Tag: Johnny Depp

‘Dead Men Tell No Tales’ was Great: Don’t listen to the critics, Disney needs to make a lot more Pirate movies

I think if you’ll look carefully dear reader you’ll notice two things about the newspaper reviewers who gave Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, a bad review.  They are severe liberals who hate Donald Trump and they are suffering from “daddy issues,” meaning they have some predilection toward not wanting to think about their dads for whatever reason.  One thing that was extremely obvious about Dead Men Tell No Tales—which is a recurring theme in all the Disney Pirate movies, is that the famous Joseph Campbell Hero’s Journey of reconciliation with the father is used extensively.  If there is any fault in the film it’s in that the writers and producers are primitively stuck on that one theme—which for Disney is the formula.  To understand why, just read The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the classic Joseph Campbell work and you’ll understand why.  But other than that, Dead Men Tell No Tales is a great movie that was a lot of fun.  It’ll be a very successful movie and Disney should continue making a lot of them.  Hopefully they will.  The movie remarkably lacked any politics.  Disney wasn’t trying to slide any gay characters under the door and the romance themes were traditional and the whole thing was about adventure and discovery.  It’s one of those movies you leave the theater feeling good about much the way the ride in Disney World feels.  And Disney could continue making Pirate movies forever and people would still see them because they want to feel those things when coming out of the theater in their home towns since they can’t go to Disney World everyday.

But this hatred that reviewers had, particularly at The New York Times and at the ultra liberal Rolling Stone magazine was so pathetic for its desperation.  Their primary premise of hate was that the Pirate movies where the same old story lines—nobody had evolved.  Jack Sparrow’s story arch had no evolution to it—he was the same character that he was in the first movie. Basically, the reviewers have this idea that unless a movie deals with progressive causes like gay rights, feminism, wealth redistribution and plot points where the state takes care of everyone—then any movie is a bad one.  Of course Dead Men Tell No Tales isn’t about any of those things which is one of the reasons its good.  I mean I’ve been very hard on Disney for leaning toward progressivism when clearly their primary audience is Trump conservatives and they have been hurting their own market share by sticking in gay plot points and other acts of lunacy to appease the Democrats who now run Disney as a company.  But that mistake wasn’t made in this fifth Pirates film.  And it’s certainly not a conservative film by any means, but what movie is?  Conservatives are used to being ignored at the box office.  As the weekend numbers came in I found myself happy to see people went to see the movie in spite of the negative reviews showing the big newspapers how irrelevant they truly are in the 21st century.

All these industry people have already put their own nails into the coffins of Hollywood film making.  The grim reality for them is that only movies like Pirates from Disney can really be economically viable in this modern environment where they view the film making industry to be on the solitary mission of spreading liberal causes to the world.  Instead of making a movie that everyone can make money off of from the actors down to the promotional people, these industry idiots provide critics of movies as if the only reason people pay a lot of money to see them instead of waiting for the home market to show them from the comfort of our living rooms is to lectured to by Hillary Clinton supporters who would demand we all be more liberal.

There was nothing wrong with Jack Sparrow or Johnny Depp’s performance.  There’s nothing there to reflect the off-camera trouble of Johnny Depp’s rough divorce or his financial issues.  Anybody who writes anything otherwise is reaching—and trying to make something out of nothing.  If I were to give Disney any advice I would say make more Pirate movies and make them less as giant ensemble pieces and more about the adventures of Jack Sparrow.  All Pirates of the Caribbean movies don’t need to have huge casts like Dead Men Tell No Tales did and they all don’t have to be pinnacles to the survival of the human race to be good movies.  The character of Jack Sparrow is a lot like Bugs Bunny.  People would go see Pirate movies just to see how Johnny Depp’s character would get out of the latest mess.  Watching the execution scene in Dead Men Tell No Tales made this very apparent.  Jack Sparrow makes these movies fun and people would pay money just to see that character survive some new invention of malice, like at the opening of the movie where he wakes up inside a bank vault with the wife of the mayor trying to rob a bank but instead had passed out drunk and in need of escape.  Jack Sparrow could travel the world on such adventures and people wouldn’t mind a bit.  They’d still spend a billion dollars per picture at the box office and Disney could save some production costs.

