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.
But that’s not all, Duque Marcus Vaccaro, also known as the “Golden Tongue,” is Spain’s most important negotiator. He alone can interrupt the king at any hour, and his imperatives often become reality. He has been dispatched to the Italian city-states, the Knights of Malta, and even to England and France. Devereaux, the French privateer, has lost his sanity to his obsession with finding the Dragon’s Eye, a gem that legend says grants the owner immortality. The beautiful Lady Baptiste, considered both a hero and a scourge, she has even been asked by Madame LaFontaine to be one of her girls. Her allegiance remains true to her ship and crew. Madame LaFontaine is the proprietress of Chateau Fontainebleu, a burlesque house in New Orleans. Her girls report everything they hear to her which she can then sell to the highest bidder. Guy LaPlante born in New Orleans has never seen the France he defends. Both Madame LaFontaine and Vicomtesse Richelieu covert his new-world attitude, but he desires only one treasure: Lady Baptiste. Luc Savard watched Canada become a pawn and forgotten territory while the upstart United States thrived, Savard grew increasingly dissatisfied. Starting life as a pirate preying on U.S. ships was a start, but when he was outlawed by Canada, he vowed to fight on his own until he controlled the entire hemisphere. Tabatha McWarren was run out of Providence. Two months later she arrived in New Orleans with a crew devoted to her life. To join her crew, a sailor must drink a mug of her home-brew of cursed blood. Geoffery Flores signaled his resignation from the French Navy with the dead body of his superior officer, who referred to him as a half-breed. Captain Flores is ruthless to his prey but generous to his crew. Gaston de St. Croix might have damned his soul, but Crimson Angel has shown him the gates of heaven. Jonas Richman knows the seduction of evil only too well. The loss of his family to violent predators left him with a single motivation: the destruction of any servant of evil! Brent Rice has always been signed on with the American Navy; he’s just always been there. Although he has no rank, his stories of ship engagements are so exact, and his knowledge of naval strategy so advanced, he is sought after by every military commander. And finally, Sammy the Skull! While Sammy Skulow was alive, he was considered one of the most brutal and insane captains. It is only fitting then, that his hatred for everyone damned him to living even after his flesh rotted away upon his death as his body roams the seas with his sails set for destruction as a phantom ghost and recruiter for the gates of hell!
Sea World did not set up its park in Orlando on its own. It went there because of the success of Disney World. Universal Studios did not set up in Orlando with their two parks, Universals Studios and Islands of Adventure on their own. They went there because of Disney World. All the interesting restaurants, hotels and shopping establishments on International in Orlando and Kissimmee all are there because of Disney World.
For the mind to wrap itself around just how important Walt Disney World in Orlando is to not just the state of Florida, but the entire United States have a look at these numbers from source article at the link, a majority of the text is below however:
When you read this, think for just a second of all the companies that exist just to supply Walt Disney World with material, whether it be food, wrappers, steel for construction, concrete, you name it.
30,500 acres or 43 square miles of property is what is considered the original area centrally located in Florida and is considered the largest of its kind in the world.
1965 is when the public was told about the Walt Disney World Resort Plans
52 months of construction were needed to build Walt Disney World back in 1971.
8 million cubic yards of earth were moved to build Walt Disney World.
2,000 acres remain open for development by the Walt Disney World Company.
$180 an acres was a great price for the Florida land, until Disney was named the person buying the land then the price went to $1000 an acre.
27,258 acres of land were purchased for WDW
$5,018, 770 was the cost of the 27,258 acres
18 months of moving dirt were used to just prepare the Magic Kingdom site to be built.
8 million cubic yards of earth were moved to build the Magic Kingdom.
2,600,000 chocolate covered Mickey Mouse ice cream bars are sold every year at Walt Disney World (WDW)
4 colors make up the official colors of WDW, lagoon blue, mint green, pumpkin orange, lavender.
450 acre area is Bay Lake and located near the Magic Kingdom.
4.5 miles of beach line the Seven Seas lagoon and Bay Lake
2.385 billion gallons make up the volume of water that is Bay Lake and the adjoining Seven Seas Lagoon.
3.8 million pens are purchased by WDW each year.
600 tons of steel helps make up Cinderella’s Castle, and not a single stone.
4 inches is the distance the driver of the armored car has between the door and the wall of the Utilidors, which is the only gas-powered vehicle allowed in the Tunnel.
9 acres of tunnel are under the Magic Kingdom.
14 feet below ground are the 9 acres of tunnels servicing the Magic Kingdom.
2 times a month the horse shaped hitching posts on Main Street, USA are scraped and painted.
20 minutes is all it takes to fill Splash Mountain and 5 Minutes to drain it.
47 square miles is the original property size that was purchased for Walt Disney World.
7,500 acres were set aside as Conversation area in 1970 and developed a system of more than 43 miles of canals and 22 miles of levees to control the water level.
70,000 fingerling bass were originally stocked in Bay lake when WDW first opened.
