swash swash buckle buckle
Apr. 8th, 2011 03:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arishaContinuing from yesterday's post, here is PART TWO of FIFTEEN REASONS WHY I THINK THE PIRATES SEQUELS ARE AWESOME!
8. Lord Cutler Beckett
Ugh, YouTube is failing me and I can't find any of the Beckett scenes I was hoping to post. So, uh, here's a scene that he's in.
Beckett was the first new character to appear in the sequels and I remember at first being a little confused by his presence. But I think I was a fan even before I finished watching Dead Man's Chest for the first time. I find him a really interesting character because he knows exactly what his goals are, he always knows precisely what he's going to do to achieve them, and he chooses his words very carefully so that he can always say exactly what he means. As the writers point out in DMC's audio commentary, Beckett never asks a question that he doesn't already know the answer to. This creates a great contrast between him and the other characters, especially Jack, with whom he has a past connection that's only hinted at (I love how it's never straight-out said that the "P" brand on Jack's arm is Beckett's doing, and yet they managed to make that fact perfectly clear) and a continuing rivalry that I also find really interesting. Beckett is also acted really well and he gets to say some of my favourite lines of the trilogy, so yeah, he is definitely one of my favourite parts of the Pirates movies.
I'll also use this section to point out how awesome Mercer is! And if you don't even know who Mercer is I can't blame you, I think they only say his name once, but he's Beckett's slimy sidekick and he is so much fun to watch. I feel like Pirates tries to make its villains at least somewhat sympathetic, but Mercer seems to be horrible just for the fun of it. I'm glad he's not a main character but as a minor character he is fantastic. I could seriously listen to his "It's a letter to the king. It's from you" all day. xD
9. The Story
I have decided that there are two parts to this category:
1) The storyline in general. lol I was going to try to sum it up for you in one nice, short sentence but now I am not in the vein. But pirates fighting mythical creatures and also the Man, why yes I am down for that!!
2) One time![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
the_wykydtron asked me why I like the Pirates movies so much and I started off with "I like the way they present information~" because that is exactly how huge a nerd I am. This sub-category has two parts:
2a) The Pirates movies believe you are smart and can figure things out for yourself, if given enough clues. Kind of a dumb example but the best one I can think of right now is: at the beginning of Dead Man's Chest, what is the monkey doing back on the Pearl? Well, the end of Curse of the Black Pearl shows us Jack steering the Pearl while looking at his compass (which, when that movie was first released, we believed to point the way to the Isla de Muerta) and Gibbs tells us pretty early in DMC that the Isla de Muerta has disappeared. We know from the scene after the CotBP credits that the monkey was left on the island and is once again undead. So it's probably safe to piece together the scenario in which Jack took the Pearl back to the Isla, and while the island was gone the monkey was still there. (I believe the writers confirm this on the DMC audio commentary.) I'm sure this is annoying for some, but I like a story that doesn't feel the need to explain every detail to you.
2b) These movies are complicated! I would be very surprised to see someone claiming that they understood every plot point the first time they watched the sequels. This is something that the entire trilogy gets criticized for, and if I liked the movies less than I do I might be annoyed by it as well. But as someone who watches her favourite movies over and over and over again, I love that the Pirates movies reward multiple viewings. I don't think this is a case of sloppy writing, I think the stories they tell are just complex enough that it's hard to follow every thread the first time you watch them. An example of a scene that I love now but that I really didn't get the first time would be the scene in At World's End where Jack and Beckett are having a discussion on the Endeavour and Will, Elizabeth, Barbossa and Sao Feng are trying to work something out on the Pearl. That's six different characters who have six different things that they want to get out of that scene, and the audience has to keep up with them and the fact that the camera keeps going back and forth between the ships. But I think it's really well done. I guess if I like the characters and everything else enough already, I don't mind having to work a bit to understand the nuances of the story. :)
10. The Settings
lol this category is pretty much just here because I didn't know where else to ramble about the ends of the earth scenes! Minus the guy who loses his toe, I LOVE the scene where the ship is travelling through the ice floes. The colours are great, I really like the parts where Will is trying to figure out the map, and the way the music swells as the scene ends is just gorgeous. It's a fairly calm scene but it always makes me feel like exciting things are about to happen! And exciting things do happen in the scene's continuation, when the characters discover they are about to go over the waterfall! xD I love the look of this scene as well, aaaaand yeah pretty much everything else about it. :)