On that note I think the Pirate films should be more like the new Star Wars movies—a new one should come out each year.  Bring the production costs down into the $150 million range and just let them do their thing.  There was nothing “lazy” about this Pirate movie as reviewers seemed obsessed in disclosing.  It’s not easy by any means to make a movie that looks as beautiful as Dead Men Tell No Tales from the special effects people, to the costume design to the wondrous score this time by Geoff Zanelli using themes created by Hans Zimmer.  This was movie making at its best and every new Pirate adventure doesn’t have to be on the scale of Dead Men Tell No Tales or At World’s End.  Like the classic Bugs Bunny cartoons, we knew and expected the animated rabbit to survive the aggressions of Yosemite Sam and the Martian, but what we wanted to see was how.  Disney has a nearly perfect character for that kind of thing in Sparrow and they should use him more.  Who cares what the industry thinks about milking the Pirate franchise for everything they can?  People in Hollywood want to work don’t they?  I would personally love to see a new Pirates film every year and if they only made $800 million each—so be it.  It would be good cash flow for a company that needs it—everyone needs it.  So why not do it?

Everyone should go see Dead Men Tell No Tales.  Don’t listen to the critics; they have no idea what they are talking about.  Movies are all about the feeling that this latest Pirates films provides—good fun that the whole family can enjoy together.  The correct formula for a motion picture really isn’t any more complicated than that.  I know when I’m having a bad day I put on one of the Pirate movie soundtracks and let the Jack Sparrow theme song cheer me up with his laissez-faire approach to life.  It works, in the same way that the character works in the movies.  I know that may be hard for the Disney Corporation to get their minds around, but all they really need to do is put Johnny Depp on-screen dressed as Jack Sparrow—pick some point on the map  and let the story tell itself.  Add the special effects in post production to fill in the gaps and just pump out as many Pirate moves as you can over the next decade and let movie fans have some fun without the politics.  Everyone would be better off.

Rich Hoffman

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Pirates of the Caribbean, On Stranger Tides: A Movie Review and Commentary

It doesn’t happen often, where I walk out of a movie theater at 2:30 am and feel as awake as midday. It’s been a very, very long time since I’ve seen a movie I enjoyed as much as the new Pirates of the Caribbean film, On Stranger Tides.

People who read my work frequently know that I cover school levies, political corruption, and legal maneuvering to great extent on these pages. However, I do an occasional story about football, motorcycles, and films also. My very first love in life is mythology, the stories of cultures. Stories tell you the true nature of the culture you are studying. This is why I know so much about the inner workings of politics, is because I understand the myths of the culture. So I can see through the stories politicians attempt to tell to sell the idea they are portraying. I know mythology from books. I know mythology from my life. And I know mythology from actually doing work in the entertainment business on occasion. So I understand all too well the difficulties of bringing a vast mythology to life that reflects more than what visuals can speak of, that speaks to the human heart. I learned when I was very young that some of the most accurate votes cast occurring in human culture is happening at movie theaters with the price of a ticket. What people chose to see at a movie theater is an accurate gage of the psychology of the over-all culture.

When it is all-encompassing, especially for people like me and the friends I associate with, to be politically active, to have concerns of George Soros and his “Open Society” of communist thought, or Barrack Obama’s latest faux pas, it is good, and revealing to step into a darkened theater and witness truth in the form of fiction. Even though many in Hollywood are leftists, the good stories they tell are not. Not the ones that sell tickets anyway. There are ideas in stories that contain truth because the mythology of that story has innate value, which transcended the political view points of the actors and directors because it’s the story that matters. It is the story that communicates. The actors are but vehicles that take you to the story.

