once more with symbols!
I went to see Dead Man's Chest again tonight, this time with subtext and symbolism in mind, and now, I shall discuss. :)
Not as extensively as my previous essay, because it is 3:35 in the morning, but I still feel compelled to do some ramblin'.
What I found really interesting concerning J/E subtext in this film is that, well -- there is none.
Well, perhaps that's a bit of a bold statement. But honestly, off the top of my head, I can't think of any. (Although blaming the fact that it is 3:30-ish in the morning is allowed.) Why?
Because it's all right there, blatantly spelled out for us on the screen. We don't need subtext anymore, because we're in canon-land now, my friends.
Rather, all of the interesting subtext and symbolism that I picked up on while viewing the film seemed to be centered around Will and the Will/Elizabeth relationship.
This is quite compelling in itself, because it makes it seem as though the J/E and W/E relationships have switched places since the first film. This time, it's J/E that's getting the romantic focus, whereas W/E is thrown into symbols-and-subtext-land. However, whereas all of the J/E subtext in Curse of the Black Pearl points toward the connection between the characters and a possible one-day romance, the W/E subtext in Dead Man's Chest is -- well -- anti-W/E.
Let us consider.
Hell's Bells: The Wedding That Wasn't
Really, really wasn't. Throughout the course of the film, it's really beaten into us that Will and Elizabeth didn't get married -- and not only that, but that their wedding was interrupted by, well, some pretty extreme circumstances.
I'm assuming that the reason the wedding didn't take place in the first place was because of the storm, although I could be wrong. In any case, the storm's definitely important -- it's pouring buckets and buckets of rain, and we're shown in detail that the wedding's been destroyed by it. It's well on its way to washing everything away. And then we have Elizabeth, staring out to sea. This might just be there because it's visually stunning (the whole sequence is gorgeous), but it's still interesting to note.
And then, well, they get arrested, at which point in time Elizabeth tells Will herself that it's "bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding." She says it in tearful jest, but it's not the only time that their potential marriage takes on the sense of being cursed.
Later, when Elizabeth "negotiates" with Lord Beckett, he brings up the subject, and goes so far as to suggest that the wedding being interrupted was "fate intervening." It's interesting that it's a villain who suggests this: we don't feel compelled to trust him or listen to him, and at this point in the story, it is a rather villainous thing to say -- we're still meant to be rooting for Will/Elizabeth. And yet, he does throw the suggestion out there, voicing aloud that perhaps Will and Elizabeth quite simply aren't meant to be.
Then, there's the matter of Elizabeth's wedding dress. It shows up on the ship, and the crew immediately think it's cursed. Pretty harsh, huh? Not exactly the best vibes.
What's more, through Elizabeth's scheme with the dress, it eventually reunites her not with her husband-to-be, but with Jack. Iiiinteresting.
And then, of course, there's the fact that the last time we see the dress, it's on its way down to the depths of the ocean. There's more I'd like to say about this part, but that belongs in the section discussing Will.
Good Guy/Bad Guy Girl
The one romantic scene between Will and Elizabeth -- complete with airy, romantic lighting, close-ups, and actual physical contact of the non-"thank God you're not dead!" variety -- is the one that takes place in the jail cell.
Funnily enough, not only are they physically separated in this scene, but we have Will on the outside, and Elizabeth behind the bars. He's in the position of being 'good,' whereas she is, physically, where the bad guy should be. Considering the way each one's characterization progresses throughout the rest of the film, this is interesting to note.
Furthermore, the way each behaves is rather telling of their character, and the fact that they're just plain not all that compatible: Will is driven by the intention to free her, and is all in all quite gallant and heroic, whereas Elizabeth is being quite coquettish and forward.
The last thing Elizabeth says, ironically, is "I'll wait for you." She also seems to intend to kiss Will goodbye, and appears quite shaken when he leaves without doing so. The whole scene concludes with quite a pronounced sense of emptiness.
The Importance of Being William
"You have a touch of destiny about you, William Turner," Tia Dalma tells Will when she first sees him. Very interesting indeed, considering the expected Disney happily-ever-after ending for the guy has him marrying Elizabeth and being a blacksmith, doing a bit of swashbuckling on the side every so often.
I must confess, I never really thought of Will having any kind of great destiny -- the fact that he's the hero of the films never brought me to associate him with having some grand, Harry Potter-esque fate. Possibly because he's painted as being very conventional and slightly bland, especially in the first film. But watching this film a third time made me suspect that perhaps there's quite a bit more in store for Mr. Turner than I'd ever contemplated.