Dead Man's Chest has some neat settings in it too. I quite like Isla Cruces, it definitely makes me want to go hang out on some Caribbean island. Tia Dalma's hut, besides being situated in an area that recalls the beginning of the ride, is a really interesting place to stage a scene - I like how the characters poke around through all her crazy belongings when they're there. And the Flying Dutchman is a creepy ship that absorbs its crew into its woodwork! So while I don't have a lot to say about this category, yes I think the settings in the sequels are awesome. :)
11. Apotheosis
The summer that At World's End came out I was taking a film class, and for that class I wrote an essay called "'There is a Cost Must Be Paid in the End': The Hero's Journey in the Pirates of the Caribbean Sequels." I've never shared it because I wrote it super quickly and it's really not that great an essay, but if you want to read 3,720 words of me rambling about Will Turner's storyline then let me know and I'll post it! x) But anyway, according to myself of four years ago, "apotheosis" is one of the last stages of the Hero's Journey as laid out by Joseph Campbell, and it means "becoming god-like." I am not the only one to apply this word to Will's transformation into the Captain of the Flying Dutchman; someone out there in LJ land has an icon of Captain Turner with "apotheosis" as its caption and man it is kind of the best icon ever. Anyway, here is what my essay tells us about the climax of At World's End:
Apotheosis (Becoming God-like)
This is the stage at which the Hero’s abilities and idea of reality have shifted to the extent that he is able to sacrifice himself, and allow himself to be reborn. Against the opinions of the other characters, Will believes he will be able to achieve both of his apparently conflicting goals. He has married Elizabeth, something he has wanted to do at least since the end of Curse. At the same time, however, he refuses to fight back against Bootstrap, who attacks his son when he is too addled to recognize him as anything but Jones’ enemy. Though Bootstrap’s blows weaken Will just before Will must fight Davy Jones, Will never wishes him any harm. The accomplishment of one goal and the refusal to give up on another give Will a larger point of view and enable him to be sacrificed, and then reborn.
Rescue From Without
During this stage, the Hero is rescued by someone or something from the Ordinary World because the Hero’s own return to the Ordinary World has been blocked. Will’s return to the Ordinary World is blocked because he is dying after Jones plunged a sword through his chest. Jack holds Will’s hand around his broken sword and uses it to stab Jones’ heart, making Will the next immortal captain of the Flying Dutchman. Bootstrap uses the knife he gave Will to cut out Will’s heart and place it in the Dead Man’s Chest. This is Will’s death and his Rebirth, brought about by Will’s determination to free his father but also by Jack, a part of the Ordinary World.
Master of Two Worlds/Rebirth/Resurrection
Due to all that he has experienced, the Hero now sees both the divine and the human, the conscious and the unconscious. When Will is reborn, it is as the new captain of the Flying Dutchman, the Underworld. Will must now spend his time in the literal Underworld, ferrying to the afterlife those souls who were lost at sea. He has died and been reborn, entered the darkness and emerged from it, complete with a new purpose.
The Crossing of the Return Threshold/The Road Back
As captain of the Flying Dutchman, Will must wait ten years for one day in the Ordinary World. We see his first day in the Ordinary World at the end of At World’s End, as he leaves Elizabeth in order to take up the job of the Underworld’s boatman.
With Bootstrap as his new Mentor, Will is ready to begin a new Journey, to embark on a new Path.
Ignoring my attempts to be all cool and academic, oh my god I cannot even tell you how much I love everything about Will's transformation, it is one of my favourite scenes in any movie ever. Jack with the heart bleeding in his hands, and Jones stabbing Will, and Bootstrap coming to, and Elizabeth freaking out, and Jack struggling with his decision, even though we know he'll make the right decision!, and the way he has to help Will to stab the heart and then wrench Elizabeth away from him. And then back on the Pearl where everyone is trying to get Jack to issue a command but all he'll do is belay Barbossa's commands all tense as if he's not even sure that it worked. And then the Dutchman finally rising back up out of the water, all of the crew losing their non-human features, and the camera panning across them and Bootstrap until we see Will and he turns around and starts giving orders LIKE A BOSS (and that scar! and that bandana! I can't believe I once mocked the bandana!!), aaaaaaaaaugh you guys this scene is so amazing that four years later I am still not even over it. I never ever would've guessed that the trilogy would end so heartwrenching and so awesome and so bittersweet but I love it. It is pretty much the ending of At World's End that had me going, "Yes, THIS is my new favourite trilogy."