The success of The Pirate of the Caribbean films reflects a deeper yearning in human society that moves beyond the political direction of power players such as what you might find in politics. The desire for individuality cannot be overlooked when the characters in films ooze such traits, and the recent surge in this last decade in the amount of young people who are getting tattoos is testimony to a social desire to “be unique,” to have something they choose themselves to place upon their bodies that they did not inherit from their parents. Something they decide to give themselves as a way to mark their bodies in an individual way. This is the inner pirate in all people, the desire to be unique, free, and left alone. The human need for this is very strong, and even though I, or anyone in my immediate family do not have tattoos of any kind, I understand the need. Tattoos are something I’d discourage someone from getting, because there are better ways to communicate individuality. But the human spirit craves authenticity. I have seen this same behavior in Key West where women completely undress at the Adam and Eve, the nude bar that sits above the Bull and Whistle and have body paint artists paint their bodies in such a way that they can walk down Duval Street completely nude, yet appear from a distance to be wearing cloths. The women get the sensation of being publicly nude and fearless, without openly breaking the law. This is an act of rebellion brought on by the necessity of an over-regulated society, a perversion of nature where an inner fantasy must be aligned with the living person because in daily life the two aspects function too far from each other.

I have acquaintances that work in show biz that are very liberal and often times they see me as their political enemy in matters of social value, but on a set or at the lunch table over a pizza, we have more in common then they’d wish to admit. I often shake my finger at them and remind them that they are living Doctor Jeckle and Mr. Hyde existences, and they won’t be happy as people until they unify their thoughts with their reality. But they don’t listen. Instead, they get tattoos and paint their bodies in drunken rages on occasion, because the social engineering doesn’t work, and their true natures only come out in drinking binges or in darkened theaters.

And that brings us to the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. I know why I love pirates. I’ve talked about it on these pages at great length. I like them so much that when Branden Keefe of Channel 9 News came to my house recently to do a story he asked me, “Are those cannons?”

“Yes,” I replied. He was looking at the cannons I have on my porch that I use to fire off during football games in the fall, or to announce the start of a new meeting at my house. I fired these cannons off at the start of a Tea Party meeting of the State Sovereignty Committee much to the amusement of my guests because they had never seen anything like that before. But my neighbors are used to it. Such things are part of the “pirate’s life for me.” It’s part of living the mythology of existence instead of just being a passive observer.

So am I alone in this love? No. People love The Pirate of the Caribbean movies. They love them for the high adventure. They love them for the spectacle. And they love them for the character Johnny Depp created in Captain Jack Sparrow. I was concerned when I learned that On Stranger Tides was going to have a more toned down budget then the previous film At Worlds End. Well…..in each of the previous three Pirate films, there were moments that I didn’t like. I enjoyed the overall story line, the high adventure, the sets, the visual effects, but I always felt there wasn’t quite enough swashbuckler in the series that should be oozing out of it. I always attributed this problem with too many characters and Disney-like sappy sub-plots that belonged in a different kind of movie. Critics like those sub-plots, but I don’t. A pirate film should be all about the swashbuckler and much less about emotion.

On Stranger Tides I expected to be not so good. I thought that if Disney pulled in the budget, that the franchise would suffer. But then I saw the budget, and noticed that even this scaled down version of the Pirates of the Caribbean series was north of $200 million, I was curious.

My wife and I planned to see the movie on Friday night. But, this is a film we wanted to share with our kids, because my kids grew up with a love of adventure films. I showed them every action film ever made when they were growing up, and they understand my passion for Pirates. Plus, in my family, our favorite past-time that we do together is playing the Pirates Constructible Strategy Game by WizKids, so my wife refused to go without the kids, and they were all working. So finding an open window where we could all get together and see the movie was very problematic, and I was getting irritated at all the various schedules.

