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So, having had a good nights sleep and a bit of time to think.
AWE has more plotholes than you can shake a stick at (I just want to know what exactly is going to stop Elizabeth from simply following Will to sea, or alternatively have a big jacuzzi installed for them to play in?). AWE certainly has a lot of pretty pictures, and som squicky ones (tentacle-suffocation is not a death I'd wish on anyone), but really, it can blow you away, but when you sit down and reflect...
You know, I somehow think part of the problem I have with the movies is that CotBP and DMC/AWE are very different in how they compare to the real world. In CotBP you get the impression that this is the real world. Admittedly a somewhat generic Age of Sail Disneyland real world, but not so different as to be unrecognisable. Magic is unusual and unknown in this place. Nobody expects it, people don't believe it, it's an intrusion. Pirates are real pirates - very unpleasant types, pillaging and plundering - shown in sharp contrast to a girl's fantasies, even if there is the loveable scoundrel Jack.
DMC/AWE are high fantasy. Their world is one where magic is at the core and wellknown. Jack and Barbossa might not have believed the curse on the gold before it actually hit, but now suddenly they hold the secrets of Calypso? The world is swamped with mystical maps, compasses that doesn't point north, raging sea goddesses/malstroms/weird hive mind crabs. History with the EIC and all that has pretty much departed from our history, and with Calypso free I suspect that it will only continue to do so (because sorry, but pirates aren't somehow nice, freedom-loving people as this movie seems to want them to be). Even geography is no longer even remotely close to something real.
At the end of CotBP, there is a great openness. Nobody except for Barbossa is really permanently disposed of. Anybody can be brought into play. And Jack has his Pearl (and DMC/AWE - I won't forgive you for that. Jack loves the Pearl. He wouldn't be content to leave her with Barbossa!) You're free to imagine a past and a future for all these characters, so little have been revealed.
DMC/AWE offers too much, limits too many. Jack loses a lot when his oddness seems to be hereditary. Everybody seems to wind up in more or less inescapable positions - except Jack, who might possibly find the Fountain of Youth.
And then there is James. You know, he's actually an excellent illustration of the differences between the movies - and not just because he is a favourite character. In the first movie with its somewhat closer to reality approach, it's quite easy to see that he is a good man, protecting ordinary people from predation. He doesn't get the girl, but at least he doesn't get punished or something in this tale either. Then, in DMC/AWE the people who would be called villains in the real world (ie. pirates) are made into some sort of freedom fighters (you know, the flip side of terrorists?) and suddenly a character who is actually the one who most often does "the right thing", and assumes that the world works the way we expect it to, finds himself on the wrong side. Poor James is really treated shabbily. Elizabeth is a bitch, you know - a woman who cheerfully betrays people right and left and left Jack for the Kraken, what right does she have to not be able to forgive James? For what, running off with the heart? Of course, if he hadn't, someone (Will?) would probably have taken a stab at it pretty soon - and with the Dutchman changing captain, AWE could never have happened. Still, poor James. Stupid movie people, you have Jack Davenport, and you have him in a few scenes looking miserably, lets him give the megalomaniac bitch (pirate king anyone?) a kiss and then die a redemptive death while others who have so much more to be redeemed for. Idiots. (how long do you think it will be before someone writes a James-returns-from-the-dead fanfic - preferably to be with Jack. Hmmm, maybe I should write that - or maybe not.)
And just so you know, I think Elizabeth might be related to Rogue from the X-men - we're talking the kiss of death here. Check the movies. Is there any man she kisses who does not die shortly after? Jack, James, Sao Peng, Will.
Anyway, I think I'll choose to see anything and everything from DMC and AWE as optional, not canon. It's T&T's fanfic for CotBP and no more canon than, say, my stuff. At least to me. I have too many old story ideas that I never got around to write and I like the more real world approach better. If I wanted high fantasy, I'd be writing LotR, not PotC.
You know, I somehow think part of the problem I have with the movies is that CotBP and DMC/AWE are very different in how they compare to the real world. In CotBP you get the impression that this is the real world. Admittedly a somewhat generic Age of Sail Disneyland real world, but not so different as to be unrecognisable. Magic is unusual and unknown in this place. Nobody expects it, people don't believe it, it's an intrusion. Pirates are real pirates - very unpleasant types, pillaging and plundering - shown in sharp contrast to a girl's fantasies, even if there is the loveable scoundrel Jack.
