Tets goes to see Pirates 4: Stranger Tides

Hmm, So I went off to see Pirates of the Caribbean 4 : On Stranger tides the other day.  I like the Pirates movies.  Sure Number 2 was a bit too much and #3 was a tad on the dodgy side, but you have to admit the character of Capt. Jack Sparrow is indeed an interesting dude.  Johnny Depp  and Geoffrey Rush definitely saved the later movies

 

So after hearing positive reviews for #4 and seeing that Orlando and Kiera’s characters were both absent, as well as a good cast (bar Penelope Cruz), I was looking forward to it. 

 

I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Even the presence of Penelope didn’t ruin it for me.  Geoffrey Rush was fantastic as Barbosa, as I would have expected him to be and Johnny Depp was his usual charismatic self as Sparrow and best of all, the one-up-manship between Barbosa and Sparrow was played on nicely as well.

 

However, I saw it in 3-D.  Now I know that 3-D films of this type are recent technology (I have to work with them every day) and a bit of a novelty, but I noticed at work when I glanced into the theatres that Pirates 4 just didn’t seem all that 3-D.  I assumed I kept looking at the wrong bits, so when I see the whole movies, it will impress me more.

 

It didn’t.  At the end of the movie, the first thing I asked myself was “Why was this a 3-D movie?”  Most movies that are made 3-D are done so after filming.  I assume they are madde with the idea that they will eventually be 3-D and so are shot with that in mind.  However, Pirates 4 here doesn’t have this.  There is not a single scene here that made me think, ‘That looks nice in 3-D.’  In fact, a lot of the time I was thinking, ‘This scene gains nothing by being 3-D.’  There is something wrong with that.

 

Some examples of good 3-D films.  Avatar by James Cameron of course, I was impressed with Pixar’s ‘Up,’ which although looked nice as a normal film, the 3-D really added a sense of depth and scale as it was so tastefully done and Thor I remember coming out of and thinking that was a satisfying 3-D movie.

 

Pirates 4, cannot be added to that list.  Where the 3-D was most noticeable, it just seemed a little flat to me, there was a part where a guy rolls down a hill towards the screen, but it felt like he was on one plane with the hill and the background was on another plane. 

 

Don’t get me wrong, by no means is it a bad movies, it was just a wasted 3-D effort.  I think they could have happily released it normally and it would have been better.  It gained nothing, but lost something, as it just looked kind of sloppy and more to the point, pointless.  Remember Clash of the Titans (the recent one)?  That was a post filmed 3-D movie and that was much the same.

 

The next Harry Potter movie I suspect will be in the same boat.  The Deathly Hallows part 1 was intended to be a 3-D movie, but they ran out of time post production and couldn’t convert it, so they just released a 2-D film.  Hopefully they will release a 2-D version as well as the 3-D one, as I think there is no point to it being 3-D.   I believe Transformers Dark of The Moon is a post-production into 3-D job as well, the only saving grace for that is that Michael bay did say from the start it would be 3-D, so hopefully he has taken that into account during filming.

 

Anyway, that is all I have to say on Pirates 4 for now.  Great movie, very enjoyable, but save your money and go see the normal version, the 3-D one isn’t worth it.  If people keep going to see these hack-job 3-D transition movies, they will keep doing it.  Don’t see them, they should get the idea and change their ways!  (fingers crossed).

 

This has inspired me for another post actually.  Time to formulate my thoughts.