During Saturday, May 21, 2011 I started checking the numbers from Box Office Mojo and saw that On Stranger Tides on Friday had pulled in $35 million which was good. Plus it had pulled in $92 million worldwide, so that was even better. The total take up to Saturday morning was $127 million, which is very good. If the film cost just over $200 million and Disney poured another $200 million in promotion, which means by the time everything is said and done, On Stranger Tides will be close to $500 million in total upfront investment, then Friday’s take puts it on target to recover its money, which is important, because for people like me, if a film like this doesn’t make its money back, more films like it won’t be made in the future. Plus, like I said, the amount of ticket sales is to me a kind of worldwide vote on the type of values our culture embraces, so I found such numbers much to my liking.

My wife and I entertained guests from across the pond on Saturday for a good part of the day. I kept looking at the clock all day for an opening that wouldn’t present itself. I told my wife, “We have to see the new Pirates movie this weekend! And we’re running out of time!”

She got on the phone and arranged to get my kids all together after everyone finished work and all their own social engagements were completed and we met at Showcase Cinema Springdale at 11:30 PM Saturday night, the last showing of Pirates for the day.

Again, I expected a fun film. I expected to be a little let down, but to enjoy the over-all tone of the film. What I saw surprised me.

The film was fantastic! It was a lot better than the other three. All the sappy sub-plots, the love story, the social commentary and all the confusing characters, were gone. What On Stranger Tides did was accomplish the perfect swashbuckler that would have made Errol Flynn or Douglas Fairbanks proud. It was the best movie of its kind that I had seen since The Mask of Zorro in 1998. On Stranger Tides had great stunt coordination with the sword fights, and action sequences, it had compelling characters that you either loved or hated, the visual effects were fantastic and not over-the-top and the plot was a simple treasure hunt that had old-fashioned appeal. It was obvious the Pirates franchise had either discovered itself again, or had just re-invented itself into a mature adult. From the kind of film On Stranger Tides is, it is the perfect movie. I can’t think of a frame of film that I did not like. Maybe the sequence with the palm tree, I understand what they were trying to do, but the physics didn’t work for me. But other than that, everything was fantastic.

It was such a good movie, I actually have to place it somewhere between Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom as far as a film that captured the spirit of high adventure. It was that good of a film.

Those things aside, the move would have been awesome all by itself. But for me personally something else held my heart dearer than anything I’ve seen for years on a movie screen, or even in real life. When it first hit the screen around 12:20 in the morning I thought I had died and gone to heaven, for I had seen something that had only existed in my mind up to that point.

My wife and I have lots of secret places we like to run off to. I’ve talked about Key West, Newport on the Levy, our favorite book store among many things. One of our favorite places is Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay, where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers play football. We love to stay in the Hilton on the Bay, eat at the International Mall, and catch a game at Ray Jay when we can get away for the weekend in the fall. Now, I love my wife. But one of my other great loves in this world is the Pirate Ship inside that stadium. I am utterly in love with the big skull that hangs off the bow of that ship, and has red glowing eyes and breathes smoke during the football game. I’ve told the Glazer family myself how much I admire them for building such a thing and I fly the Buccaneer flags they gave me personally every Sunday afternoon during football season in tribute to their pirate ship, because I think it is so innovative, creative, and such a good tool that engages the fans in the game. It certainly raised the bar in the NFL as to the fan experience. So what happened at 12:20 took my breath away, because it was obvious to me that Rob Marshall, director of On Stranger Tides feels the way I do about pirate ships with skulls on the bows.

The Queen Ann’s Revenge is a ship I know from our Pirates Constructible Game. I know the ship from history too, as the ship that Blackbeard died on when getting stuck on a sand bar off the coast of the Carolinas. Well, in this film, Blackbeard is alive and well, which he is fantastic to look at, and The Queen Ann’s Revenge is a haunted ghost ship that is absolutely spectacular. And I don’t mean spectacular with a little “s.” I mean SPECTACULAR! Nothing short of jaw dropping spectacular!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Disney crew actually built a life-sized ship that they filmed on. There was no cheap visual effects shortcut here. They built an actual life-sized ghost ship that oozed pure sinister evil over every frame of film. It is worth the price of a ticket just to see this ship on the screen. It’s that good!

