Pirates of the Caribbean II

Having waited patiently for the crowds to thin out, I saw Dead Man's Chest in a mostly-full theater on Thursday night. Here's fair warning: If you're a jumpy person, don't be the one to hold the popcorn. Otherwise, you're likely to wind up with popcorn all over yourself. All over the floor, too. And maybe the pirate sitting next to you. All I can say is, it's a good thing I wasn't also holding the soda.

Anyways, after seeing Pirates II, I realized that I now need to go back and see the first one again. My main memories of The Curse of the Black Pearl are Johnny Depp's entrance, the line "This is just like what the Greeks did at Troy, except they were in a horse, and we're in dresses," and disconnected scenes that might or might not contain important parts of the storyline. So I'm not going to write a full review of Dead Man's Chest. For a complete and well-thought-out review, check out Chris Knight's take on it here.

As for my thoughts--well, I just remember seeing my first Johnny Depp movie, Benny and Joon. For the next several years, I didn't realize who had played the quirky and unforgettable outcast, Sam (who brought life to an otherwise rather stupid movie, if my memory holds true); my good friend Edd told me in the summer of 2004, after giving me a brief but hilariously lifelike imitation of Sam's breadsticks-dance with a couple of potatoes.

Now, having seen Johnny Depp as Captain Jack and in other roles, I've got to take my proverbial hat off to him for perfecting a practically unsurpassed gift as an actor. I might question his ability to portray anything non-offbeat, were it not that I saw Chocolat and Finding Neverland (fabulous movies, both of them, in my opinion). I love seeing creativity taken to its best, whether in acting, writing, art, music, science, sport, or any other field. Johnny Depp takes the idea of a character and gives it a soul.

At some point, I'm going to have to watch Dead Man's Chest again, if for no other reason than that I never caught sight of my former coworker, Rusty Rice, who reportedly got called in as an extra a couple of times during the filming of this movie and the next. He worked on one of the tallships that was used in the movies, and at one point even sent my then-boss a picture of himself wearing Johnny Depp's hat.

The final view we get of Captain Jack Sparrow kicks off the marketing for the next movie. Anyone who sees that scene and doesn't care whether or not they catch the trilogy finale--well, they're missing that integral human gotta-know-the-ending-of-the-story component. The writers apparently took lessons from Scheherazade herself.