tower of terror
“one word: forget it.”
the quote from the hollywood reporter on the cover promises, “a thrill ride!” i have to imagine they’re talking about the theme park ride. i’ve been on that ride once. I DID NOT HAVE A GOOD TIME. so perhaps this was actually appropriate. d-rank
the country bears
“at country bear hall you could be different and still fit in.”
it was terrible but there were enough things about it that were wildly entertaining to make it on the whole not a terrible experience? the music was surprisingly good for the most part and all the happy family stuff was nice but what really made it worthwhile was a god-tier christopher walken performance. i loved every second he was on the screen. oh and there is a comically-bad scene in a carwash that was so bad it looped back to good. they were just going for it. c-rank
pirates of the caribbean: the curse of the black pearl
“i’m dishonest, and a dishonest man you can
always trust to be dishonest. honestly.”
extremely brave of hollywood to make billions of dollars making movies about pirates and then tell us not to pirate movies.
i first heard about this one because my best friends in high school were an online group of repressed fanfic writers who came together because we were all popular writers on a star wars fanfiction forum. i haven’t kept up with everyone but at the time the vast majority of that chat were cis girls, so this coming on the heels of the lord of the rings movies inspired no small amount of thirst in that group.
i don’t remember for sure whether i saw the first one in theaters because late high school was a time when i was skipping a whole lot of movies especially ones that had quite a bit of hype behind them, but i don’t know, probably i did? at any rate whenever i got around to seeing it i definitely loved it and during my freshman year of college this was one of our go-to “put on a movie and eat pizza” kind of movies so yeah. i have quite a bit of built-in affinity and nostalgia for it.
oh and we’re watching all these movies to get ready for jungle cruise because they’re in the movies based on disney rides cinematic universe, so i guess probably i should talk about the ride too. i actually first visited disney world when i was visiting an ex of mine who lived in orlando. so, yeah. knowing that i had never gone before they had to make sure to take me on haunted mansion (which immediately became my favorite as i knew it probably would), jungle cruise, and pirates of the caribbean. and in an act of supreme betrayal they failed to warn me about the drop towards the beginning of the ride, which isn’t something i was expecting in a dark ride okay!, and i’m pretty sure i made some kind of embarrassing girly noise but whatever. anyway yeah haunted mansion is my favorite but pirates of the caribbean is pretty cool too i guess.
so, yeah, back to the movie. there’s some structural weirdness to this one but i honestly think it works pretty dang well? and every element still really works for me. the action, the humor, and dang that soundtrack. these movies are honestly just kind of the perfect kind of blockbuster.
or like they would be if johnny depp weren’t in them, but you know. i actually find it weirdly easy to separate him from jack sparrow despite it being his like most recognizable and kinda career-defining role? i don’t know.
so as far as thirst purposes a movie about pirates sure could use a lot more bondage, though there is one pretty nice scene of will being forcibly gagged. and obviously jack isn’t really an acceptable object for thirst. (just because i’m able to separate depp from the character pretty effectively doesn’t mean i’m comfy thirsting and honestly i was never really into jack like that anyway.) orlando bloom would be an obvious boon here but i really don’t love him with facial hair and he was way hotter as legolas yeah i know shocking that i prefer the femboy version but still. he’s orlando bloom he isn’t exactly harsh on the eyes.
but really in this franchise keira knightley is where it’s at. elizabeth is a great character and she plays her super well. she’s so fierce and i love her weird thirst for pirates and in the next movie she has to disguise herself as a boy and it’s just unfairly hot and yeah.
so yeah i still really love this one and its first two sequels. it has all the important blockbuster elements covered and i really like its swashbuckling action/comedy vibe, and every time i have an excuse to revisit it i thoroughly enjoy the experience.
oh and there wasn’t a logical place to mention this but there’s a running joke about will being a eunuch and my fiancx and boyfriend made fun of me pretty hard every time it came up and that was lovely. oh wait i guess i coulda mentioned that in the thirst section but oh well too late now goodbye. s-rank
the haunted mansion (2003)
“do you believe in ghosts?”
it’s not great but it’s not terrible? but i just want a haunted mansion movie with the kind of resources a pirates of the caribbean movie gets, and with a director who’s willing to fight disney if they have to like verbinski had to on pirates. c-rank
pirates of the caribbean: dead man’s chest
“you can mistrust me less than you can mistrust him. trust me.”
the 00s absolutely spoiled us with a trilogy of astonishingly good trilogies. we appreciated the lord of the rings trilogy as such at the time, but the popular narrative around the other two (the matrix and pirates of the caribbean) was that the first movie was fresh and exciting and the second and third movies were stale and disappointing.
even though i eventually got peer pressured into agreeing with that, i just… really don’t get it. in both cases i think the sequels took a pretty good idea established in the first movie and just absolutely ran with it to make something bigger and better. this is blockbuster filmmaking at its absolute best.
meanwhile in thirst land ELIZABETH DRESSED AS A BOY IS SO UNFAIR WHAT THE HECK. HELP I AM SO GAY!!! and i freaking love the bit where she dashes enthusiastically into that bar fight with her sword drawn and upbeat fiddle music plays in the background and heck this movie is good i’m so disappointed in all of you for sleeping on it.
my only really substantial complaint is that i really could’ve done without the racist portrayal of island natives. i know it’s a genre staple but when you’re revitalizing a genre this kind of thing is best left behind. s-rank
pirates of the caribbean: at world’s end
“hoist the colors!”
