One of those challenges about producing film trilogies themed on fantastic premises is coming up with story arcs to string and relate the three films together. Ideally, you\u2019ll want to write the entire story for the three films first before even making the first one, rather than make a film with only very loose ideas about where to go from there and suddenly realize that you have lots of backtracking and corrective exposition to do after the fact when the first film turns so successful studios demand sequels.<\/p>\n
Film trilogies like Peter Jackson\u2019s Lord of the Rings<\/em> (LOTR) are<\/em> lucky in this respect: their stories were written for the printed word first, so the films just need to follow the original text close enough and the audiences can then sufficiently draw relation between the films to see the continuity from one to the next. We also had The Matrix <\/em>trilogy, which only casually introduced overarching story points in the first film and left it to the second and third films to actually flesh them out. And then we had the Star Wars<\/em> original trilogy, which I thought was the worst offender of \u201cmaking it up as we go along\u201d, enjoyable as the three films to me were. I\u2019m thinking specifically of Obi-wan Kenobi\u2019s claim to Luke Skywalker that Vader \u201ckilled his father\u201d, to which he could only clarify as \u201cin a manner of speaking\u201d in the third film when it\u2019s established Vader was Luke\u2019s Lao Pei.<\/p>\n I felt the Pirates trilogy was somewhere in in effect between LOTR<\/em> and The Matrix<\/em> in this regard, and it\u2019s something I\u2019d mostly missed in the original viewings. In my revisits on Blu-ray, I now noticed there were numerous references in the first film to significant story points in the second and third films, and winningly, those references weren\u2019t just casual. For instance, the legend of Bill \u2018Bootstrap\u2019 Turner is solidly explained in the first film, which the next two films properly follows-up on, as is also Sparrow\u2019s ownership of the Black Pearl<\/em> and constant cycle of experiencing mutiny with his crew and island marooned. Another example: why Barbossa was brought back from the dead by Calypso in the second film is revealed in the third.<\/p>\n The net effect of properly establishing numerous story arcs that are introduced early and resolved later really made for a better sense of continuity and cohesion between the three films, though as these fantastic adventures go, there\u2019s still a lot of belief suspension needed on its sensibility. For instance, after the third film I\u2019m still wondering what exactly was Calypso\u2019s reaction to being freed by the fourth Brethren Court aside from the maelstrom that she coughed up. Or the inconsistencies surrounding the prowess of the Flying Dutchman<\/em>\u2019s ship and crew: is the ship indestructible and the crew immortal for them to have easily swept through the opposing pirate fleet \u2013 shown early in the last film \u2013 but somehow seemed more vulnerable in the climatic fight at the film\u2019s end.<\/p>\n Concluded in the next post.:)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of those challenges about producing film trilogies themed on fantastic premises is coming up with story arcs to string and relate the three films together. Ideally, you\u2019ll want to write the entire story for the three films first before<\/p>\n