Before finding his father in Dead Man's Chest, Will's sole purpose has always been Elizabeth -- saving Elizabeth, to be specific. It's rather formulaic, and essentially the basis for their relationship: hero saves girl, hero gets girl. In fact, he's mid-hero-saves-girl-again when all of a sudden he's given something else to fight for -- his father. The storyline with his father is left at a rather intriguing point in Dead Man's Chest, with Will swearing that he'll free his father from his imprisonment. I couldn't help wondering what the compass would point to for Will at this point in the story, were he to use it -- is Elizabeth still the thing he wants most, or has saving his father become even more important than her?
And then there's the matter of destiny. What kind of destiny? At this point, it's clearly all about speculation, but I stumbled across a theory that I found myself considering all throughout the movie and found rather eerily plausible.
boonies posted the idea that Will might become the next Davy Jones.
Granted, on a surface level, one doesn't generally link Orlando Bloom with a guy whose face is a squid.
And yet!
There are indeed eerie, eerie parallels between Will and Davy Jones.
When Tia Dalma tells the story of Davy Jones's heartbreak, I couldn't help noticing how eerily well her description of the woman matched Elizabeth - "untamable" is definitely applicable to our Miss Swann, especially in the second film. They also make a point of showing Will's reaction to this.
From what I've seen, it's a near-agreed upon theory that Tia Dalma is indeed the woman that Davy Jones loved and lost, as evidenced by the matching music box lockets seen in his and her possession. Tia Dalma's fascination with and attraction to Will, then, could be considered a parallel.
Another interesting thing to note is that when Elizabeth's wedding dress is shown sinking, the melody from the music box plays over the scene.
A point that I thought was made very clear throughout the film is that someone has to control the sea -- and that the East India Trading Company is far from being that ideal someone. From where Dead Man's Chest left off, it looks as though Will's going to be the one to ultimately destroy Davy Jones's heart and thus Davy Jones -- perhaps this will somehow wind up bestowing upon him the responsibility of controlling the sea?
That is, after all, quite the destiny.
Also, it allows the three main characters to sink into a rather classic scenario in terms of their relationships with each other. The hero is generally too busy to get the girl, but the more snarky sidekick (although admittedly, Jack isn't precisely a sidekick, and if he is, he's a rather awful one) and strong-willed heroine do tend to have so many sparks flying that it all works out in the end. (See Star Wars and Harry Potter.)
--
As it's now 4:30 in the morning, and I don't think I can formulate anything approaching semi-well-organized thoughts for much longer, I'll shut up pretty quickly, after pointing out just a few more things I found interesting.
The (brilliantly amusing) swordfight between Jack, Will, and Norrington is, on the surface, fought over the chest. However, it's not exactly a stretch to suspect that the feelings the three men harbor for Elizabeth also factor into their desire to inflict severe violence upon each other. :) Now, Will and Norrington wind up seeing the swordfight to the very end, whereas Jack manages to drop out early -- and winds up being the one to actually get the chest. Hmmm -- I do wonder what this might bode for the future. ;-)
On a more general note, I believe I've read somewhere that the first film was made as a standalone, and then the "Curse of the Black Pearl" subtitle was tacked on in hopes that it'd be successful enough for a sequel or two. Now, the characterization and relationship dynamics that you're going to apply to a one-shot film are quite different and much more basic than what you can manage in a three-film series.
In Curse of the Black Pearl, the hero is Will and the girl is Elizabeth. Simple. And really, a love triangle has no place in a typical action/adventure film -- there's already far too much going on. Best to keep the romantic plot simple, as well as something that compliments the overall plot. (Still, it does seem that the writers & co. were intrigued from the start by the Jack/Elizabeth relationship, as it receives so much attention regardless of the fact that they're not the romance.)
Now, it seems conceivable that once they found out Pirates was going to become a trilogy, the writers decided to add much more complexity to the characters and their relationships. The hero already got the girl at the end of the first film, and in a way that hadn't been particularly compelling; with two more films, there's suddenly room to explore the more unconventional romance between Jack and Elizabeth -- not to mention that it will spice things up a lot more than Will/Elizabeth, which has been stripped of tension since they got together at the end of the first.
Meanwhile, Will, already in the position of the hero, is suddenly able to be a real hero -- not just in the "nice hat", swash-swash-buckle-buckle sense, but in the epic hero sense. The destiny sense. Potter and Skywalker, step aside. (Well, maybe not quite.) And when it comes to destiny, romance kinda just tends to get in the way.
In good-God-it's-4:42-in-the-morning conclusion, I am trying very, very hard not to get my hopes up for a Jack/Elizabeth resolution to things. And it just be said that it would be much easier if they didn't keep making J/E all the more possible.
