POTC – AWE DVD RPG BRB LOL
So I managed to grab a full DVD copy of Pirates of the Caribbean – At World’s End (which may or may not be downloaded), and needless to say, I was horrendously disappointed with the amount of special features in the 2 disc set. I’m not sure why the DVD release took so incredibly long (seeing as Ratatouille and Ocean’s 13 were released in theaters later and yet the DVDs were released earlier), so I thought it must be chock full of special features; they needed to get the stars to do commentary ala Curse of the Black Pearl, etc. I even preordered a copy, because I thought there would be a ton of extra stuff.
I’m glad that I canceled my order, because the amount of extra features are pitiful. There’s even no Jerry Bruckheimer ‘I’m a photographer, let me show you my pretty pictures with commentary’ feature. There are about… 6-7 features on the second disc, each less than 15 minutes long. The features themselves are pretty boring, and you hardly see any of the stars talk at all. Keira probably had 30 seconds of interview time, Bill Nighy 10 seconds, and you don’t see Jack Davenport at all (in which I was very disappointed. He was such a huge laugh during interviews in Dead Man’s Chest).
I thought the deleted scenes would make up for it, and I thought they’ll throw in the bit where Davy Jones and Calypso had the prolonged conversation in the brig, since it was a very big thing on the Intarwebz. I remember some people also saying that there were many scenes involving Norrington that were cut out, so I was looking forward to that too.
There is a grand total of two deleted scenes. One has Jack and Barbossa fighting over the helm, and the other has Pintel and Ragetti talking about riddles. Oh wait, there’s also commentary by Gore Verbinski, if that’s any consolation.
From what I heard, the DVD booklet apparently has a Pirates FAQ of sorts, and this is what it says:
Since Will honored his destiny on the Flying Dutchman, in 10 years does he get to return to land for good, thereby freeing his father and crew?
Every 10 years, Will may step on land for one day. He is bound to the Flying Dutchman forever.
I pretty much foamed at the mouth at this. HE CAN’T BE. I WANT A MOTHERFUCKING HAPPY ENDING, DAMMIT. Not to mention that the guys actually deleted that goddamn scene where Calypso and Davy Jones talk about the curse being broken after 10 years, and everyone who’s even remotely connected to the Pirates fandom KNOW IT. I thought it was such a nice contrast between the relationship of Calypso/Davy Jones and Will/Elizabeth, and there you go Disney, crushing my hopes and dreams. :’(
The film itself is still awesome. The final battle was so full of pumped up adrenaline, even on my 15 inch computer screen whoops, my mistake, my 14 inch TV. I still think Davy Jones has the attention span of a hamster, despite all my love for the poor guy. He threatens to kill Jack, Will, Liz and Bootstrap, but he doesn’t succeed in any of them (except Will), which makes me rather annoyed at the whole ‘you can’t kill off main characters, but you can give the illusion that you are!’ He takes no notice of his severed tentacle, the chest with his heart disappears whenever his attention moves to someone else, and apparently his tingly senses whenever his heart is nearby can be flickered like an on/off switch. I am still sorely disappointed that we don’t see human!Davy in all his costume-y glory, with half of the brig in darkness and the other half has him in dull candlelight.
I also really wished there was some conclusion to the whole Calypso/Davy Jones ending, without having to run to Ted and Terry asking ‘WTF HAPPENED’. But then again, I might be asking too much, seeing as the curse of the Flying Dutchman was never fully explained and we don’t even know how Elizabeth and Will’s lives will end. Does she stab the heart when she’s 80 and frail, and a youthful Will dying next to her in bed? And seriously, her kid is not going to run to Daddy with open arms, not with him disappearing for 10 years and returning for one day. Most of that day would be spent with having hawt sex with Elizabeth anyway.
Y’know, it would have been a better explanation that after 10 years, the curse is broken, and Will and Liz live happily ever after. It doesn’t fit into the film (CURSE YOU GUYS FOR DELETING THAT SCENE) but it explains it a hell of a lot better. Plus, you get the typical Hollywood ending, which every Hollywood film is supposed to have by law. Pirates, I love you, so give me a happy ending, dammit!
I still love the music, and it makes me even sadder that only a few of the tracks I like are on the OST. There was a musical bit where Will dies and Jack and Liz escape by parachute, and that melody was beautiful. IT’S NOWHERE TO BE FOUND. Do I really have to replay that scene with a bunch of sound effects in the background to listen to the awesomeness that is Hans Zimmer? No, I will not buy your 4-in-1 Collector’s Edition POTC OST thing just to listen to 8 extra tracks of music that weren’t in the original OSTs (it’s on my wishlist though).
Listening to the orchestrations in the film and the OST, I’ve come to the conclusion that the film music sounds better than it does on the soundtrack, which is another sad thing to note. There are more brass and violins, and less of the synthetic stuff, and the film score sounds more ‘well-rounded’ than the OST.