4 trains are part of the WDW railroad; each train has 5 cars and can hold approximately 360 Guests and 2 wheelchairs. The train names are: Walter E. Disney (red), Lilly Belle (green),Roger E. Broggie (yellow),Roy O. Disney (blue).
10 miles per hour is the touring speed of the WDW railroad trains travel at while taking you on your scenic journey around the park.
3,000,000 are how many passengers the WDW railroad carries each year.
100,000 guests is the max capacity for the Magic Kingdom. The parking lot closes at 75,000 to allow room for Hotel resort guests arriving on buses, boats and monorail.
11,000 firework shows per year makes WDW the largest consumer of fireworks in North America.
2,300 wedding are estimated to take place at WDW in a year.
15,000 weddings have taken place at WDW since September 1991.
7 million hamburgers are sold in the park each year
5 million hotdogs are consumed each year in the park
1.4 million barbecued turkey legs are consumed each year at Walt Disney World
58,000 employees are employed by Walt Disney world as of 2006, spending more than $1.1 billion on payroll and $478 million in benefits each year
5,000 employees are dedicated to the maintenance and engineering at WDW including 750 horticulturists and 600 painters.
$100 million is spent each year to maintain the Magic Kingdom.
10 of the 12 trains can be stored in the maintenance shop on its upper level (the bottom level houses the four steam locomotives that circle the Magic Kingdom). On any given night, two Mark VI trains are parked outside the gate of the Magic Kingdom. No train will ever be left outside two nights in a row.
150 truckloads of holiday decorations adorn the Walt Disney World Resort and 300,000 yards of ribbon and bows drape over 1,500 Christmas trees during the yuletide season.
72,000 ticket holders at the FedEx Orange Bowl National Championship game in Miami each receive a surprise free ticket to any Disney theme park in the world. The largest Disney theme park ticket give-away ever was part of the launch of the Happiest Celebration on Earth, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Disneyland and Disney theme parks.
50,000th child to have a Disney theme park wish granted by the Make-A-Wish Foundation and Disney. This event took place on October 6, 2005.
2,500 different Cast Member costume designs make up a working wardrobe of about 1.8 million pieces. Approximately 13,000 costume pieces are manufactured each year at Walt Disney World.
15 million miles are driven by the Walt Disney World bus fleet each year.
3,421,399 (approximately)famous “Mouse Ear” hats sold each year at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando to cover the head of every man, woman and child in Portland, Oregon.
30th year anniversary for Walt Disney World was celebrated October 1, 2001. Happy Anniversary !
392,040 square feet of space under the Magic Kingdom creates the Utilidors and are bustling with action. Beside navigation information the walls are covered with motivational information, such as the 7 rules of a Cast Member.
750 watercraft makes Walt Disney World the 5th largest fleet of watercraft in the world.
14 feet deep is the Seven Sea lagoon, but Bay lake is only 12 feet deep.
2.5 million garments(pieces) exist in Walt Disney World costuming department.
150,000 gallons of paint were purchased in 2004 enough to cover 7,500 average size homes.
263 buses are in service at Walt Disney World.
50 million soft drinks are sold annually at WDW.
9 million pounds of French Fries are sold annually at WDW.
194,871 miles of toilet tissue are used annually at WDW.
24,409 miles of paper towels are used annually at WDW.
319,353 lbs. of chocolate are used annually at WDW.
1.2 million pounds of watermelon are used annually at WDW.
741,150 pounds of sugar are used annually at WDW.
1.8 million pounds of flour are used annually at WDW.
245,000 pounds of fruit filling are used annually at WDW.
38,000 pounds of white icing glaze are used annually at WDW.
2.9 million pounds of eggs are used annually at WDW.
606,000 pounds of bananas are used annually at WDW.
510,000 of grapes are used annually at WDW.
1.5 million soft pretzels are served annually at WDW.
639,000 pounds of macaroni and cheese are served at WDW.
337,000 pencils are purchased annually to use at WDW.
148 million sheets of recycled copier paper are used annually at WDW.
730,102 gallons of bleach are used annually at WDW.
214,000 bandages were provided to guests during the year 2004 at WDW.
20,000 different colors of paint used in Walt Disney World.
14.25 pound largemouth bass is the largest ever caught on Bay Lake, but we’ll never know since it is catch and release fishing.
3 circle vision films play at WDW. n the Magic Kingdom, take a trip through time in Tomorrowland’s “The Timekeeper.” The other two films using the Circle-Vision technology are both found in Epcot’s World Showcase. They are O Canada!, and the Wonders of China.
175 different outfits are in Mickey’s wardrobe closet, including a scuba suit and a tuxedo.
200 different outfits are in Minnie’s wardrobe closet, including a cheerleader costume and various evening gowns.
15 million gallons of water are used each day at WDW.
5,000 plus performers, (not counting the 500 doves that were released), joined in the Grand Opening Celebration of Walt Disney World at the Magic Kingdom on October 25, 1971.
1,076-piece band (including 76 trombones) was led by “Music man” Meredith Wilson as part of the Grand opening parade up Main Street, USA.
51,000 employees work at WDW, this number changes with the seasons and peak park seasons.
