Pirates II and the World Cup
I saw the second Pirates of the Caribbean with Scott Torborg last night. It was nice to see it get fairly good reviews from the general movie-going audience (who I trust far more than the critics), so I was looking forward to it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t at all what I expected. It was not a bad movie, necessarily, but it had none of the lightheartedness that made the first one so endearing. It was indeed much darker; as I heard someone call it, “Pirates of the Caribbean 2: The Empire Strikes Back.”
However, I’m torn as to whether darker was really necessary here. Certainly it made the movie seem less flippant and more important; but that isn’t really what I was hoping for. I wanted to feel good at the end of the day, not pensive. Alas, it was not to be as the darker side of human nature reared its ugly head again and again.
Certainly some of the nastiness of the opening scenes was completely unnecessary, and almost all of the humor seemed to be a reference back to the first film, which actually was funny in its own right. Also, there was too much to get done in the story that tried to hard to do too many things at times that it frayed at the edges. And although I didn’t like the major choices made by the characters (by design, I am sure), it is also, ultimately, what made this movie work at all: The fallibility of all is perhaps the greatest uniting theme of humanity.
Which brings me to the World Cup. Italy beat France, while I was rooting for France. But more shocking than the loss to Italy for us Francophiles was the loss of Zinidine Zidane to red card for a truly absurd foul in overtime. A great player, who seemed to be always cool under pressure, the captain of a team of veterans, made perhaps the greatest mistake of his career in his final game. So how does this fit in with the Pirates? Well, as I see it, we all make mistakes — and we all deserve a shot at redemption. I hope Zidane proves to be apologetic and conciliatory, and I believe him doing so will help him be remembered for his wonderful career instead of his final moments of competitive soccer. And Elizabeth Swan, Norrington, Barbosa, and company will get their chance at the redemption in a year or two as well.
July 9th, 2006 at 04:30:25 pm
Why Zidane did it? Provoked? Probably. Check out the video at youtube.com or here on my site. http://ulyssesonline.com/2006/07/09/zidane/
Still laughing. It was the titty twist that sent him over the edge.
July 9th, 2006 at 11:14:30 pm
We want our heros to be the distillation of the best in all of us. Unfortunately, they are still human. Zidane was certainly provoked — the nipple twist and probably a racial slur as well (we have all heard about the soccer’s extreme racist past and present). What I would have liked to have seen was perhaps Zidane standing up the the Italian, getting in his face a bit, and showing him who was better by again outplaying him on the field. Unfortunately, in the heat of the moment, he made a different choice. As a human who has also messed up a good number of times, I hope we don’t write Zizou off because of this. While it is not right to forget his temper, it is no better to forget a brilliant soccer career.