DMC/AWE are high fantasy. Their world is one where magic is at the core and wellknown. Jack and Barbossa might not have believed the curse on the gold before it actually hit, but now suddenly they hold the secrets of Calypso? The world is swamped with mystical maps, compasses that doesn't point north, raging sea goddesses/malstroms/weird hive mind crabs. History with the EIC and all that has pretty much departed from our history, and with Calypso free I suspect that it will only continue to do so (because sorry, but pirates aren't somehow nice, freedom-loving people as this movie seems to want them to be). Even geography is no longer even remotely close to something real.
At the end of CotBP, there is a great openness. Nobody except for Barbossa is really permanently disposed of. Anybody can be brought into play. And Jack has his Pearl (and DMC/AWE - I won't forgive you for that. Jack loves the Pearl. He wouldn't be content to leave her with Barbossa!) You're free to imagine a past and a future for all these characters, so little have been revealed.
DMC/AWE offers too much, limits too many. Jack loses a lot when his oddness seems to be hereditary. Everybody seems to wind up in more or less inescapable positions - except Jack, who might possibly find the Fountain of Youth.
And then there is James. You know, he's actually an excellent illustration of the differences between the movies - and not just because he is a favourite character. In the first movie with its somewhat closer to reality approach, it's quite easy to see that he is a good man, protecting ordinary people from predation. He doesn't get the girl, but at least he doesn't get punished or something in this tale either. Then, in DMC/AWE the people who would be called villains in the real world (ie. pirates) are made into some sort of freedom fighters (you know, the flip side of terrorists?) and suddenly a character who is actually the one who most often does "the right thing", and assumes that the world works the way we expect it to, finds himself on the wrong side. Poor James is really treated shabbily. Elizabeth is a bitch, you know - a woman who cheerfully betrays people right and left and left Jack for the Kraken, what right does she have to not be able to forgive James? For what, running off with the heart? Of course, if he hadn't, someone (Will?) would probably have taken a stab at it pretty soon - and with the Dutchman changing captain, AWE could never have happened. Still, poor James. Stupid movie people, you have Jack Davenport, and you have him in a few scenes looking miserably, lets him give the megalomaniac bitch (pirate king anyone?) a kiss and then die a redemptive death while others who have so much more to be redeemed for. Idiots. (how long do you think it will be before someone writes a James-returns-from-the-dead fanfic - preferably to be with Jack. Hmmm, maybe I should write that - or maybe not.)
And just so you know, I think Elizabeth might be related to Rogue from the X-men - we're talking the kiss of death here. Check the movies. Is there any man she kisses who does not die shortly after? Jack, James, Sao Peng, Will.
Anyway, I think I'll choose to see anything and everything from DMC and AWE as optional, not canon. It's T&T's fanfic for CotBP and no more canon than, say, my stuff. At least to me. I have too many old story ideas that I never got around to write and I like the more real world approach better. If I wanted high fantasy, I'd be writing LotR, not PotC.
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From: (Anonymous)
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Milla
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From: (Anonymous)
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Anyway, I think I'll choose to see anything and everything from DMC and AWE as optional, not canon. It's T&T's fanfic for CotBP and no more canon than, say, my stuff.
My same approach. I'm glad to know you're going to write other fics in the CotBP universe. I've missed them. :)
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I've missed them
Yeah. Me too.
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And I KNOW! I hated that "forgiveness" scene. I was SO hoping he'd say "I don't need your forgiveness, Elizabeth. I have my own conscience, and when and how I get clear with it is my concern."
What also miffed me to no end is that apparently they imply Norrington would stand for mass executions and abolishment of all rights that lead to a semblance of fair trial.
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Sounds like they just murdered our James and threw him out like trash, in every way they could possibly think of, and the character was slaughtered long before his physical death. I'm just not going to accept it.
So. CotBP-Only, me too. The sequels were a horrible nightmare of Norrington's, but he's awake now and shaking it off. So are we!
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If the sequels are a horrible nightmare of James', surely it begs the question of why his mind would come up with a ship full of Jack Sparrows, many of them less than fully dressed, now doesn't it?
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Okay... it wasn't ALL a nightmare ;-)