I love Pirates of the Caribbean. Even when the scriptwriters didn’t seem to be doing their job, the world that Gore Verbinski gave us made up for it (it’s like Harry Potter, in a way). It’s just annoying to see that the special features are minuscule, and they just don’t seem to know how to market the product. They did a stellar job in Curse of the Black Pearl, and I’m not sure how that got lost down the line.
Anyway, if you want to buy AWE, get the single disc edition and save yourself 10 bucks. Unless Disney comes out with a ‘Director’s Cut’ or something, I don’t think the DVD is worth it.
Sexism – An Observation on Elizabeth Swann
Edited and purged, formerly “Sexism and Asian cinema”: Because Elizabeth needs some love all her own.
You know how you just get that irritating feeling when people say ‘that’s sexist!’ whenever the opportunity shows itself? Yeah, try and swallow that when you’re around me. After this stereotype and prejudice course, I’m seeing shit in a whole new light, and everything is sexist, or racist, and can be justified.
I find it extremely hypocritical for these very same Sue authors to tout an unrealistic representation of themselves when Elizabeth is a (relatively) realistic representation of nearly all of these things that they want to be. She fends for herself, holds power, and doesn’t fall for every man that comes her way, but at the same time she could not defeat the main antagonist, Davy Jones. She couldn’t save her father from death, or Will, even.
Fanfiction aside, I observed (at least in the communities I frequent), people refer to the personage as Keira, not Elizabeth. It’s ‘Keira’s annoying’, ‘I didn’t like Keira in the movie’, and it baffles me why they don’t refer to her as Elizabeth. If they want to hate the character, shouldn’t they refer to the character’s name, and not the person who portrays her?
There were numerous comments of ‘I liked her when she wore pretty dresses/fainted’, ’she had too much screen time’, and ‘I’m all for girl power, but she was annoying’. I got really bothered by the second reason; are males really necessary to become the main protagonist on default? I also never got a real definition to ‘annoying’ when I probed for answers, and my guess is that they don’t know (at least consciously). My inference was that they didn’t like the stronger character of Elizabeth, and ‘annoying’ was just the most suitable way to express dislike without sounding prejudiced (I suppose the most popular word to describe Elizabeth in the fanfiction world would be a Sue).
When I attempted to probe further into the reasons why they wanted Elizabeth to not be the Pirate King, they began to get offended (who wouldn’t, and in my defense, I would like to believe I wrote as neutral a tone as I am now) and began to state over and over along the lines of ‘I’m not sexist, I LOVE KEIRA, I never said I didn’t like her, and I’m not going to discuss this further.’
Sadly enough – from my observation at least – comments of this nature were usually made by females. It’s really sad to see females actually conform to the stereotype of gender inequality, where females are supposed to wear pretty dresses and get rescued by men, and must always play the supporting role to a male protagonist.
The males, in contrast, don’t disguise their prejudice. I’ve seen comments ranging from ‘I hate Keira’s jaw’ to this little gem:
if you’re gonna have a girl that’s a badass in your movie, the only way for it to be believable is for her to be butt-ugly. a pretty girl just throws all believabiliy out the window. anyone seen “Monster” with Charlize Theron. she killed lots of people and it was freakin terrifying. why? because it was hard to even look at her.
Let’s take this apart, shall we?
1. The only way for a girl to quash stereotypes (specifically, not being the damsel in distress) is to be ‘butt-ugly’. If you’re beautiful, you’re just there to be goggled at. Your purpose is to be goggled at. Apparently beautiful girls cannot be strong – it’s not ‘believable’ – which makes me wonder how many women he actually knows.
2. The fact that the character of Charlize Theron murdered people was not because of the act itself, but rather it was how ugly she looked. I’m pretty sure the movie wasn’t exactly trying to portray her as the next Medusa… literally.
There are others which are perhaps more explicit and implicit compared with this comment, but I shan’t make you roll your eyes and tell me that ‘ZOMG SEXISM EXISTS DIDNT U KNO’.
What I am shocked to see, however, is how bad the objectification of women has become in cinema, and how much of these stereotypes have been internalized. Even when a female character is ‘badass’, she still needs to bare skin and have a desirable personality (Tomb Raider, Charlie’s Angels), while simultaneously getting defeated by a man or being ‘broken’ by a man (falling in love and thus not being able to be badass anymore). The character of Elizabeth isn’t like that at all. She traveled all the way by herself to find Will, made decisions herself, becomes a captain of a ship, becomes the Pirate King, and actually took on the roles that a man is stereotyped to hold. That doesn’t sit well with people (females included, sadly enough). I find it absolutely sad that Elizabeth’s character has been so negatively received, simply because she has rejected all the stereotypes of what women are supposed to be without having to become a sexual object.
I think we’ve become a society so afraid to offend others that subjects like these become taboo. I myself have stepped away from the constant Elizabeth-bashing because of all the high emotions that run from the other party (I just like to analyze other people’s words, regardless of my personal bias.) Out of all my sourcing, I have yet to see a legitimate, unprejudiced reason as to why Elizabeth (the character, not Keira) has been so widely disliked by everyone. Goes to show how much stereotyping and prejudice runs deep in the societies we live in.