The story worked at every level. It was fun, romantic, thrilling, mysterious, and historically authentic. The costume design was first-rate, and I mean Academy Award winning material. If On Stranger Tides doesn’t get Oscars for best Visual Effects, Sound, and Costume Design, I would hate to see the film that beats it, because those categories were all top-notch, and I mean top.

When the film ended, I felt refreshed, completely rejuvenated even in the small hours of the morning. The film took my family on an unforgettable adventure that is of a quality I have not seen in well over a decade. There have been good movies since the films I mentioned, like the Mask of Zorro, and the first two Indiana Jones films, but On Stranger Tides is the first that comes to my mind probably in the lifetimes of many young people going to see this film to have such an experience.

This was not a tired old recycle of a franchise. This was a stand-alone first film that would be forever remembered if it was part one and not a fourth film. Any fears of not having the characters of Elizabeth and Will in the film are dismissed. The film is about Captain Jack, but the supporting characters such as Penelope Cruz as the old flame of Sparrow and Blackbeard’s daughter was perfect. She fit the role as though she were born to play the part. Barbarossa was still perfectly played as he was in the other three films, but Blackbeard in this film could go down as a classic villain as popular as Darth Vader. He was that good in this film.

Will people go see this movie three, four, ten times like they did in previous films? I don’t know. We live in a pretty cynical age. Film goers are pretty jaded these days, so whether or not they appreciate what at good film On Stranger Tides truly is will remain to be seen. I was just complaining the other day that nobody was making films like this anymore, and Disney actually pulled it off and they did it by trimming down their budget and expectations. They put restrictions on themselves to make their funding model more viable and not attempt to be everything to everybody. They focused on just doing a good job and letting the chips fall where they may. And it worked.

This film should be a lesson to everyone. Sometimes, less is more. Put the money where it counts and decide what you don’t need than make everything count. On Stranger Tides does that very well and will go down in film history as one of the very best films that Hollywood has to offer in a long tradition of evoking modern mythology to reflect the consciousness of the human spirit.

This is Hollywood at it’s best!


Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
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Pirates, Freedom, and Key West: What’s more important, order or happiness?

A week ago I shared a private family secret, our love of pirate ships, the constructible strategy game. Everyone that knows me well knows that I love pirates. It’s not the lawlessness nature of them that I like, but it’s the romantic idea of freedom that they represent.

I’m not normally a fan of liquor commercials, but I think I may have just seen the best one ever produced in this Captain Morgan advertisement. The makers of this commercial got it right. It may as well been ripped straight out of my mind. I LOVE IT!


The only thing I would have done different is the French vessel would have been sunk, the treasure looted, then Morgan’s crew would enjoy the drink. But, close enough.

Needless to say, I immensely enjoy the marketing strategy of Captain Morgan Rum. The key is to be honest with the sign stimuli that moves your heart to beat, and for me, this kind of stuff does it.

Pirates are one of the reasons that I ride motorcycles everywhere I go, its part of the attitude and culture of motorcycle riding that you can’t get when you just drive a car around. Here is that same woman from the Captain Morgan sword fight commercial doing the next natural thing, doing a motorcycle shoot for Harley Davidson.

That’s why I’ve said it more than once, progressives can attempt to ruin America through the schools, through legislation, through television and other social media, but deep within the human heart is a desire to be free. Motorcyclists today have a taste of that freedom, like the original pirates of the Caribbean did or the open range cowboy or frontier fighter. So in the end, progressives, socialists, communists, Marxists, and every group that wishes social control, will fail, and the reason they will fail is for the same reason the Captain Morgan ads work as visual eye candy, for the same reason that a man, or woman will spend all their extra money to buy a motorcycle, and will flock to a large motorcycle rally like Sturgis or Daytona.

