if you ask me what I remember about Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's
Chest I would tell you three things 1.
everyone's in love with Elizabeth for
some reason 2.
squid people and 3.
there's a really great fight on a giant
wheel naturally it is the last one we're going to be talking about the wheel
fight on Isla Cruces in Dead Man's Chest is a really spectacular set piece and
it's so much fun... but.
actually that pretty much sums up my opinion of the
movie in microcosm there's so much to like about it but.
But I wish that the
rest of the scene was stronger it starts weak some of the sections go
on for too long, the editing is interesting and the script lets it down
at some key moments and that's a real shame if you watch my Curse of the Black Pearl
video where I talked about the fight in the blacksmith shop between
Jack and will I called it a perfect pirate fight well if we're going to
continue the theme it's a patchy pirate fight and not in a nautical eyepatch
kind of way my name is Jill Bearup and my hobby is stage combat which is to say
fighting people with swords or staffs or your fists or whatever but hopefully in
ways that a) convey characters story and intent b) look good and c) also don't actually
hurt the other person and on this channel we talk about fights in media
from that perspective.
Now the plot of dead man's chest is actually very simple
who is going to get to the chest of Davy Jones and his heart contained therein
first?
the people looking for the chest are in no particular order Davy Jones
cursed squid captain of the Flying Dutchman whose heart it actually is
Cutler Beckett of the East India Trading Company who wants to control the Seas
James Norrington former Commodore now a drunk whose life has been wrecked wants
to give the chest to Beckett to restore his honor HONOR!
sorry I've been watching
Avatar The Last Airbender recently carry on Will Turner whose father bootstrap
bill is serving on the Dutchman and Will has vowed to save him and of course Jack
Sparrow who needs leverage over Jones to stop him from taking his soul and his
ship because Jack silly eejit that he is has made a deal and time's up you'll
notice that Elizabeth is conspicuous by her absence from this list of people who
have a compelling need for the chest and that is why she ends up stuck with the
comic relief and also fainting hilariously because nobody cares anyway like the
treasure cave fight in curse of the Black Pearl the Isla Cruces fight
comes near the end of Dead Man's Chest we have located the chest on Isla Cruces
with the help of Elizabeth and the compass and Elizabeth's desires will
shows up with the key three of our main characters
re-establish their motivations they fight for the key Elizabeth shouts at
them they fight on the beach Elizabeth shouts at them the comic
relief steals the chest Jack runs to the ruined mill, the Dutchman's crew
show up our main characters fight up the stairs on the roof Jack turns Norrington
on Will a giant wheel gets involved Elizabeth and the comedy pirates fight
the Dutchman's crew eventually Jack gets the key and opens the chest but it's
Norrington who eventually gets the heart and the empty chest which he uses to
draw off the baddies "Don't wait for me!"
side note I rewatched the first three
movies again and Norrington is now my favorite character and it's a darn shame he
didn't get more screen time and general character development I mean the
choreography tries its best but the script does not have a lot of time for
him even when he's doing dramatic heroics.
To explain the problems and the
good points in this fight we're going to look at it in three broad sections which
I have labeled section 1 rushed and unsatisfying section 2 nearly brilliant
but falls at the final hurdle section 3 unmitigated fun good job everyone
same scene different sections different purposes wildly varying quality: Dead
Man's Chest everyone!
the setup is a three-way sword fight between Jack
Sparrow Will Turner and James Norrington.
All of them need the key to open the
chest simple but after an excellent Mexican or I guess Caribbean standoff we
do not start strong I know there will be later shenanigans which are much more
fun but it feels like they were just trying to get this section done as fast
as possible so that we can get on to the more fun
things which all things considered with the production schedule might have been
what happened, but.
