Anticipating Pirates

The end begins...today!

Over at National Review Online, Frederica Matthewes-Green concludes her generally positive review of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End thus:

Less likeable is the absurd opening premise, that the East India Trading Company has gathered so much political power that they can suspend the laws on a Caribbean island and execute anyone who befriends a pirate. Perhaps we need a refresher course in what pirates are. Just as a carjacker steals your car, pirates steal your ship. A pirate ship would come alongside their victim, invade it, then kill and rape and throw overboard at random, keeping cargo and valuables for themselves. [...]

[T]he inference that the British government killed civilians in order to save merchandise from pirates is outrageous; governments killed pirates in order to save civilians, and it’s a good thing. ... This attempt to recast the underlying story as a conflict between romantic pirates and powerful corporations undercuts the dynamic necessary to give any pirate story a good jolting start. In the first film, the pirates were sexy bad guys; now they’re gentle people with seaweed in their hair. If by the next film they’re marching in protest outside Wal-mart headquarters, it may be earnest, but it won’t be much fun.

...and this is my biggest worry about the franchise, and bothers me about modern films in general. Every film has a point of view, every film expresses some comment on some level of morality. Don't deny it, it's just a fact.

This first hit me hard when I did something silly, I stopped to think about a silly and fun film, namely The Lost World: Jurassic Park. In the film, who is the "villain"? Clearly it's meant to be that weasel-faced bastard taking over the corporation. And what villainy is he engaged in? Why, that rotten guy is saving a company from bankruptcy and -- and this is his most egregious sin -- he wants to create a zoo. The villainy portrayed is the effort to round up wild dinosaurs to populate a zoo. Oh dear, how evil.

Now, villainy is not a necessary ingredient for a film, even one as silly as The Lost World. There really wasn't villainy in the original Jurassic Park. You had a greedy guy being exploited by a rival corporation and, as things must in these sorts of films, everything goes wrong. In The Lost World, though, the film is clearly painting the zoo collectors has morally bankrupt, while the eco-freak (Plan B) who "liberates" the animals is the "hero".

Plan B results in most of the zoo collectors being killed. Every death on the island can be traced directly to eco-freak's "liberation" of the captured animals, yet he's clearly portrayed as a hero. When evil industrialist nephew gets munched to death by baby t-rex, you can hear the righteous tone in the music. Justice in the first film is in Nedry's death and in the failure of Hammond's island. In the second, the notion of justice is turned upside-down. And don't say that the notion of "justice" wasn't a factor. Listen to the music, watch how its edited, see how clearly Spielberg presents who he thinks is good, and who he thinks is evil. And how evil gets his just desserts.

Feh.

Which brings me to the Pirates trilogy. In the first film, the pirates are mean, murdering bastards. You have a certain sympathy for their plight, for the curse they "live" under, but not much. The kill, they rape, they pillage, and they laugh while doing all the above. They are proper villains; they are, without a doubt, the bad guys.

Except for Captain Jack Sparrow. There's some question as to whether he's much of a pirate at all. He's more Bugs Bunny (deliberately, I hasten to add), with delusions of being a ship's captain. It's his lack of pirate ability that leads to the mutiny which gets him marooned which sets up the plot.

In the second film, he's even less of a pirate and more of a goof. Yes, yes, he's out for his own skin, but there's little thought or planning to his actions. (In Curse, he was always scheming; in Chest he chanced upon opportunities.) But ah, a new villain is introduced, Lord Beckett of the East India Trading Company. Oh again, the horror of this vile man. He wants to...trade! I love the moment when he's recruiting Will and the young Mr. Turner says something about taking the compass from Jack. His lordship says oh no, "Barter!" He actually loathes violence, preferring to negotiate, to barter, to buy what he wants.

Which is quite the opposite of pirate behavior, don't you think?

From this humble set up, though, his motion picture power leads where motion picture power is supposed to always lead, to being corrupt and unchecked. He's not doing a good thing by ridding the world of pirates, he's doing an evil thing. And the pirates? Well, they just want to live free, you know. Sometimes they have to kill you in order to support their free life style, but, hey, them's the breaks. Better that than that merchant dude, right? Better you should be beaten and robbed than shop at Wal-Mart, right?

So while I'll be seeing At World's End this Sunday (and they're anticipating a $200+ million Memorial Day Weekend take at the box office), and while I anticipate a thrill ride of a film, I also expect that I'll be quietly cringing at the morality it portrays, and at the film's cowardice. Because Curse of the Black Pearl was brave enough to have bad and rotten people, i.e., pirates, portrayed as bad and rotten people, something neither of its sequels has the stomach for.