Pirates 4 trailer and thoughts
The first trailer for Pirates 4 is out.
It looks awfully promising. It looks freaking awesome, actually. But I'm afraid to get my hopes up after being so utterly, bitterly, horribly disappointed by the third film. I want On Stranger Tides to be fantastic, to revive the franchise, to return to the epic adventure of the first film. It looks good. It looks funny, exciting, and interesting. Please don't let me down!
I used to love this franchise so much, and felt so betrayed when the third film took a big heaping shit on everything I enjoyed about it.
Can the fourth movie make things right again? I hope so. Oh, how I hope so.
Will Johnny Depp have the kind of on-screen chemistry with Penelope Cruz that he did with Keira Knightley? Will his rivalry with Barbossa return to the nuanced, delicious state it was in during the first film, or the cartoonish farce of the third? Will Blackbeard fit into the PotC mythos? Will the plot be needlessly complicated like the third film's?
Will Angelica (Cruz's character) hold her own as a fully realized character, or will she just be thrown in as eye candy for the male audience, and to give Jack a new love interest? Back before they utterly fucked up the love triangle in the second and third films, some fans envisioned a franchise where Jack and Elizabeth were both pirates in their own right, having adventures and those wonderful battles of wits and words. We Sparrabeth shippers didn't even necessarily insist that they be officially together as a full-time couple, as long as they were both free to chase their own horizons, always a part of each other's world in some fashion. A playful rivalry, double-crossing and teasing, cooperating and flirting, sparring and tricking... The thrill of the chase, the unpredictable love/hate dynamic, underestimating each other, outwitting each other only to be outwitted in turn... It would have been glorious.
Alas, it was not to be, mostly because Keira Knightley didn't want to be tied down to the role any longer. While I can respect that decision, I can still wistfully imagine what could have been.
The thing is, it looks like that's kind of what they're trying to create between Jack and Angelica. I'm not sure how I feel about that. If done right, it could be quite entertaining. If the chemistry is there, and Jack stays in-character, I can see it working. I have to try very hard to keep an open mind, though, because part of my brain is petty and stubbornly says "I only want Elizabeth, not some makeshift stand-in."
What made the Jack/Elizabeth pairing so appealing to me was that we got a chance to know them both as fully realized characters long before the sparks started flying. We knew a bit about Elizabeth's childhood and family origins, we knew her hopes and dreams, how confined she felt by society's expectations, how conflicted she was between trying to please her beloved father and trying to please herself, how clever, brave and ruthless she could be, how she despised being passive, how she dreamed of pirates... She was a well-developed character in her own right, completely independently of her ties to male characters, and as a bit of a feminist critic I appreciated that. With or without anybody else, she was a kickass woman. The ways she complimented Jack, and vice versa, were fascinating to contemplate. She brought out the best in him, and he brought out the worst in her (in a good, piratical way). ;)
Can this new Angelica character live up to that kind of precedent? I don't see how, when from the looks of thing she'll be introduced and then locking lips with Sparrow in the same two-hour span of film. In between the plot, zombies, mermaids, other pirates, action sequences, and what-have-you, I doubt they're going to devote a lot of screen time to character development. It's not that kind of movie, and that's fine. I'd go watch Jane Austen stuff if that's all I wanted. (And sometimes I do...Austen is awesome. That's not the point.) But the first two PotC films showed that it is possible to have both great characters and swashbuckling action.
So it won't be Penelope Cruz's fault, or anyone's fault, really, if Angelica seems shallow next to Elizabeth, simply because she'll only have one movie to develop instead of a trilogy. I suppose they're doing the best they can, and with the state of the franchise they don't have the luxury of several more movies to develop new characters. If this one bombs, it's probably over.
Playing the "Oh, they have a history together, we just haven't mentioned it before" card may carry a whiff of bad fanfiction, but in Jack's case he has a history with half the population of the Western Antilles, so...that I can forgive.
I just hope that the filmmakers aren't thinking, "Oh, they liked Jack being paired up with a pirate chick, eh? Okay, here's a different pirate with boobs, enjoy." It wasn't "Jack with a lady pirate" that made Sparrabeth so intriguing; it was the characters and the way they interacted. They were both great characters, and great characters are not interchangeable. You can't just go, "Darn, Knightley won't do another pirate movie. Let's just get some other actress, maybe a brunette this time, rinse and repeat."
I guess what it all boils down to is that I really hope Angelica wins me over and is a fun, strong character, but I'm afraid she's just going to be there as the token female/love interest.
I am spacey on DayQuil due to a lingering cold, so any or all of the above may be rambling and nonsensical. If so, I apologize.