Confession time: sometimes I look up ~movie reviews for parents~ or whatever they're calling them these days because I get a kick out of reading them and the lists of things that they think parents might want to keep their kids from seeing. (Also, yeah, I sometimes read them for my own purposes because I am five years old and don't like it when movies are more violent than I expect them to be!!) ANYWAY, this would've been four years ago so maybe I'm making it up, but I feel like I read a review of At World's End on one of these sites and one of the things they mentioned was that although there is a lot of backstabbing and scheming and betraying in the Pirates movies, in the end the message is that when your friends really need you, you should be there for them. Awwww. <3 Jack being the "good man" that he always tries to pretend he isn't makes my heart grow three sizes. :D
Now insert your own segue into another paragraph from the above-quoted essay:
The Hero and His Shadow
Will’s Shadow in the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels is not clear at first, but by the end it is obvious. Parallels are drawn between Will’s life and the life of Davy Jones, and there are many mentions of Jones that foreshadow Will’s own fate. Jones is Will’s opposite, but also his equal. Because Jones is Will’s unconscious, his Ego, Will has to be rid of him before he can be reborn. This takes place during the stage of Rescue From Without. When Jack stabs Jones’ heart, Jones falls from the ship and is lost to the sea. This is representative of Will losing his Ego and regaining his Self in order to return to the top of the monomyth chart and be reborn.
Damn I'm good.
12. The Worldbuilding
Curse of the Black Pearl is a pirate movie that happens to feature the undead. Dead Man's Chest and At World's End have a lot more elements of fantasy in them, and, from my experience working the box office during the summer AWE was released, this lost a lot of viewers. (Well, okay, I can only recall the refund I had to give to the couple who walked out during the Locker scene, but they were really vocal about how they did not care for it.) But I really like the way that more and more fantasy gets mixed in as the trilogy goes on, and I love some of the ideas that are included. A huge mythical creature who is somehow able to follow a single person across the ocean? Sure, why not. There's a rule that you can only go on land once every ten years but it can be circumvented by standing in a bucket of water? Sounds good to me. Cutting out your heart will make you immortal? I'm down with that! Flipping your ship upside down will take you from the land of the dead to the land of the living? Of course!! Maybe some of the fantasy elements get a little ridiculous but I don't care, I think they fit well within the story and I really like them. I also feel like I could easily imagine pirates telling each other stories about a crew of fish people, or an ancient goddess who controls the weather, or the journey made by the souls who died at sea, or a mythical pirate who was so hardcore he cut out his own heart ... I know that the ideas I have about real pirates are probably deeply flawed, but I enjoy this image and I feel if you look at it that way, then all the fantasy in the trilogy makes sense.
I am also super stoked for the mermaids in On Stranger Tides!! The Little Mermaid was my most favourite movie when I was a kid, what can I say. :D
13. Bootstrap Bill
You might have gathered from some of my comments in these two posts that I wasn't a fan of Dead Man's Chest when it first came out. And that's definitely true - it took a number of repeat viewings before the movie started to grow on me. Yet another thing I wasn't so sure about at first was Bootstrap Bill. I thought Curse of the Black Pearl wrapped his story up nice and neatly and having him show up alive in Dead Man's Chest felt like clumsy retconning to me. Clumsy DISLOYAL retconning!! (Especially because Bootstrap looks nothing like Will and CotBP led us all to believe they would be pretty much IDENTICAL lolol.) But eventually I admitted that the way they brought him into the movies makes sense (and his first scene is so good) and they did some really interesting things with his character - I mean, he's definitely not the character I was expecting him to be. He has such bad luck and such a bittersweet storyline but his heart is always in the right place and his relationship with Will is actually rather sweet, so in the end I will confess that I am glad they brought him into the sequels.
He also features in one of the most heartwrenching scenes in the entire trilogy, imo - the scene I consider to be the answer to the "What more can they do to me?" that he asks in DMC. Soon after AWE came out I saw someone complaining that the below scene was too long and should've ended before the second round of "You know my name!" Well, for one thing, that would be bad storytelling because this is the scene that explains why Bootstrap is so out of it in his later scenes where he attacks Norrington and then Will. And for another thing, pretty sure that would rob this scene of half its emotional impact. Oh, Bootstrap ... :'(
hahaha oh gosh why is it taking me so long to write these. STAY TUNED FOR THE EXCITING CONCLUSION!!
