I saw the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie yesterday. Although, it could more truly be said I saw it early this morning. The movie didn’t start until 11:24, and I didn’t get out until 2:00 in the morning. Thank god for the overpriced popcorn and coke. Which for me was dinner and a vital source of caffeine.
It has been the best summer movie so far. After the disappointment of X-Men: The Last Stand and the love/hate relationship with Superman Returns it was nice to see a movie that was entirely good. The only complaints I could have is a little too much CGI (suspension of disbelief tends to shut down when CGI stunts happen) and a very slight pacing problem. But those are minor quibbles. If you see only one summer movie, this seems to be the one to see.
Sequels, as a rule of thumb, tend to be poor in comparison. I think that is the nature of the beast though. If you make the sequel at the same time as the original, you can have them flow together. But usually the sequel is only made after the movie execs see the original is a hit. So they feel disjointed. Often a number of hard coincidences are needed to get the characters to interact with each other again. This movie fell victim to that, but they did their best to get people who don’t necessarily like each other to work together again.
What they did do quite well is really make it a sequel right. You do that by taking elements from the first movie (usually minor ones if the sequel wasn’t made at the same time) and make them far more of a plot hook in the next. The other way is to not introduce too many new characters, and use as many from the first movie as possible. Pirates did that in spades. Almost every character from the first is in the second. Even ones that don’t make sense were forced in. Mostly, I suspect, because they were good comic relief.
My final piece of advice. The credits last ten minutes. There is a brief ten second scene waiting for you at the end. You will feel no sense of loss if you miss it, and you could probably predict that that was what happened. So if you don’t want to wait through all those names, don’t feel too bad. But at least you know it is there.