You bastard.

Well considering it's not even out yet, I can't really say ho i feel about it. But i am really excited, especially since i don't hate the sequels nearly as much as others do.

I like the character of Jack enough to see this in the theaters, but if the story is as muddled and confusing as At World's End, I might actually demand my money back.

I'm skeptical, but I love all 3 of the films equally, so I will be checking it out in a week or so.

Dead Man's Chest and At Worlds' End are both better than the first film.

Yeah, I said it.  Davey Jones is the coolest shit imaginable, Jack's death and Barbossa showing up at the end of DMC are both awesome moments.  And if you don't like At World's End, you are watching a pirate movie for the wrong reasons.  It ends with a giant pirate war around and inside a whirlpool, and that film has both Barbossa AND Davey Jones, which means it has very little room for suck.  Every character's arc is wrapped up perfectly, and all the relationships find closure- Davey Jones and Calypso, Will and his Father, Will and Elizabeth (sea battle sword fighting marriage, come the fuck on), Jack and Will, Jack and Elizabeth, Norrington and Elizabeth...

I understand the words people use to say those two movies fell short of the original, but I was on board for every single second of that series.  This one... well, Blackbeard showing up is going to have to work to win me over, as much as I loved the guy as a kid.

Now the downside to working in a cinema - standing up for 8 straight hours with PotC in 5 screens. Eck =/

I think you're misunderstanding the objection. I, for one, have no problem with implementing pirate/seafaring lore in a rollicking high fantasy adventure. The first movie established a world where supernatural seaman's legends are all true, so all of that is perfectly allowable. Hell, if you're going to tell a story with that setup, you'd BETTER sail off the edge of the earth at some point or I'm gonna ask for my money back. The problem is that the story around those cool crazy happenings is incoherent, which is not what I signed up for, especially when the first movie was so tightly written.

Every character's existing arc is abandoned and replaced by a new one, laden with retcons, and wrapped up halfheartedly amid the whirlpool fighting.

More power to you if you can enjoy it, but the first one is brilliant and the sequels are a mess that flail wildly from one half-baked storyline to the next. They're only "better" if you use that word to mean "more spectacular and expensive." Which, to be fair, a lot of people do.

I have to wonder when the last time was that you actually watched the films. YMMV whether you find them all to be fun and watchable, but to make a broad statement that none of them are well-crafted, 'good' movies is just plain incorrect.

The first film IS an intentionally crafted 'good' movie by any objective measure. There's plenty of subtlety, subversion of tropes alongside celebration of tropes, setup/payoff, etc. Pick your screenwriting theory of choice -- McKee, Campbell, Vogler, Snyder -- CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL nails every beat. There is no "pulling things out of their ass" to be found (beyond the extent inherently involved in creating any work of fiction, of course) and nary an extraneous plot thread. It may be pulpy popcorn fare, but it's built on a rock-solid foundation.

The sequels, on the other hand, are indeed blithering messes of big stupid action/adventure, grasping desperately at tropes and hoping that with enough action and VFX we'll be convinced it's a plot. And if you think that's fine, then hey, the sequels are, by definition, fine. But to lump the original into the same category as the sequels in terms of how capably and carefully they're written is not only factually untrue, but the difference is exactly the source of my (and others') objection to the sequels compared to the first.

Watch them again back to back. Whether or not you find yourself able to enjoy them all equally -- purely subjective -- if you really can't tell any objective difference between the quality and economy of storytelling in BLACK PEARL vs. the sequels, I'll be shocked.

Not to belabor the point, but I want to be clear that I am talking about the writing/storytelling, not the technical aspects of the filmmaking. Certainly the sequels are superior to the original in scope and scale, absolutely the action and effects are cranked to 11 and a damn fine job of it. But that's not how a movie wins me over.

All that said, I had tentative hopes for STRANGER TIDES. It was based on a book, so the story was already sorted out, and they had time to write and develop it rather than being in the middle of a production rush like the sequels, particularly AWE, suffered from. Will & Elizabeth were out so the story didn't have to be contorted to include them, the budget was reduced so they wouldn't be able to get too slaphappy about the FX, and CHICAGO is one of my favorite movies so Rob Marshall directing seemed promising. Thought it might well be a return to form. But it seems it was not to be.

Almost went to the midnight screening tonight.  I get a student discount at AMC on Thursdays, and the range I've been getting some trigger time in on is just down the street, so Thursdays have become my "going into town" days.  Stopped by to see what they were offering this week and, no shit, I think they were showing it on every screen at midnight.  Figure I'll give it a week and catch it next Thursday unless the reviews are utter shite, otherwise, Netflix.

I went in having read terrible reviews and having recently tried to explain the motivations in DMC on the internet.

Disclamed.

But I liked it. It was different, it felt different, but I liked it. I don't think it stands up to much scrutiny, but it's now my second favorite in the series.

I'm gonna write up a full review with spoilers as to why I really didn't like it. In short, it was clustered, full of characters I didn't care about, and felt more like a "Hey kids, it's Jack Sparrow!" thing than a PotC-film. In fact, had they called it "Jack Sparrow and the Fountain of Youth", I think I'd be much more OK with it.

I killed him.