8. Lord Cutler Beckett
Ugh, YouTube is failing me and I can't find any of the Beckett scenes I was hoping to post. So, uh, here's a scene that he's in.
Beckett was the first new character to appear in the sequels and I remember at first being a little confused by his presence. But I think I was a fan even before I finished watching Dead Man's Chest for the first time. I find him a really interesting character because he knows exactly what his goals are, he always knows precisely what he's going to do to achieve them, and he chooses his words very carefully so that he can always say exactly what he means. As the writers point out in DMC's audio commentary, Beckett never asks a question that he doesn't already know the answer to. This creates a great contrast between him and the other characters, especially Jack, with whom he has a past connection that's only hinted at (I love how it's never straight-out said that the "P" brand on Jack's arm is Beckett's doing, and yet they managed to make that fact perfectly clear) and a continuing rivalry that I also find really interesting. Beckett is also acted really well and he gets to say some of my favourite lines of the trilogy, so yeah, he is definitely one of my favourite parts of the Pirates movies.
I'll also use this section to point out how awesome Mercer is! And if you don't even know who Mercer is I can't blame you, I think they only say his name once, but he's Beckett's slimy sidekick and he is so much fun to watch. I feel like Pirates tries to make its villains at least somewhat sympathetic, but Mercer seems to be horrible just for the fun of it. I'm glad he's not a main character but as a minor character he is fantastic. I could seriously listen to his "It's a letter to the king. It's from you" all day. xD
9. The Story
I have decided that there are two parts to this category:
1) The storyline in general. lol I was going to try to sum it up for you in one nice, short sentence but now I am not in the vein. But pirates fighting mythical creatures and also the Man, why yes I am down for that!!
2) One time
the_wykydtron asked me why I like the Pirates movies so much and I started off with "I like the way they present information~" because that is exactly how huge a nerd I am. This sub-category has two parts:2a) The Pirates movies believe you are smart and can figure things out for yourself, if given enough clues. Kind of a dumb example but the best one I can think of right now is: at the beginning of Dead Man's Chest, what is the monkey doing back on the Pearl? Well, the end of Curse of the Black Pearl shows us Jack steering the Pearl while looking at his compass (which, when that movie was first released, we believed to point the way to the Isla de Muerta) and Gibbs tells us pretty early in DMC that the Isla de Muerta has disappeared. We know from the scene after the CotBP credits that the monkey was left on the island and is once again undead. So it's probably safe to piece together the scenario in which Jack took the Pearl back to the Isla, and while the island was gone the monkey was still there. (I believe the writers confirm this on the DMC audio commentary.) I'm sure this is annoying for some, but I like a story that doesn't feel the need to explain every detail to you.
2b) These movies are complicated! I would be very surprised to see someone claiming that they understood every plot point the first time they watched the sequels. This is something that the entire trilogy gets criticized for, and if I liked the movies less than I do I might be annoyed by it as well. But as someone who watches her favourite movies over and over and over again, I love that the Pirates movies reward multiple viewings. I don't think this is a case of sloppy writing, I think the stories they tell are just complex enough that it's hard to follow every thread the first time you watch them. An example of a scene that I love now but that I really didn't get the first time would be the scene in At World's End where Jack and Beckett are having a discussion on the Endeavour and Will, Elizabeth, Barbossa and Sao Feng are trying to work something out on the Pearl. That's six different characters who have six different things that they want to get out of that scene, and the audience has to keep up with them and the fact that the camera keeps going back and forth between the ships. But I think it's really well done. I guess if I like the characters and everything else enough already, I don't mind having to work a bit to understand the nuances of the story. :)
10. The Settings
lol this category is pretty much just here because I didn't know where else to ramble about the ends of the earth scenes! Minus the guy who loses his toe, I LOVE the scene where the ship is travelling through the ice floes. The colours are great, I really like the parts where Will is trying to figure out the map, and the way the music swells as the scene ends is just gorgeous. It's a fairly calm scene but it always makes me feel like exciting things are about to happen! And exciting things do happen in the scene's continuation, when the characters discover they are about to go over the waterfall! xD I love the look of this scene as well, aaaaand yeah pretty much everything else about it. :)
