As for the low points, well \u2013 all the scenes with Keira Knightley\u2019s Swann in pirate gear and trying to pirate talk. Really CMI: she just does not look or talk like the part requires. The lowest point was when she tries to do that inspirational \u201cLet\u2019s go get \u2018em!\u201d talk for the Brethren Court fleet against overwhelming odds in the form of the Beckett\u2019s East India Fleet just before the climatic battle of the last film. Maybe she was to trying to channel William Wallace<\/a>. Too bad it just didn\u2019t work. Her counterpart, Orlando Bloom\u2019s Will Turner fared better though it\u2019s still a huge strain listening to his slightly tenorish-baritone mixed voice trying to sound macho.<\/p>\n The CG work for all three films are amazingly good and on high def you see a lot more detail that you might have missed on the big screen or on DVD. Especially those visual characters that makeup Captain Davy Jones (veteran Brit actor Bill Nighy)\u2019s cursed crew. I thought Gollum from LOTR<\/em> looked obviously computer generated, but in Pirates<\/em>, the crew members look so real I have a hard time believing that they are all CGed, logic at whether creeping tentacles for beards and dread locks are even humanly possible aside.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n As for missed opportunities: starting with music: Hans Zimmer I think took a lot of flak for self-plagiarizing and mining his earlier soundtracks for the Pirates<\/em> trilogy. I thought the music is indeed semi-repetitive across the three films and aimed squarely to please the mass demographic without concern for musical subtlety or sophistication. There was another pirate film \u2013 Cutthroat Island <\/em>\u2013 from 1995 starring Matthew Modine and Geena Davis, the latter actress who seems to have nearly completely disappeared off film radar. That film had a superb film soundtrack by John Debney, and it played homage to the 1930-1950s swashbuckling film scores of Erich Korngold. The music in this Pirates<\/em> trilogy on the other hand is easy on the ear and catchy enough. But there\u2019s little in its main themes that signify it\u2019s a series of films on the colorful Caribbean era of the 16th century. In other words, the music here is what you\u2019d found in King Arthur<\/a><\/em> which in turn was what you found in Gladiator<\/em> which sounded suspiciously like what one heard in The Rock<\/em>.<\/p>\n There\u2019s also the absence of character-pair conflict and tensions in a couple of spots. In some instances where there is, it works: e.g. Barbossa and Sparrow\u2019s mutual antagonism over the Black Pearl\u2019s ownership makes for some of the last film\u2019s biggest laughs. Remember that scene about telescope sizes, or that \u201cBelay that belay order!\u201d scene of dialog between the two? The Laurel and Hardy character team of Ragetti and Pintel works for me too.<\/p>\n What didn\u2019t and not trivially so: lovebirds Turner and Swann. It doesn\u2019t help when the two of them have about as much chemistry as oil and water, and both were miscast if for different reasons. The two of them start out having hots for each other at the get-go and it\u2019s sustained for the next two films. The one spot which presents an opportunity for conflict and which should had been farmed for material is given short drift instead. I\u2019m referring to the scene when Turner sees Swann smooching Sparrow (before she ties him down with the ship to appease to Kraken LOL) and mistakenly believes she\u2019s got a thing for him. It\u2019s resolved in the third film in a lover\u2019s quarrel scene, but not satisfactorily.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n All said and done and on balance, I enjoyed my week-long revisits to the three films. Based on my original viewings, I would have rated the trilogy perhaps two stars. But for the revisits and perhaps now that I\u2019ve paid more attention to the proceedings, the experience improved significantly. Not perfect, but still a terrifically enjoyable\u2026<\/p>\n There were several high and low points in my revisits to the three films too this week: memorable scenes that worked very well, and scenes that were just awful. For the former: the standout scenes included the introduction of Jack<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/star10.gif\")
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