GETTING DEEP WITH DEPP
6/7/2007 9:52:53 AM by Vicky Bloom
The master of the Caribbean is back this summer with a Pirates three-quel that has everyone buzzing. At World’s End is the third and final installment of the global hit — for now.
Photos Courtesy of Buena Vista Pictures
There’s a good reason why Captain Jack Sparrow, the quirky, idiosyncratic character in this summer’s Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, walks the way he does — slightly off balance, with a rhythm in his step that’s hard to follow.
PIRATE PERFECT: An epic battle threatens the entire pirate lifestyle in At World’s End when the entire cast travels to Singapore to confront Pirate Sao Feng.
“To me, it was like this guy who had spent a very, very long time on the ocean battling the elements,” says Johnny Depp, who’s portrayed Jack in all three films. “It was a guy who had spent way too much time in the sun, so maybe his brain was literally cooked a bit. And he was way more comfortable on the deck of a ship, in terms of the rhythm of the ocean, than he was on dry land.” To sum it up, as he told Ugo.com, Jack hates being on land, which is probably why we can’t get enough of him.
Wave has been closely following the production of the third installment in the Pirates trilogy because it’s literally soaked in all the things we love. Who doesn’t remember waiting in long lines for the original “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride at Disneyland, watching the jailed pirate trying to woo a dog to bring him the keys to his cell? This moment was later recreated on screen in The Curse of the Black Pearl along with others that quickly catapulted the entire franchise well past joyride to full-out blockbuster film and family classic. It’s a phenomenon of a Hollywood story, where most adaptations are taken from books or shows and the Disney ride usually comes after the movie.
And it probably wouldn’t have ever happened if it hadn’t been for Depp’s unexpected take on Jack, for which he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor in 2004. Instead of a clean-cut and heroic pirate that the studio was expecting, Depp’s character has gold teeth and dreadlocks, and he loves rum and slurs his speech. Needless to say, Disney executives panicked a bit during filming of the first movie, but after record-breaking opening weekends of the previous films, Depp’s been given free reign, and even Keith Richards, who Depp has credited as being part of the inspiration for his character, will make a cameo as Jack’s father.
In the follow-up to 2006’s Dead Man’s Chest, Will Turner and Elizabeth Swan team up with Captain Barbossa to free Jack from the mind-bending trap of Davy Jones. Of course that’s only the beginning, and they soon find themselves on a ship navigating through treachery, betrayal and wild waters to Singapore to confront the Chinese Pirate Sao Feng, played by new cast member Chow Yun-Fat. The film escalates to an epic battle where they must ultimately choose sides and determine the fate of the entire pirate lifestyle.
The film was shot partly in the studio and partly at sea off the coast of Southern California off the South Bay area in August 2006, although in the final product, it will be hard to tell which parts are special effects and which are real. In one scene of At World’s End, the crew finds itself aboard a ship that is being flooded with waters from the raging seas that reach past their waist. It was shot in a studio, on a replica of the ship filled with blue plastic balls, just like those found in inflated spaces at carnivals, that are later turned to water through computer graphics. Both ships, The Black Pearl and The Flying Dutchman, were built to their full-size, but the latter was also recreated digitally for certain scenes in the film.
This feat in animation is little compared to the characters of Davy Jones and his crew, a group of 18 sea-creatures mixed with humans of zombie-like proportions. His entire face is made up of 46 tentacles, all of which were completely computer-generated by software that was created to make the movement of each one seem so natural that many people originally believed that his face was partially animatronic. The same applies for other members of Jones’s crew — one has a face covered in coral, another a head that is partially sea-urchin, and the effects go into so much detail that one crewmember’s tongue is made up of oyster meat. Every aspect of the film takes into account the presence of the sea, from the wear of the salt on the ships’ surfaces to the sunburns on the castmembers’ faces.
TREMENDOUS TRECK: The last installment of the Pirates trilogy means the end of a cinematic era — for now.
In anticipation of the worldwide premiere of At World’s End, Disney launched a new, revamped edition of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride, with Depp’s likeness portrayed in Jack. Depp, who has two kids with wife Vanessa Paradis, attended the opening of the ride and admitted that it was a bit surreal to see himself in animatronic form. The character is one of Depp’s favorite, one that he has mentioned he would still like to keep working on despite this third film being the last in the trilogy — for now.
There have been hints that the studio might keep the Pirates franchise going, and even Depp has said that if the same team of writers, directors and actors were to return, he would play Jack Sparrow all over again. “I kind of like everything about playing him. I feel like he’s just good fun to play,” he says. And he’s fun to watch, too, though Depp does it so naturally that it makes us wonder how much of Jack is actually Depp.
The film runs a relatively long 165 minutes, but with its sea-faring adventure, upper deck sword fights and the raging ocean as its main setting, we wouldn’t miss a second of it.