Dead Man's Chest has some neat settings in it too. I quite like Isla Cruces, it definitely makes me want to go hang out on some Caribbean island. Tia Dalma's hut, besides being situated in an area that recalls the beginning of the ride, is a really interesting place to stage a scene - I like how the characters poke around through all her crazy belongings when they're there. And the Flying Dutchman is a creepy ship that absorbs its crew into its woodwork! So while I don't have a lot to say about this category, yes I think the settings in the sequels are awesome. :)
11. Apotheosis
The summer that At World's End came out I was taking a film class, and for that class I wrote an essay called "'There is a Cost Must Be Paid in the End': The Hero's Journey in the Pirates of the Caribbean Sequels." I've never shared it because I wrote it super quickly and it's really not that great an essay, but if you want to read 3,720 words of me rambling about Will Turner's storyline then let me know and I'll post it! x) But anyway, according to myself of four years ago, "apotheosis" is one of the last stages of the Hero's Journey as laid out by Joseph Campbell, and it means "becoming god-like." I am not the only one to apply this word to Will's transformation into the Captain of the Flying Dutchman; someone out there in LJ land has an icon of Captain Turner with "apotheosis" as its caption and man it is kind of the best icon ever. Anyway, here is what my essay tells us about the climax of At World's End:
Apotheosis (Becoming God-like)
This is the stage at which the Hero’s abilities and idea of reality have shifted to the extent that he is able to sacrifice himself, and allow himself to be reborn. Against the opinions of the other characters, Will believes he will be able to achieve both of his apparently conflicting goals. He has married Elizabeth, something he has wanted to do at least since the end of Curse. At the same time, however, he refuses to fight back against Bootstrap, who attacks his son when he is too addled to recognize him as anything but Jones’ enemy. Though Bootstrap’s blows weaken Will just before Will must fight Davy Jones, Will never wishes him any harm. The accomplishment of one goal and the refusal to give up on another give Will a larger point of view and enable him to be sacrificed, and then reborn.
Rescue From Without
During this stage, the Hero is rescued by someone or something from the Ordinary World because the Hero’s own return to the Ordinary World has been blocked. Will’s return to the Ordinary World is blocked because he is dying after Jones plunged a sword through his chest. Jack holds Will’s hand around his broken sword and uses it to stab Jones’ heart, making Will the next immortal captain of the Flying Dutchman. Bootstrap uses the knife he gave Will to cut out Will’s heart and place it in the Dead Man’s Chest. This is Will’s death and his Rebirth, brought about by Will’s determination to free his father but also by Jack, a part of the Ordinary World.
Master of Two Worlds/Rebirth/Resurrection
Due to all that he has experienced, the Hero now sees both the divine and the human, the conscious and the unconscious. When Will is reborn, it is as the new captain of the Flying Dutchman, the Underworld. Will must now spend his time in the literal Underworld, ferrying to the afterlife those souls who were lost at sea. He has died and been reborn, entered the darkness and emerged from it, complete with a new purpose.
The Crossing of the Return Threshold/The Road Back
As captain of the Flying Dutchman, Will must wait ten years for one day in the Ordinary World. We see his first day in the Ordinary World at the end of At World’s End, as he leaves Elizabeth in order to take up the job of the Underworld’s boatman.
With Bootstrap as his new Mentor, Will is ready to begin a new Journey, to embark on a new Path.
Ignoring my attempts to be all cool and academic, oh my god I cannot even tell you how much I love everything about Will's transformation, it is one of my favourite scenes in any movie ever. Jack with the heart bleeding in his hands, and Jones stabbing Will, and Bootstrap coming to, and Elizabeth freaking out, and Jack struggling with his decision, even though we know he'll make the right decision!, and the way he has to help Will to stab the heart and then wrench Elizabeth away from him. And then back on the Pearl where everyone is trying to get Jack to issue a command but all he'll do is belay Barbossa's commands all tense as if he's not even sure that it worked. And then the Dutchman finally rising back up out of the water, all of the crew losing their non-human features, and the camera panning across them and Bootstrap until we see Will and he turns around and starts giving orders LIKE A BOSS (and that scar! and that bandana! I can't believe I once mocked the bandana!!), aaaaaaaaaugh you guys this scene is so amazing that four years later I am still not even over it. I never ever would've guessed that the trilogy would end so heartwrenching and so awesome and so bittersweet but I love it. It is pretty much the ending of At World's End that had me going, "Yes, THIS is my new favourite trilogy."
