Over the last week, I’ve watched the first three “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, just to catch up on the storyline, and on Sunday, I finally got around to watch Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, the fourth installment in the story of Captain Jack Sparrow, based on the Disney ride of the same name. And since the early showing was the 3D version, I decided to go for it. I’ve heard so much hype about movies in 3D, and having tried it briefly on my visit to Disney World and Universal Studios two years ago (although only for 5-10 minutes at a time), I thought I’d give it a whirl.
To be honest, it didn’t impress me much. Sure, some segments had some “cheap 3D tricks”, such as pointing a sword in your face, and sitting in a small rowboat (making you feel like you’re sitting right across from the person). The beginning, with the 3D version of the Disney logo, and looking across the ocean in darkness, were quite impressive, but as the movie progressed, I got the feeling that I might as well could be watching the “regular” 2D version. And with the Norwegian tradition of subtitling everything in Norwegian when another language is spoken, it broke the illusion at a few points in the movie. Granted, the subtitles were “floating” in front of the movie (and was more or less unreadable when I removed my 3D glasses, just to double-check), but when a person was supposed to be closer to us in distance, at a eyeball’s measure being “in front” of where the subtitles were positioned, the illusion broke as soon as that person moved sideways to where the subtitles were. Also, the fact that the movie screen is a limited rectangle did its job of ruining the 3D illusion at some points.
The movie itself was pretty good, though. It did keep in canon with the rest of the movies, even though I missed seeing both Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly from the previous movies, even if their characters’ stories are more or less done at this point. Only a few small cameo appearances would’ve been enough to satisfy me, though, just as some reassurance that their characters were still around.
In any case, I’ll be looking forward to parts 5 and 6, which are coming out in 2013 and 2014 (if the rough release dates listed on IMDb can be trusted).