every section of a fight should have a purpose ideally it
should have multiple purposes character development
showing off impressive choreography or cinematography or scenery getting the
characters from point A to point B world buildings setting up dialogue whatever
this section get the characters from point a beside the chest to point B on
the beach and that would be fine if there were something to go along with it
but there isn't there's just elizabeth shouting angrily so no particular
character development and while the choreography is perfectly fine it's
almost completely obscured by the editing on this channel we call the
sections into which fights are divided for learning and indeed shooting
purposes phrases phrases because they're like dialogue or music the first section
has two phrases one of five moves on one of
eight moves the first phrase has a grand total of six shots for just five moves
and the seventh shot is our characters running to get them in position for the
second phrase which has seven shots for eight moves and you can use fast cuts
and indeed short phrases for lots of things like feeling out defenses or
having a lot of dialogue in your fight or any number of things but that's not
what's happening here this doesn't feel intentional it just
feels perfunctory it's not impressive swordplay because we're too close in to
see it we're not getting pretty location shots because ditto and the edits are so
fast that you might miss the character details and there are some character
details details like James Norrington may have his focus on the key but he's
clever enough to slow down his other opponent any chance he gets
by contrast the blacksmith shop fight uses its relatively short cuts to move
us around the cramped feeling space and it attenuates the pacing with dialogue
you have the one two three second shots but you also have the four or five six
second shots the editing is still pretty busy when it comes to the fight but
other things do happen like talking like reactions a two-second shot of our three
characters running does not really have the same effect after such a strong
tense standoff when they actually start fighting it starts weak and that's a
shame and then after a mostly unreadable section we have this longer section
where three stunt performers circle around fighting in the background while
Elizabeth shouts at them.
it is I suppose an attempt at character development for
Elizabeth and to be fair that bit where she pretends to faint and nobody cares
is quite funny but it goes on just a bit too long and it robs us of any sense of
urgency we're not mostly not going to be talking
about the sections with Elizabeth and the sections with the Dutchman's crew in
them and I do understand the need to cut between the three groups in the scene
but Elizabeth & the comedy pirates kind of round the pacing into wall for this
section what you want and what you have in the rest of the scene is a nice
undulation of tension which rises and falls while still rising overall what
you have here is more like....whump.
the fluid fighting that you get from people with
years of training is all very well but basically they're just moving scenery
right now which you can tell because there's a lot of spinning in a circle
and we're not really allowed to feel particularly engaged with it
and while that is about to improve that's where the other deeper problem
with the movie shows up we get back in close to our three main men as they fight
and snatch the key from each other their motivations are clear the editing is
slightly less frenetic it works fine there are still lots of very rapid shots
but they are interspersed with slightly longer takes which let us breathe just a
little and the variety makes it nicer to watch and sand in face good use of
environment there James but "by your leave mr.
Turner" one of the things that
I didn't like about dead man's chest is that it focuses on Jack a lot not quite
to the complete exclusion of the other characters but definitely to the point
where it feels like everyone is mostly important in relation to Jack see that
moment it does a great job of reinforcing meet James secretly hates
Will point that Jack will be taking advantage of very soon but a better line
would have been nice or just some more dialogue in this section in general I
mean it's fun but there's plenty of fun going around I feel like they could have
cut it down or made it more meaningful possibly that's my other tagline to this
movie dead man's chest cut it down or make it more meaningful for a good
example of character via fight as soon as Jack is in possession of the key he
runs away we move the action from the flat open Beach to somewhere that he can
gain some kind of material advantage from his environment and we have the
stair climbing and roof fights character purpose recalled that Jack is tricksy and
never in favor of a straight fight plot purpose ring a bell while buckling your
swash alerting the Dutchman's crew to your location other purposes show off
your lavish Caribbean scenery by climbing the old building and fighting
on the roof getting nearer to the wheel that is one of your most impressive
action set-pieces see many things in one it can be done but apparently only if
Jack is involve I'm mostly not going to speak to the specifics of the
choreography in this video but the section in the mill is fun makes good
use of the environment and the phrases are necessarily short because one
misstep and you're gonna fall we still get a maximum of two things happening in
any one shot before we cut but you know it's okay it works fine in this section
and when we get up to the top of the ruined building we get oh three four
four and a half second shots before we cut which means that we get to see much
more of the actual sword work and when we cut in we
spend more time on their faces and so have more time to connect them
emotionally so that's nice but as I said Pirates of the Caribbean 2 has Jack
Sparrow as a very main character to the point that it seems to forget that we
might also like to see the other characters too
Norrington disarms Jack on the roof and is about to kill him when "who was it that
at the very moment you had a notorious pirate safely behind bars saw fit to
free said pirate and take your dearly beloved all to to his self eh?"