The real Henry Morgan is one of my favorite historical characters. Now this might seem like an odd selection to people who read my work and think I’m a moralist. Morality to me is being authentic. Hiding one’s desires behind a drunken splendor does not take courage. To say that I did what I did because I was drunk is weak. To say I did what I did and I don’t care what you think about and I did it with full knowledge that you would not like it is more the proper attitude.

This is why I like modern-day Key West so much, because it is the closest thing on earth to Port Royal in Jamaica during Henry Morgan’s time. Here is a great documentary on Morgan and Port Royal. Again, I don’t enjoy debauchery, drunken acts, or illicit sex, but I do enjoy honesty, and there is a lack of politics in Key West and an honesty that comes with it that I enjoy. And Port Royal is what it was because it was free of politics and represents what people truly want and desire for themselves without government engineering.

We are at the point, as of this writing, just a week away from the release of the 4th Pirates of the Caribbean film, which of course my wife and I will be seeing on the opening day. Pirates of the Caribbean as a concept of course started as a ride at Disney Land and the interesting thing about the ride Pirates of the Caribbean, Walt Disney was making children films, yet he was obsessed with pirates. Why do you think that is? Listen to Walt Disney talk about his concept for the ride, where he talks about the crimes pirates committed in heroic ways. Nobody these days could get by with talking about this kind of stuff. Progressives have made everything so “touchy—feely” that creative types can’t even discuss the violence committed by a group of people like pirates, or frontiersman in any context by in feeling compassion for the victim of the violence. This is why the closest thing we have today to Walt Disney is George Lucas. Our society today would sue Disney for trying to corrupt children with this broadcast.

The key to Walt Disney is he understood that for imagination to work in the human mind, which is what he hoped to inspire in young people, is that they can’t get too hung up on rules. But young people needed to have their own set of values that they’d build with the mythology Disney gave them with foundation stories.

Modern business executives or politicians don’t understand how Disney thought. In fact, nobody does, because people get so hung up on the rules of living instead of the joy of it. Heck, even people in his family, friends and company don’t understand. We all understand the situation on a subconscious level, but people are unable to reach that understanding under conscious thought.

Oh, by the way, Walt Disney didn’t go to college. He didn’t even finish high school, only had one year. Maybe that’s the key to success. Tests do show that kids seem to become less innovative and imaginative with each year of public school. We seem to teach imagination out of kids.

So when Johnny Depp puts on this costume to play Jack Sparrow again, people will flock to see it, even though many of the people who work at Disney don’t really understand why. They are still milking Walt Disney’s ideas that are over 40 years old now without creating anything new, because the key to success is in the essence behind the myth.

If you follow progressive ideas, and a lot of young people do because it’s taught to them in their public schools and colleges, they hide the lie of their movement behind emotional truths, which then disguises the essence of any given thought. They seek to re-engineer what it means to be human by eradicating the desire for freedom. That desire for freedom to my relief is still able to reach young people. In fact, the new Lego Pirates of the Caribbean is something my wife and I are looking forward to playing with our young nieces and nephews where even those under the age of 10 can get that small taste for freedom manifested in the enjoyment of a game.

It is unlikely that any of the people working on the Pirates film including Johnny Depp understands what Walt Disney understood clearly when he came up with the idea for a Pirates ride in his children’s themed amusement park. Here at the premier, all the participants appear able to feel the energy evoked by the film, but aren’t sure how it translates to the art of living life. To them, the movie realm is a separate fantasy to be lived only with the price of a ticket and viewed in a darkened theater. To me, the movie realm is a reflection of human consciousness and represents the true desires of mankind.

That art is all about freedom, and not waking up in the morning worried about a government telling you what to do, what to eat, what to learn, or how you’ll make your money. It’s a genuine love of freedom, the right to succeed or fail to live or die in the pursuit of it. That’s the magic!

And it was nice to see that the director of the Captain Morgan commercial understood that freedom which he captured so wonderfully in that new clip. It’s one thing to copy off something you like and admire. It’s a whole other thing to understand it, and that commercial does.

These are my kind of people!

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com