11 miles of garland, 3,000 wreaths and 1,500 Christmas trees are spread around during the holiday season. The tallest is a 70-foot tree in Disney’s Contemporary Resort. In addition, trees, which range in height from 45 to 70 feet, are placed in prominent positions in the theme parks.
500,000 character watches are sold annually mainly Mickey watches, are slipped onto wrists from Walt Disney World gift shops each year. At any given time, there are more than 200 different varieties of character watches. The most popular timepiece: a gold-tone relief of Mickey Mouse.
100 pairs of sunglasses are turned in at the Magic Kingdom lost and found alone. There have been enough “shades” submitted each year in the Magic Kingdom to outfit every resident of Sun City, Arizona; Sun City, California; and Sun City, Florida. Since 1971, an estimated 1.5 million pairs of glasses have found their way into the “lost” bin.
6,000 different types of food are served at WDW.
350 or more chefs are employed at WDW
150 semi trucks of decorations are used to decorate WDW during the Christmas season.
15 miles of garland are to decorate at WDW during Christmas season.
300,000 yards of ribbon are used for decorating at Christmas.
1,500 Christmas trees are used all around the WDW property for decorating.
8 million lights are used to decorate the 4 parks for Christmas.
18 towers are on Cinderella’s Castle.
2 times the size of Manhattan Island is the property of Walt Disney World.
200 feet is the maximum building height in Florida, so the building does not have a red light installed for aircraft.
1st guest entered Walt Disney World on October 1, 1971
50,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on March 2,1976
100,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on October 22, 1979
150,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on April 7, 1983
200,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on July 20, 1985
300,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on June 21, 1989
400,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on August 5,1992
500,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on October 13, 1995
600,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on June 24, 1998
4 million guests of Walt Disney World Resort hotels have used Disney’s Magical Express since the airport shuttle, luggage delivery and airline check-in service launched May 5, 2005
250,000 Guests at the Walt Disney World Resort ride the Various forms of “mass transit” every day, which include monorails, ferryboats, bus services and water taxis.
100,000 to 200,000 photos of guests are taken each day by Disney’s PhotoPass photographers
4 % percent of all amateur photography is estimated to be taken at Walt Disney World and Disneyland
3 times the park has been closed, once resort wide in September 1999 for Hurricane Floyd; resort wide on September 11th, 2001 due to the terror attacks on America; and Epcot only on July 17th, 2002 due to a power outage.
72,000 individual AudioAnimatronic functions per second are controlled by the Digital Animation Control System (DACS)
800 different variety of trees had been acquired, moved and acclimated and transplanted at WDW as it was reported in 1970
2.2 million travelers were bused from Orlando International Airport to either a WDW resort hotels or cruise ships in 2008, That works out to about $1.6 million a year in payments to the airport
80,000 high school seniors will celebrate graduation during the annual Grad Nite party at Walt Disney World Resort. Disney has hosted the event for 36 years with a variety of acts from KC and the Sunshine Band to Jessica Simpson.
In 1939, at the urging of Jack Frye, president of TWA, Hughes quietly purchased a majority share of TWA stock for nearly US$7 million and took control of the airline. Upon assuming ownership, Hughes was prohibited by federal law from building his own aircraft. Seeking an aircraft that would perform better than TWA’s fleet of Boeing 307 Stratoliners, Hughes approached Boeing’s competitor, Lockheed. Hughes had a good relationship with Lockheed since they had built the aircraft he used in his record flight around the world in 1938. Lockheed agreed to Hughes’s request that the new aircraft be built-in secrecy. The result was the revolutionary Constellation and TWA purchased the first 40 of the new airliners off the production line. It was Hughes control of TWA that intercontinental airline travel began, the world became suddenly smaller and it was because Hughes pushed to have better planes built.
As the major airlines continued to compete over various routes through the 1940s, TWA gained a reputation for banking its future on the most advanced aircraft available. For example, as United and American began using the DC-6 aircraft, TWA responded by introducing the Lockheed L.1049 Super Constellation on September 10, 1952. The new aircraft had a 35 percent greater passenger carrying capacity than its predecessor. TWA was the first airline to inaugurate regularly scheduled nonstop transcontinental service between Los Angeles and New York on October 19, 1953.
TWA also entered the international market. At the end of World War II, the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), the organization that distributed routes for U.S. airlines, decided to allow other airlines to share in Pan American’s monopoly of international routes. TWA was one of the airlines granted this right, with permission to fly to Europe and India. TWA began regular New York-to-Paris service in February 1946. This route was later extended to Cairo, Egypt. TWA battled hard with Pan American for various international routes, but it initially failed to exploit its key advantage of being able to connect international flights with domestic ones, a handicap for Pan Am, which did not fly any domestic routes. TWA was also late in introducing jet service internationally, preferring instead to focus on domestic jet services. TWA’s first regularly scheduled jet flight took place on November 23, 1959—a New York-London-Frankfurt flight – a year after its main rivals. It took several years for the airline to regain its competitive advantage lost because of this delay.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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 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.
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.
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.
The Overmanwarrior 