Jack convinces Norrington that Willl is responsible for ruining his life and
uses this to make good his escape another excellent character moment for
Jack and I'm not against those but "unfortunately mr Turner he's right"
Norrington is so enraged at will that he doesn't immediately pursue Jack instead
choosing to turn around and fight well and here's where we fall Don because
this should be a pivotal or at least important character moment for
Norrington his sole goal to this point in the movie has been to get his life
and his career and his honor back but here enraged by Jack's words beating
will becomes important enough to him that he's willing to suspend his pursuit
of the key in order to turn on will we've seen it in the choreography that
he tries to disable will even when will doesn't actually have the key which is
good tactics yes but also may speak to Norrington's deep-seated resentment of
will as the guy who took Elizabeth away from him and then here with Jack's words
it all bubbles up to the surface and suddenly will is fighting for his life I
mean again which is a fascinating decision on the part of a character who
has generally displayed such high integrity and generally lawful good
tendencies right but there's very little in terms of clothes in shots to sell
that to us there's no chance to see the emotion behind it and there's almost no
dialogue after that point which could have sold it to us a little bit better
that there's very little dialogue from Norrington would work fine because
perhaps he's overcome by his emotions but there's no dialogue from will at all
and that combined with the lack of closing shots to show us their faces and
their expressions and their emotions just makes this part fall flat.
it could
have been a really powerful moment and instead it just feels like a convenient
device so that we can set up well and Norrington getting onto the wheel and
Jack being on the ground so that he can be picked up by said
wheel we see will fighting for his life in the background but Jack is the focus
of the shot I said I wasn't going to speak to the choreography specifically
in this video and this is why it doesn't matter a lot of the time there is some
nice-looking stuff going on in this section on the roof but they could be
doing anything up there as long as it looked vaguely marital in this section in
the background on the beach is slightly more noticeable looking vaguely martial
twirling twirling twirling towards freedom but Jack in the foreground is
our focus in this shot and every shot he's in on the setup for the next
section is all that matters never mind giving this returning
character from the first movie a chance to work through his issues on screen and
increase our empathy for him nope we need more Jack being Jack and while Jack
is tremendous fun in the first film particularly as a reactive character
because he pulls focus from the main plot in unexpected ways that doesn't
work quite so well when he is the main plot but once we get to the set piece
regardless of why we got there it's still a lot of fun it's meant to be
spectacular fun and it is we get reaction shots of all three characters
and while we do spend a lot of time on Jack that's okay I love the fact that we
spend some time with the wheel stationary from our point of view so the
scenery whirls behind us but we can still see the characters clearly the
whole thing looks great and it doesn't go on for too long
yay and then after some more shenanigans which wind us up on the beach Norrington
runs back into the woods with the chest and we're pretty much done.
you know I
think Norrington's apparently suicidal tendencies deserved a little bit more
screen time but maybe I'm just sour because I just watched the third movie
again the problem I have overall with this fight and the reason I think that
it's patchy rather than cohesive is that it starts weak and while there's some
attempt at the layering that went on during the first film's fights it
doesn't consistently work set up of motivations excellent and clear open
area fights perfunctory character work great if you're jack character work not
if you aren't choreography some good stuff
choreography mostly too far away or too close in to see properly dialogue
occasionally snappy dialogue practically non-existent we show off the beautiful
locations we have some fun with swashbuckling the wheelset piece in
particular looks fabulous it's not bad by any means it's solid it's fun people
motivations are clear there are some really gorgeous looking bits but the
perfunctory opening section the missed opportunities for character moments the
minimal generally uninspired dialogue all combined to make me think I mean it's
not terrible, but it could have been amazing
pirate related fights are your thing then I do have another video on the
first Pirates of the Caribbean movie or if you would like to see all of my
videos on movie fights then there should be a playlist on that side of my face as
well thank you to my patrons as always for being wonderful and lovely and I'll
see you all next time