the pirates of the caribbean trilogy is perfect and at world’s end is my favorite pirates of the caribbean movie.
whatever your favorite part of the pirates movie is, at world’s end did it the best. first of all, if your favorite thing about the pirates trilogy isn’t the music, you are objectively wrong and i am objectively right. sorry. but like. i absolutely forgot that as good as the soundtracks have always been in this trilogy, in at world’s end it just found a completely new gear. and a lot of the best bits of music are also just combined with some of the most striking visuals in the series.
there’s a fantastic overhead shot of the hai peng sailing through some icy water that's when i really first started noticing “oh wait the soundtrack really isn’t playing this time, guys!” there’s the crackling intensity and almost showdown-like feel when the three principals from each side meet on the sandbar to parlay. and ofc there’s will & elizabeth’s love theme, especially on the island at the end of the movie *chef’s kiss* (also, kissing keira knightley’s leg while she takes off her boot may be the hottest thing a straight guy’s ever done.)
(sidebar here to also mention that the kiss that happened between these two on the black pearl with that crazy wraparound camera, strategic deployment of slomo, and all the action happening in the background was just one of the most iconic kisses in movie history, imho. i don’t even care that it was straight.)
or if you like swashbuckling action, you’ll get plenty of it here. obviously the big battle at the end amid the maelstrom gives you plenty, but i honestly think the early action scene in singapore might be my favorite action scene in the series just because of its energy? (oh, this feels like the right place to mention: these movies are kinda super racist in ways i didn’t notice the first time i watched them, so like, just be aware of that i suppose?) on the whole, i just love when action feels big & bombastic but not especially gritty? so like. y’know. just... entirely this series?
or if you like feelings and all that kinda bullshit (ok, fine, so do i) you’ll find the moments of most heightened emotional intensity in the series here. i’m not about to pretend that it’s a whole lot by the standards of most movies, but for a pirates of the caribbean movie, this is probably about the high water mark there, too. like i said. whatever element you like most in these movies, this one did it the best.
by the way? if you haven’t seen this in a long time, i would give it a rewatch. because if you’re anything like me, you might just get a lot you didn’t get before out of watching the movie open with the chairman of the colonialist east india company callously overseeing mass executions while a british soldier emotionlessly announces suspensions of rights such as habeas corpus, jury trial, right to assembly, etc. it’s explicitly capitalist and it’s explicitly fascist. and it throws what the heroes are fighting against into stark relief.
in the end, for all the fun and humor of the series, they’re really facing the same choice we face on a daily basis. resist, serve, or die.
like the heroes in every story worth telling, they chose the right one.
hoist the colors. s-rank
pirates of the caribbean: on stranger tides
“what are you doing?”
“planning an escape route.”
you and me both, jack. you and me both. d-rank
tomorrowland
“all right, it’s going to be bright [...] and really loud. [...] and
you’re going to wish you were dead. but then it’ll be over.”
hey, so, maybe instead of making a dystopian movie that features a third act speech in which the villain literally turns to the audience and bitches at them for being into dystopian movies, you could’ve just... made the optimistic retro futurist movie this kinda sorta hinted at but never actually delivered? maybe... that?
p.s. the main character of this movie shoulda been the little robot girl.
p.p.s. lmao one of the most powerful corporations in the world made a movie about how the earth is being destroyed because people are watching dystopian movies instead of blandly positive movies that ignore all the very real problems we’re facing. yeah, you guys are right that’s probably why. c-rank
pirates of the caribbean: dead men tell no tales
“i’m a captain. i know which stars to follow home.”
this was pretty okay!! not even in the ballpark of as good as the first three movies, but after the fourth one was just an unbelievable chore to watch, i’ll happily take “pretty good” and “extremely watchable.”
my only major complaint is that there was one hella misogynistic gag involving jack being forced to marry someone while in a noose and held at gunpoint, but whatever. the rest of the movie made up for it in a big way. b-rank
jungle cruise
“the rocks you see here in the river are sandstone. but some people
just take them for granite. it’s one of my boulder attractions.”
yes, hi, i did enjoy pirates of the caribbean alternative with less straightforward racism starring the rock and emily blunt as a tomboy and somebody i haven’t heard of as an explicitly gay femboy! thanks for asking.
please give that femboy a boyfriend, though. and please let him say the word “gay” out loud for the gods’ sake. b-rank
muppets haunted mansion
“is this haunted room actually stretching or is it your imagination? you know what? i just realized this room has no windows and no doors. which offers this chilling challenge… to find a way out!”
when i begged for literally years for them to make a good haunted mansion movie this is NOT how i expected them to pull it off. a-rank
updated movies disney rides cinematic universe rankings
1. pirates of the caribbean: at world’s end (s-rank)
2. pirates of the caribbean: the curse of the black pearl (s-rank)
3. pirates of the caribbean: dead man’s chest (s-rank)
4. muppet haunted mansion (a-rank)
5. jungle cruise (b-rank)
6. pirates of the caribbean: dead men tell no tales (b-rank)
7. the haunted mansion (c-rank)
8. mission to mars (c-rank)
9. the country bears (c-rank)
10. tomorrowland (c-rank)
11. pirates of the caribbean: on stranger tides (d-rank)
12. tower of terror (d-rank)
No comments:
Post a Comment