Confession time: sometimes I look up ~movie reviews for parents~ or whatever they're calling them these days because I get a kick out of reading them and the lists of things that they think parents might want to keep their kids from seeing. (Also, yeah, I sometimes read them for my own purposes because I am five years old and don't like it when movies are more violent than I expect them to be!!) ANYWAY, this would've been four years ago so maybe I'm making it up, but I feel like I read a review of At World's End on one of these sites and one of the things they mentioned was that although there is a lot of backstabbing and scheming and betraying in the Pirates movies, in the end the message is that when your friends really need you, you should be there for them. Awwww. <3 Jack being the "good man" that he always tries to pretend he isn't makes my heart grow three sizes. :D
Now insert your own segue into another paragraph from the above-quoted essay:
The Hero and His Shadow
Will’s Shadow in the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels is not clear at first, but by the end it is obvious. Parallels are drawn between Will’s life and the life of Davy Jones, and there are many mentions of Jones that foreshadow Will’s own fate. Jones is Will’s opposite, but also his equal. Because Jones is Will’s unconscious, his Ego, Will has to be rid of him before he can be reborn. This takes place during the stage of Rescue From Without. When Jack stabs Jones’ heart, Jones falls from the ship and is lost to the sea. This is representative of Will losing his Ego and regaining his Self in order to return to the top of the monomyth chart and be reborn.
Damn I'm good.
12. The Worldbuilding
Curse of the Black Pearl is a pirate movie that happens to feature the undead. Dead Man's Chest and At World's End have a lot more elements of fantasy in them, and, from my experience working the box office during the summer AWE was released, this lost a lot of viewers. (Well, okay, I can only recall the refund I had to give to the couple who walked out during the Locker scene, but they were really vocal about how they did not care for it.) But I really like the way that more and more fantasy gets mixed in as the trilogy goes on, and I love some of the ideas that are included. A huge mythical creature who is somehow able to follow a single person across the ocean? Sure, why not. There's a rule that you can only go on land once every ten years but it can be circumvented by standing in a bucket of water? Sounds good to me. Cutting out your heart will make you immortal? I'm down with that! Flipping your ship upside down will take you from the land of the dead to the land of the living? Of course!! Maybe some of the fantasy elements get a little ridiculous but I don't care, I think they fit well within the story and I really like them. I also feel like I could easily imagine pirates telling each other stories about a crew of fish people, or an ancient goddess who controls the weather, or the journey made by the souls who died at sea, or a mythical pirate who was so hardcore he cut out his own heart ... I know that the ideas I have about real pirates are probably deeply flawed, but I enjoy this image and I feel if you look at it that way, then all the fantasy in the trilogy makes sense.
I am also super stoked for the mermaids in On Stranger Tides!! The Little Mermaid was my most favourite movie when I was a kid, what can I say. :D
13. Bootstrap Bill
You might have gathered from some of my comments in these two posts that I wasn't a fan of Dead Man's Chest when it first came out. And that's definitely true - it took a number of repeat viewings before the movie started to grow on me. Yet another thing I wasn't so sure about at first was Bootstrap Bill. I thought Curse of the Black Pearl wrapped his story up nice and neatly and having him show up alive in Dead Man's Chest felt like clumsy retconning to me. Clumsy DISLOYAL retconning!! (Especially because Bootstrap looks nothing like Will and CotBP led us all to believe they would be pretty much IDENTICAL lolol.) But eventually I admitted that the way they brought him into the movies makes sense (and his first scene is so good) and they did some really interesting things with his character - I mean, he's definitely not the character I was expecting him to be. He has such bad luck and such a bittersweet storyline but his heart is always in the right place and his relationship with Will is actually rather sweet, so in the end I will confess that I am glad they brought him into the sequels.
He also features in one of the most heartwrenching scenes in the entire trilogy, imo - the scene I consider to be the answer to the "What more can they do to me?" that he asks in DMC. Soon after AWE came out I saw someone complaining that the below scene was too long and should've ended before the second round of "You know my name!" Well, for one thing, that would be bad storytelling because this is the scene that explains why Bootstrap is so out of it in his later scenes where he attacks Norrington and then Will. And for another thing, pretty sure that would rob this scene of half its emotional impact. Oh, Bootstrap ... :'(
hahaha oh gosh why is it taking me so long to write these. STAY TUNED FOR THE EXCITING CONCLUSION!!