Hmph. Mean ol' writers.
Not as extensively as my previous essay, because it is 3:35 in the morning, but I still feel compelled to do some ramblin'.
What I found really interesting concerning J/E subtext in this film is that, well -- there is none.
Well, perhaps that's a bit of a bold statement. But honestly, off the top of my head, I can't think of any. (Although blaming the fact that it is 3:30-ish in the morning is allowed.) Why?
Because it's all right there, blatantly spelled out for us on the screen. We don't need subtext anymore, because we're in canon-land now, my friends.
Rather, all of the interesting subtext and symbolism that I picked up on while viewing the film seemed to be centered around Will and the Will/Elizabeth relationship.
This is quite compelling in itself, because it makes it seem as though the J/E and W/E relationships have switched places since the first film. This time, it's J/E that's getting the romantic focus, whereas W/E is thrown into symbols-and-subtext-land. However, whereas all of the J/E subtext in Curse of the Black Pearl points toward the connection between the characters and a possible one-day romance, the W/E subtext in Dead Man's Chest is -- well -- anti-W/E.
Let us consider.
Hell's Bells: The Wedding That Wasn't
Really, really wasn't. Throughout the course of the film, it's really beaten into us that Will and Elizabeth didn't get married -- and not only that, but that their wedding was interrupted by, well, some pretty extreme circumstances.
I'm assuming that the reason the wedding didn't take place in the first place was because of the storm, although I could be wrong. In any case, the storm's definitely important -- it's pouring buckets and buckets of rain, and we're shown in detail that the wedding's been destroyed by it. It's well on its way to washing everything away. And then we have Elizabeth, staring out to sea. This might just be there because it's visually stunning (the whole sequence is gorgeous), but it's still interesting to note.
And then, well, they get arrested, at which point in time Elizabeth tells Will herself that it's "bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding." She says it in tearful jest, but it's not the only time that their potential marriage takes on the sense of being cursed.
Later, when Elizabeth "negotiates" with Lord Beckett, he brings up the subject, and goes so far as to suggest that the wedding being interrupted was "fate intervening." It's interesting that it's a villain who suggests this: we don't feel compelled to trust him or listen to him, and at this point in the story, it is a rather villainous thing to say -- we're still meant to be rooting for Will/Elizabeth. And yet, he does throw the suggestion out there, voicing aloud that perhaps Will and Elizabeth quite simply aren't meant to be.
Then, there's the matter of Elizabeth's wedding dress. It shows up on the ship, and the crew immediately think it's cursed. Pretty harsh, huh? Not exactly the best vibes.
What's more, through Elizabeth's scheme with the dress, it eventually reunites her not with her husband-to-be, but with Jack. Iiiinteresting.
And then, of course, there's the fact that the last time we see the dress, it's on its way down to the depths of the ocean. There's more I'd like to say about this part, but that belongs in the section discussing Will.
Good Guy/Bad Guy Girl
The one romantic scene between Will and Elizabeth -- complete with airy, romantic lighting, close-ups, and actual physical contact of the non-"thank God you're not dead!" variety -- is the one that takes place in the jail cell.
Funnily enough, not only are they physically separated in this scene, but we have Will on the outside, and Elizabeth behind the bars. He's in the position of being 'good,' whereas she is, physically, where the bad guy should be. Considering the way each one's characterization progresses throughout the rest of the film, this is interesting to note.
Furthermore, the way each behaves is rather telling of their character, and the fact that they're just plain not all that compatible: Will is driven by the intention to free her, and is all in all quite gallant and heroic, whereas Elizabeth is being quite coquettish and forward.
The last thing Elizabeth says, ironically, is "I'll wait for you." She also seems to intend to kiss Will goodbye, and appears quite shaken when he leaves without doing so. The whole scene concludes with quite a pronounced sense of emptiness.
The Importance of Being William
"You have a touch of destiny about you, William Turner," Tia Dalma tells Will when she first sees him. Very interesting indeed, considering the expected Disney happily-ever-after ending for the guy has him marrying Elizabeth and being a blacksmith, doing a bit of swashbuckling on the side every so often.
I must confess, I never really thought of Will having any kind of great destiny -- the fact that he's the hero of the films never brought me to associate him with having some grand, Harry Potter-esque fate. Possibly because he's painted as being very conventional and slightly bland, especially in the first film. But watching this film a third time made me suspect that perhaps there's quite a bit more in store for Mr. Turner than I'd ever contemplated.