It looks awfully promising. It looks freaking awesome, actually. But I'm afraid to get my hopes up after being so utterly, bitterly, horribly disappointed by the third film. I want On Stranger Tides to be fantastic, to revive the franchise, to return to the epic adventure of the first film. It looks good. It looks funny, exciting, and interesting. Please don't let me down!
I used to love this franchise so much, and felt so betrayed when the third film took a big heaping shit on everything I enjoyed about it.
Can the fourth movie make things right again? I hope so. Oh, how I hope so.
Will Johnny Depp have the kind of on-screen chemistry with Penelope Cruz that he did with Keira Knightley? Will his rivalry with Barbossa return to the nuanced, delicious state it was in during the first film, or the cartoonish farce of the third? Will Blackbeard fit into the PotC mythos? Will the plot be needlessly complicated like the third film's?
Will Angelica (Cruz's character) hold her own as a fully realized character, or will she just be thrown in as eye candy for the male audience, and to give Jack a new love interest? Back before they utterly fucked up the love triangle in the second and third films, some fans envisioned a franchise where Jack and Elizabeth were both pirates in their own right, having adventures and those wonderful battles of wits and words. We Sparrabeth shippers didn't even necessarily insist that they be officially together as a full-time couple, as long as they were both free to chase their own horizons, always a part of each other's world in some fashion. A playful rivalry, double-crossing and teasing, cooperating and flirting, sparring and tricking... The thrill of the chase, the unpredictable love/hate dynamic, underestimating each other, outwitting each other only to be outwitted in turn... It would have been glorious.
Alas, it was not to be, mostly because Keira Knightley didn't want to be tied down to the role any longer. While I can respect that decision, I can still wistfully imagine what could have been.
The thing is, it looks like that's kind of what they're trying to create between Jack and Angelica. I'm not sure how I feel about that. If done right, it could be quite entertaining. If the chemistry is there, and Jack stays in-character, I can see it working. I have to try very hard to keep an open mind, though, because part of my brain is petty and stubbornly says "I only want Elizabeth, not some makeshift stand-in."
What made the Jack/Elizabeth pairing so appealing to me was that we got a chance to know them both as fully realized characters long before the sparks started flying. We knew a bit about Elizabeth's childhood and family origins, we knew her hopes and dreams, how confined she felt by society's expectations, how conflicted she was between trying to please her beloved father and trying to please herself, how clever, brave and ruthless she could be, how she despised being passive, how she dreamed of pirates... She was a well-developed character in her own right, completely independently of her ties to male characters, and as a bit of a feminist critic I appreciated that. With or without anybody else, she was a kickass woman. The ways she complimented Jack, and vice versa, were fascinating to contemplate. She brought out the best in him, and he brought out the worst in her (in a good, piratical way). ;)
Can this new Angelica character live up to that kind of precedent? I don't see how, when from the looks of thing she'll be introduced and then locking lips with Sparrow in the same two-hour span of film. In between the plot, zombies, mermaids, other pirates, action sequences, and what-have-you, I doubt they're going to devote a lot of screen time to character development. It's not that kind of movie, and that's fine. I'd go watch Jane Austen stuff if that's all I wanted. (And sometimes I do...Austen is awesome. That's not the point.) But the first two PotC films showed that it is possible to have both great characters and swashbuckling action.
So it won't be Penelope Cruz's fault, or anyone's fault, really, if Angelica seems shallow next to Elizabeth, simply because she'll only have one movie to develop instead of a trilogy. I suppose they're doing the best they can, and with the state of the franchise they don't have the luxury of several more movies to develop new characters. If this one bombs, it's probably over.
Playing the "Oh, they have a history together, we just haven't mentioned it before" card may carry a whiff of bad fanfiction, but in Jack's case he has a history with half the population of the Western Antilles, so...that I can forgive.
I just hope that the filmmakers aren't thinking, "Oh, they liked Jack being paired up with a pirate chick, eh? Okay, here's a different pirate with boobs, enjoy." It wasn't "Jack with a lady pirate" that made Sparrabeth so intriguing; it was the characters and the way they interacted. They were both great characters, and great characters are not interchangeable. You can't just go, "Darn, Knightley won't do another pirate movie. Let's just get some other actress, maybe a brunette this time, rinse and repeat."
I guess what it all boils down to is that I really hope Angelica wins me over and is a fun, strong character, but I'm afraid she's just going to be there as the token female/love interest.
I am spacey on DayQuil due to a lingering cold, so any or all of the above may be rambling and nonsensical. If so, I apologize.