//I just want to thank you for your post about the DMTNT book! I read it and while you warned about the spoilers, I didn't find it too spoilery (probably because I already know a bit from accidental findings but still xD) though I do admit to skipping a few paragraphs just in case. But thank you, because you managed to set my mind at ease about this movie without really giving anything away. I have been so stressed out regarding DMTNT because the trailers and other things look to
//very nearly ruin Jack. And as you can tell by my blog, I am very very attached and cannot stand to see one of my favorites (or any characters to be honest) ruined, especially in what may be the last installment of the movie. It’s just been causing me very real stress, especially with certain quotes from the director, that this movie wont be what it needs to be, and I am very grateful to have my mind at ease. Thank you for your post :D Thank you very much. <3
Hey, no problem. I tagged it spoilers for those who don’t want to know anything at all, especially the nature of the ending. But I didn’t want to break it down completely because they’re usually based on earlier drafts of the script and it can change a bit. Also, those books only go over dialog highlights, so there’s definitely going to be additional stuff–especially with the improvisational nature that comes around on these movies typically. But in the past–for the first three movies, I had the shooting scripts before they came out, so I use that as my point of reference–even with the improv, they didn’t tend to stray too drastically in the revisions. Like the biggest changes I remember there being is that they wrote in the scripts multiple shirtless scenes with Will and then didn’t actually go through with them. (Like in AWE, Will was the one with the melting tattoo that gave them away to Sao Feng.) Or for the wedding, Will and Elizabeth’s lines were swapped. Obviously Jack gets a lot of improvised stuff like the Jar of Dirt dance and such. But in general, it’s mostly small changes that don’t hugely impact the whole thing. So I figure just an overarching impression is sufficient.
Re: Jack: Every iteration with him makes me fret, because I really have enjoyed his character in the past–especially with the first three where there was a peek at the story of the consequences of altruism vs selfishness in him. (Which, it looks like that’s been pretty much abandoned since 4, which I don’t dig but whatever.) But he’s the kind of character who NEEDS other characters to bounce off of to work. I also think that there’s a bit of “less is more” with him too. I’d rather have 3 well-timed one-liners than a drawn-out scene of visual gags that derail the rhythm of the movie etc. He’s also a character they’ve elected to mark as unchanging, it seems. He gains new scars and baubles each movie, yeah, but the Jack Sparrow we encounter in every movie remains fundamentally the same in pretty every iteration–in that, his world view isn’t shifted much, because that worldview shift already happened in events preceding the films. He’s practically a Constant, and it’s part of the joke. He’s meant to sort of function in his own reality, in a way, anyway–a contemporary “legend” dogged by badluck and infamy. But the downside to that is that his unpredictability becomes… kind of predictable to the audience. He therefore needs a whetstone to stay sharp.
That’s one reason why the first movie works so particularly well: not only are the “rules” for the character still being discovered, but the trilogy is not about Jack. It’s about Elizabeth. And in CotBP Elizabeth is most pointedly the protagonist, as she functions as the lens through which the audience views the PotC world, with Will functioning as the second pair of eyes and the primary plot-driver for the first portion of the film. (After getting off Isla de Muerte, she’s able to become a plot-driver in her own right, because she literally has freedom to move again.) Because Elizabeth and Will take care of the needs to keep the story moving, Jack is allowed to screw around with minimal impact on the “rhythm” of the story. It doesn’t matter if his agenda runs with or against the story’s flow, because Will and Elizabeth will push it forward no matter what. The stark differences in Will and Jack or Jack and Norrington provide natural points of conflict, on top of the plot’s basic conflicts, that keeps scenes interesting. ALSO, because they’re the audience’s eyes, we have the least perspective into what’s going on in Jack’s head. And I think that distance–that element of not knowing what he’s thinking almost until it’s already done–is very beneficial to his trickster archetype.
Furthermore, you contrast Jack’s constant nature with Elizabeth and Will… The characters they are at the end of AWE are not the same people we became acquainted with in the Governor’s Mansion’s foyer. You have Elizabeth, who had stars in her eyes talking about the romance of the pirate’s life, become somewhat disenchanted with the lifestyle as she becomes more personally involved in the darkness and violence tied up in it. As her view of the world loses its rosiness, the movies’ color palettes change and kind of drain, so P3 is comparatively grey, bleak and rather chaotic compared to the first two, where the rush of adventure was still fun for her. And Will goes from a naive kid who is so obsessed with the safety net of propriety, to shield himself from more harm and tragedy, he won’t dare go beyond it to express how he feels, take credit for his own handiwork etc… to a guy working a mutiny and setting the terms at a negotiation with the lead villains and now, a broken shell of his former self, stripped of hope and drive (shakes fist at the sky).
So yeah, this new one sort of tries to be a spiritual successor to CotBP in that Henry and Carina act as the audience lenses, and our time with Jack alone is rather small. (I remembered two scenes, and even then he’s not actually ALONE, he’s just not with the other leads.) Jack’s pushed more back to being the character we access almost entirely through the other characters, instead of having “direct” access to his thoughts and feelings. However, it’s more at the level of Dead Man’s Chest–he’s not withdrawn from the audience to the extent he was in Curse of the Black Pearl.
It’s helped a bit by the fact that the protagonists are once again meeting him for the first time. Carina doesn’t know Jack at all. Henry only knows him from his wanted posters and the things Will has said about him (including, “stay awaaay”)– and maybe even what other people have told him, as he’s asked around about his parents’ adventures, although that part’s conjecture. (Elizabeth apparently doesn’t mention him at all.) So since Henry’s expectations of Jack are at a similar level as Elizabeth’s were in CotBP–things he’s heard through the grapevine, as it were–this restores a bit of Jack’s ambiguity and freedom as a character (although by now we as an audience know him well, and you can’t change that), and brings back the “rhythmic” style of interplay between of characters. And since Henry’s most prominent character trait is his inheritance of Will’s honest, earnest, altruistic initiative–which conflicts with the pirate lifestyle and generally pisses Jack off–you have some of that natural push and pull again that’s rooted in contrasting world views and behaviors, not just conflicting wants and needs.So yeah. Hope that’s reassuring. :)
