I rewatched the original trilogy in the last few days and I'm going to have to go with the original being my least favorite of the three.
All of them are bloated but only the first one truly feels like it goes in circles(they reach the Isla de Muerta at the half way point and the film just goes in a circle until we are back there again for the finish) and the original while still having a lot of fun action, it doesn't hold a candle to the greatness Verbinski brings to the two sequels.
Dead Man's Chest is definitely the more solid of the two latter films but I am so on board with the grandeur and spectacle and the general going-for-broke quality of
At World's End. That movie is more impressive than what the supposed blockbusters are bringing today.
Random Thoughts:
- As a youngin' Jack Sparrow was the coolest, now I see Elizabeth Swann for the greatness that she is.
- The special effects(particularly in Black Pearl) clearly don't wow as they used to but it is still very impressive what they pulled off.
- Davey Jones is still absurdly effective on the other hand.
- The films, while not gorey, are way more gruesome and violent than I remember. Sexual as well.
- It is hard to imagine these getting made(content-wise) by Disney these days. While the threat of it never has teeth or is ever taken seriously, Elizabeth is in constant sexual peril in the first film. The word "Rape" is used at one point(in describing what pirates do, i.e. 'rape and pillage'). The gruesomeness grows in the sequels(you see a guy getting his eye eaten by a bird in Dead Man's Chest, a child is hung to death in the opening scene of At World's End), you have the cannibal islanders(bonus points for tropey racism). At World's End feels like it was made with no studio interference or even oversight, something like the sequence with Jack going mad in the Locker seems like it would be impossible to get past the suits in this day and age.
- Naomi Harris grows 50 feet tall and then transmogrifies into a mass of crabs...how do people not love that movie?!
I intend to watch the other two at some point soon. I remember
On Stranger Tides being a massive disappointment, with the lack of Verbinski felt all over the place, I distinctly recall watching the sequence with the seesawing ship and being flabbergasted at just how much it wasn't working(Verbinski would've killed that bit). And I've never seen
Dead Men Tell No Tales, so that'll be an experience