Hollywoodland: The Perils of Pride
The Mountain and I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End last night and it was so Bogawfully dull that I took to poking myself between the eyebrows for amusement. As a consequence of the debacle, I've reached two decisions: a) Never again shall I go to the cinema to see a motion picture I have no wish to see merely to accommodate my brother. Twice I've done that this year and I believe it to be no coincidence that those two films were the worst I've had the misfortune of seeing over the last nine months, the aforementioned At World's End and the insufferable Pan's Labyrinth. My gut warned me about both, but I wanted to do something kind for the Mountain. Never again. I don't know why I have to constantly relearn this lesson, but I should never go against my gut. Accommodation is one of the foundations of friendship, but accommodation must have its limits.

b) Never again shall I see either of a jointly produced pair of sequels to a stand-alone film I greatly enjoyed. The Matrix was great, but The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions rank among the worst films I've seen. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was a heck of a lot of fun at the movies, but Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End were dull, dreary, uninspired, and unamusing in the extreme. The very notion of simultaneously producing a second and third picture in a brand-new franchise is dripping with hubris and nigh-inevitable doom. Just because you made one unexpected hit does not necessarily mean that you and your cohorts are brimming with good ideas. The sophomore effort gives fans and critics a chance to evaluate your talent absent the bias of the initial picture's novelty. Attempting to side-step the potential pitfalls of a sequel by producing two at the same time doesn't eliminate the risk of a sophomore slump, it spreads that risk over two pictures! If an unexpected hit's sequel is critically disappointing but still turns a tidy profit, lessons might be learned and applied to a third picture, which might then recapture the glory of the first. But if you remove the gap between the second and third films, you remove the opportunity to learn from your mistakes; plus, being so smug as to presume a third film is an inevitability, very nearly a birthright, smacks of the exact kind of pride that precedes a calamitous fall.

There is an obvious exception to this analysis, the brilliant pair of Back to the Future, Part II and Back to the Future, Part III, but I believe we can all agree that Back to the Future, both the original movie and the larger trilogy, is expectional in any number of ways. Bog, I love those movies!