Before finding his father in Dead Man's Chest, Will's sole purpose has always been Elizabeth -- saving Elizabeth, to be specific. It's rather formulaic, and essentially the basis for their relationship: hero saves girl, hero gets girl. In fact, he's mid-hero-saves-girl-again when all of a sudden he's given something else to fight for -- his father. The storyline with his father is left at a rather intriguing point in Dead Man's Chest, with Will swearing that he'll free his father from his imprisonment. I couldn't help wondering what the compass would point to for Will at this point in the story, were he to use it -- is Elizabeth still the thing he wants most, or has saving his father become even more important than her?
And then there's the matter of destiny. What kind of destiny? At this point, it's clearly all about speculation, but I stumbled across a theory that I found myself considering all throughout the movie and found rather eerily plausible.
boonies posted the idea that Will might become the next Davy Jones.
Granted, on a surface level, one doesn't generally link Orlando Bloom with a guy whose face is a squid.
And yet!
There are indeed eerie, eerie parallels between Will and Davy Jones.
When Tia Dalma tells the story of Davy Jones's heartbreak, I couldn't help noticing how eerily well her description of the woman matched Elizabeth - "untamable" is definitely applicable to our Miss Swann, especially in the second film. They also make a point of showing Will's reaction to this.
From what I've seen, it's a near-agreed upon theory that Tia Dalma is indeed the woman that Davy Jones loved and lost, as evidenced by the matching music box lockets seen in his and her possession. Tia Dalma's fascination with and attraction to Will, then, could be considered a parallel.
Another interesting thing to note is that when Elizabeth's wedding dress is shown sinking, the melody from the music box plays over the scene.
A point that I thought was made very clear throughout the film is that someone has to control the sea -- and that the East India Trading Company is far from being that ideal someone. From where Dead Man's Chest left off, it looks as though Will's going to be the one to ultimately destroy Davy Jones's heart and thus Davy Jones -- perhaps this will somehow wind up bestowing upon him the responsibility of controlling the sea?
That is, after all, quite the destiny.
Also, it allows the three main characters to sink into a rather classic scenario in terms of their relationships with each other. The hero is generally too busy to get the girl, but the more snarky sidekick (although admittedly, Jack isn't precisely a sidekick, and if he is, he's a rather awful one) and strong-willed heroine do tend to have so many sparks flying that it all works out in the end. (See Star Wars and Harry Potter.)
--
As it's now 4:30 in the morning, and I don't think I can formulate anything approaching semi-well-organized thoughts for much longer, I'll shut up pretty quickly, after pointing out just a few more things I found interesting.
The (brilliantly amusing) swordfight between Jack, Will, and Norrington is, on the surface, fought over the chest. However, it's not exactly a stretch to suspect that the feelings the three men harbor for Elizabeth also factor into their desire to inflict severe violence upon each other. :) Now, Will and Norrington wind up seeing the swordfight to the very end, whereas Jack manages to drop out early -- and winds up being the one to actually get the chest. Hmmm -- I do wonder what this might bode for the future. ;-)
On a more general note, I believe I've read somewhere that the first film was made as a standalone, and then the "Curse of the Black Pearl" subtitle was tacked on in hopes that it'd be successful enough for a sequel or two. Now, the characterization and relationship dynamics that you're going to apply to a one-shot film are quite different and much more basic than what you can manage in a three-film series.
In Curse of the Black Pearl, the hero is Will and the girl is Elizabeth. Simple. And really, a love triangle has no place in a typical action/adventure film -- there's already far too much going on. Best to keep the romantic plot simple, as well as something that compliments the overall plot. (Still, it does seem that the writers & co. were intrigued from the start by the Jack/Elizabeth relationship, as it receives so much attention regardless of the fact that they're not the romance.)
Now, it seems conceivable that once they found out Pirates was going to become a trilogy, the writers decided to add much more complexity to the characters and their relationships. The hero already got the girl at the end of the first film, and in a way that hadn't been particularly compelling; with two more films, there's suddenly room to explore the more unconventional romance between Jack and Elizabeth -- not to mention that it will spice things up a lot more than Will/Elizabeth, which has been stripped of tension since they got together at the end of the first.
Meanwhile, Will, already in the position of the hero, is suddenly able to be a real hero -- not just in the "nice hat", swash-swash-buckle-buckle sense, but in the epic hero sense. The destiny sense. Potter and Skywalker, step aside. (Well, maybe not quite.) And when it comes to destiny, romance kinda just tends to get in the way.
In good-God-it's-4:42-in-the-morning conclusion, I am trying very, very hard not to get my hopes up for a Jack/Elizabeth resolution to things. And it just be said that it would be much easier if they didn't keep making J/E all the more possible.
Hmph. Mean ol' writers.