At least let me get a full paragraph in before you throw in more crap I forgot was in this.

Thank the Lord, another Flying Dutchman scene! We see the crew playing a dice game called Lying Dutchman with each other where they gamble with their years of service to Davy Jones. I’m gonna be honest, when I saw this for the first time years ago I really wanted to play this game. I don’t know why, it just always looked so fun to me! Anyway, Will has a great idea to get the key.

[I’ll give you] *my soul. An eternity of servitude*.

After challenging Jones, Bootstrap Bill steps in to be a proper Will-shield and while Davy Jones is still really fun to watch during this scene, Will never seems to get any more interesting throughout the rest of this series. Dammit he started off boring and he’s gonna stay boring! When Will is about to lose, Bootstrap takes the fall for him and ends up being sentenced to an eternity of service instead of Will. In the end Will says the challenge wasn’t about winning or losing, he just wanted to know where Davy Jones’ key was. I still feel like there were better ways to find that out rather than risking eternal damnation for the sake of figuring out where the key is. Will then proceeds to steal Davy Jones’ key while he’s asleep at his organ. Okay, it should not have been that easy! For a legit cool and badass character, that’s really embarrassing!

Side pot:

Bootstrap talking with Will before he escapes.
Elizabeth talking to Jack and Norrington on the Black Pearl and Elizabeth questioning if she actually loves Jack or not.

Ooo, we got a twofer! After those two forgettable scenes back-to-back we see Will made it onto the merchant ship Elizabeth stowed away on earlier and he begs them to get to land as soon as possible. Too late though, the Flying Dutchman already caught up with him and Jones sends the Kraken to destroy the ship. Looking back too, the Kraken did not age as well as Jones did. It’s pretty obvious that the filmmakers were way prouder of this effect than they should’ve been and it ends up having the spotlight for 2 long action sequences in the movie which only makes it more obvious how not-so-good the Kraken looks. I suppose it’s a decent effect, but I don’t think it’s good enough for 2 long action sequences. That and this scene ends up being a moot point anyway because the ship is destroyed, Will survives (explain that one, writers!), and ends up getting right back on the Dutchman. Did we really need that scene in the movie? I understand that Will needed a way to convince the Dutchman crew that he was no longer on the ship so he could hitch a ride on it in secret, but couldn’t he have done that a different way? He could’ve just let one of the Dutchman’s longboats drift out into open water under the pretense that he took it to escape and hid in the jaws at the bow of the ship instead. That would’ve kept things more focused and this movie is long enough already, can we trim stuff down please?!

Side pot:

More Jack and Elizabeth flirting.
The Black Spot reactivates.
Pintel and Ragetti: ‘kracken’ vs. ‘krayken’.

I guess it’s been three days. It definitely feels like it! So we finally make it to Isla Cruces where the chest is supposed to be, but the movie still thinks it hasn’t wasted enough of our time.

They eventually find it and dig it up with the Flying Dutchman hot on their trail, and Will manages to reunite with everybody as well.

*How did you get here?*
You should be asking the writers that question.

Kinda like I said before about Davy Jones’ character, a lot is subtly revealed about him and his past while they’re on this island. For instance, the reason Jones felt the urge to bury the chest on this island in the first place implies that this island is important to him. We see a dilapidated church surrounded by a full cemetery with an open grave which suggests that there was a town on this island at one point but it’s since gone under and the open grave could be Davy Jones’ grave. That and my personal favorite touch is when they open the box that has the chest in it and find several love letters and a dried up bouquet of flowers surrounding the chest.

With Will’s return, the truth is revealed that Jack lied about not being involved in Will’s capture at the hands of the Dutchman. Though honestly that’s more of Elizabeth’s fault because his lie wasn’t convincing at all yet she still believed him. Will goes to open the chest with the key and kill Davy Jones, but this results in a three-way fight breaking out between Jack, Will, and Norrington who all want the chest for their own needs. Will wants to kill Jones to save his father, Jack wants to keep Jones alive so he can convince Jones to call off the Kraken, and Norrington wants to keep Jones alive and deliver the chest to Beckett so he can get his old life back.

Each wants the chest for hisself, don’ ‘e? Mr. Norrington, I fink, is trying to regain a bit of honor, old Jack’s lookin’ to trade it, save ‘is own skin, then Turner there, I think ‘e’s trying to settle some unresolved business ‘twixt him and his twice-cursed pirate father.
That’s literally what I ***just said***!

So Pintel and Ragetti (played again by Lee Arenberg and Mackenzie Crook) decide to do the noble thing and steal the chest from the three fighting men and Elizabeth follows close behind them. It’s at this point that I really start to have some fun with the movie again because firstly: this is the first official sword fight in the movie. Sure up until now they’ve had swords, some characters have used blades/knives to kill people, Beckett has had his fair share of playing with Norrington’s old sword, and Will has…flailed swords around, but this is the first genuine sword fight. Not only that but secondly: it’s a three-way sword fight. We’ve seen quite a few one-on-one sword fights up until now, in the previous movie, but so far we’ve yet to see a three-sided every man for himself sword fight and that on its own makes it pretty fun to watch. If you pick one person to follow you may even enjoy yourself more. Thirdly: it’s superbly choreographed with some great slapstick thrown in for good measure. The more you watch this fight the more it escalates the idea. They fight their way into the jungle, into a church and zipline on the church bell rope, onto the exterior roof, and eventually onto a broken water wheel which ends up splitting apart from its supports and rolling through the jungle with everyone on it. It’s got life, it’s got energy, it’s got humor, and it’s got fun! Where was this the entire rest of the movie?! Okay, I do still like the Pelegostos scene, but you get my point!

