Shortly after the release of King Kong, looking at the trailers for the then upcoming summer blockbusters, I thought to myself "Could this finally mark the year that spectacle returns to film?" It turns out I was right, and it seems as if a film that I thoroughly enjoyed can easily be made out to be the scapegoat of a recent disturbing trend in Hollywood films: The overuse of "suspension of disbelief." Now, I'm well aware that calculated blockbusters have been around forever, chief among them 1997's Titanic, but this trend that I'm speaking of seems to have only risen within the past few years, most notably with Jackson's King Kong. The issue is that on top of the jam-packed action that's all but guaranteed out of our summer blockbusters, we've also been getting a lot of what I refer to as fluff action-- fantastical action sequences so out of place that they verge on becoming tedious. Peter Jackson has long been king of this, and one needs to look no further than the Lord of The Rings trilogy (which felt more like a pentalogy if you go by running time), making films that are as all-encompassing as humanly possible. He brought this same framework to King Kong, a movie whose budget rose from roughly $175 to a mind-boggling $207 million, all because of Jackson's efforts to push the envelope in eye candy. Where did that extra $32 mil go? Your guess is as good as mine, but I have a hunch that a good chunk of that went to the senseless marathon battle between King Kong and a T-Rex. Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed that whole bit (as well as the rest of the film), as it answered every young kid's (well boy's anyway) question-- especially if you grew up at the same time as Jurassic Park-- of what dominating beast would win, a brute like Kong or the also feared T-Rex. The downside of action sequences like these is twofold. First, it's becoming standard now that you have to deal with CGI which is a real shame because as advanced as computers today are, there's no replacing reality, and even quality CGI (of which there's been very few-- even George Lucas' last two Star Wars looked incredibly tacky and he's been in the forefront of special effects) will look outdated in five to ten years. The second downside is that in an already overcrowded and competitive atmosphere, there comes a point where pushing the envelope for the sake of wowing the crowd becomes pushing the envelope for the sake of pushing the envelope.
That brings us to the now, where there have been continual flops from seemingly sure-fire blockbusters and I'm beginning to wonder if this could be the reason why. Could it be that everyone is trying to outdo their counterpart so they feel the need to insert the aforementioned "fluff action" to try to grab brownie points from the audience?
Well, today I finally saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, and that is both the point of as well as the basis of my rant. Like the second Matrix, Dead Man's Chest is 95% action and 5% of (very poor) dialogue. Unlike the second Matrix, Dead Man's Chest feels about one hundredth as creative as the original.
While the cast of characters are still in tact (much to the delight of any Pirates fan), you won't get much chance to enjoy any of them-- if it weren't for Johnny Depp's astounding presence as an actor, he too would've come off like a one bit actor wasting what could've been useful time and space. Keira Knightley's character goes from playful and innocent to full on tease, while Tom Hollander (who plays the "bad guy" Cutler Beckett) is such an unfathomable bore that he appears incapable of creating such conflict. Even Orlando Bloom, a man who I would hardly say is blessed with much acting talent, should be offended as the role of Will has been reduced to either being pouty or indifferent.
The actual action sequences themselves were at times enjoyable but when the running time approached an hour it began to feel tedious. From tedious it went to tiring, and then by the end of the movie, you wondered what the hell they possibly could've left out to need a third film outside of a Keith Richards cameo. They threw everything including the kitchen sink into the action of this film, and it served no purpose whatsoever. While some scenes, such as when the imprisoned men of Captain Jack's crew were forced to swing back and forth from their hanging cage, evoked the clever playfulness that made the first film so enjoyable, there were too many moments where you would expect something as strange as Dr. Phil getting in a food fight with a puffin (with Mills Lane refereeing of course) on the moon just for the sake of doing it (and being the first ones to do it). The whole three-way fight between Jack, Will, and Norrington was pointless-- their supposed motivations were about as deep as a bird bath-- and took far too long (I'm almost certain it was thirty minutes long), ending with Will and Norrington fighting fiercely on a... giant... wheel. Apparently no T-Rexes were available to make Will and Norrington run that much faster, but the point of the matter is that these films' increase in length and increased complaints in weariness stems from this very real problem-- there's simply too much fluff. That's what plagued Pirates 2 (and if it weren't for the fact that this movie were a sequel I can guarantee that it wouldn't have done half as well at the box office), Superman, and will plague every following film until someone realizes that they need to actually insert a story somewhere to keep the audience awake for the whole three hours.
Oh, and by the way, my rating for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is a paltry 52. You should save your money and wait to join Jack Sparrow and company on a Blockbuster night (no pun intended).
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