Elizabeth, Pintel, and Ragetti eventually encounter Davy Jones’ crew in the jungle as well and end up having to fight them off which is surprisingly easy for them considering the crew contains at least a dozen people if not more and there’s only 3 of them, but it can be kinda fun too. Eventually the three-way fight results in Jack getting a hold of the key and finding the chest after quickly decapitating one of Jones’ crew members who tried stealing the chest back with a coconut. He opens up the chest, steals the heart, and closes it back up without taking the key back. Kinda dumb there Jack. I know he was technically in a hurry, but it would’ve taken him 2 seconds to twist the key out of the lock, so why not take it? Jack gets back to the longboat and puts the heart in his jar of dirt which would’ve been clever if Norrington didn’t recover from his dizziness and steal the heart for himself anyway. So in the end the jar of dirt is also pointless! Whee… So after knocking Will out and being surrounded by Jones’ crew, Norrington decides to draw the rest of them off by taking the chest and running back into the jungle so everyone else can escape. Since the crew members don’t know Norrington already has the heart, he manages to give the chest back to them without raising any suspicions and gets off scot free.

When everyone else makes it back to the Black Pearl the Flying Dutchman emerges from the depths and Jack, still under the impression that he has the heart, mocks Jones thusly.

*I got a jar of dirt!*
*I got a jar of dirt!*
*And guess what’s inside it!*
Even though the jar of dirt has been rendered pointless, I’d be lying if I said this scene didn’t always make me chuckle.

Davy Jones isn’t having it though, so he tries to send the Black Pearl back to the ocean floor where it belongs but the Pearl is too fast for him. Off-topic: this guy should really consider starting an ASMR channel.

*Let them taste the triple guns.*
*AyE cApTaIn*…
I’m not saying I’d subscribe to it, I’m just saying *people* would.

It looks like the Dutchman is giving up when, oh right, the Kraken, duh! As soon as the Kraken is released on the Pearl, Jack nopes his way out of there leaving Will and Elizabeth to take charge of defending the Pearl and the audience to suffer with more scenes focusing on Will and Elizabeth. Every time I see this part I always wish that one of those two will die. That would make things interesting! It is a bit funny when they’re loading gunpowder barrels into a net to blow up the Kraken when they realize they don’t have enough gunpowder so Will tells them to load the rum.

This eventually leads to Will hanging from the barrel net and getting his foot stuck while the Kraken attacks which keeps Elizabeth from shooting it until Jack gets back to the ship and shoots for her. The Kraken gets blown up, but it’s not dead yet, it’s just royally pissed now. Jack gives the order to abandon ship and we get some more brief Elizabeth and Jack flirting (even a kiss!) before Elizabeth does this.

*It’s after you, not the ship*.
It clearly isn’t because the Kraken had several opportunities to kill Jack back there and didn’t take them.

Basically, this movie badly wants to be The Empire Strikes Back so Elizabeth decides to leave Jack behind. This of course results in Jack getting eaten by the Kraken as it takes down the Black Pearl, Davy Jones opens the chest to see his heart is missing, and Norrington delivers said heart to Lord Beckett. Now’s the time to have a funeral for Jack back at Tia’s place. Yeah, it’s a bit weird seeing everyone crying over him since this whole movie is basically his fault, but I won’t spoil their moment. Except Will’s because I hate him. Why does he care that Jack is dead?! In that sword fight from earlier Will was totally okay with Norrington killing Jack, so why would he suddenly be sad that he’s dead? Since everyone’s all morose, Tia presents them with the prospect of bringing Jack back from the dead along with the Black Pearl to which everyone agrees that they’d move Heaven and Earth to see him alive again. In the meantime, who’ll be their captain? Not gonna lie, this reveal was pretty startling the first time I saw it.

So that was Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, certainly a less than worthy follow-up to a good movie.

All things considered, I think I’m still somewhat torn on this one. Everything I said in this review I meant and I stand by it, but also like I said there are still some things that I do legit enjoy in this movie. Unfortunately it’s sandwiched between several boring moments, pointless plot threads, and un-fun characters. On the other hand though, this movie does present what I would consider a franchise mainstay in Davy Jones who I still think is really cool and fun to watch, and there are some good moments of physical comedy and action here and there. Overall I wouldn’t consider it enough to balance out the bad moments like the last film though. I’d much rather watch clips of those moments from the movie than the actual movie itself all over again which definitely isn’t good. Although, I suppose that does point out a weird strength this movie has.

You could say that what this movie does have outside of a coherent plot is well-made short films hidden throughout it. Honestly if the Pelegostos island scene, those scenes from the Flying Dutchman, everything Davy Jones related (minus him getting duped by Will while he’s asleep), and the fun three-way sword fight could make some pretty solid short films on their own. All together is when they fall apart since there isn’t a stable enough story to support it in-between those moments of joy. Part of why I think this is because I mentioned in the introduction that both Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End were shot back-to-back. My theory is that the writers likely thought they didn’t need to go the extra mile to simplify and add layers to the writing since they knew they already had a sequel ready to go. As a result, the movie heavily suffers from moments that aren’t needed, but if you’re interested in this film for your weekend movie night because of those rare nuggets of fun, then I’m not gonna stop you.

For the rating, I feel like giving this movie a solid 2/5 giant squid. I will admit that if I’m in the right mood for this movie, I can kinda be a fan of it. If I’m feeling up for it and am willing to look past all the nonsense I feel like I could give it a 3.5/5, but only on the rare occasion I do want to watch this movie and that’s the absolute highest I can rate it.

Other Pirates Reviews

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

(I make no claim of ownership for any of the images used in this post)

(Each of them are owned entirely by their respective copyright holders, which are not me)

(I’m just a humble blogger who talks about movies, I do not make them)

(Yet)