The next thing you know, we're in a land full of yellow people. No, not Springfield; Singapore. Ah, nothing like a little racism to spice up a humorless story. (The views expressed in the interviews and commentary are solely those of the individuals providing them, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Walt Disney Company or its affiliates.)
Anyway, oaring down the river in a stereotypically Oriental outfit, complete with a redneck straw hat adorned with a fashionable yellow daisy, we follow our female lead, Elizabeth Swann, a vaguely doglike black creature with a white face that was either some kind of satire of blackface or, more likely, something not worth overanalyzing because she's a cartoon and such a look simply makes her easier to draw and identify with. Regardless, her semi-canine features give me adequate reason to refer to her as a "bitch" whenever it seems necessary, and happy day, it's going to become very necessary.
Elizabeth is singing "Billie Jean", and boy, did writing this suddenly become very awkward and uncomfortable. Hi there, it's the summer of 2009, and the King of Pop has just died. That's sad and all, but if you think I'm going to let this recent tragedy destroy my running gag, you've got another thing coming.
"Billie Jean is not my lover," she hummed softly, attracting the ire of royalty-demanding record executives everywhere who don't know free advertising when they see it. "She's just a girl who claims that I am the one…." She reached the shore, and set her paddle down and walked up onto the short boardwalk.
"But the kid is not my son," a Singaporean man suddenly interrupted her, but without disrupting the flow, which was nice. "A dangerous song to be singing, for anyone ignorant of peoples' feelings." He drew a blade and threatened the insignificant Dot of a girl with it. "Particularly a woman, particularly a woman alone."
Enter an obese, dim-witted policeman, I mean, pirate, with a scraggly beard and a funny hat all his own, who threw a butterfly net over the head of the guy, whose name is Tai Huang. "Whats makeses youse think she's aloneses?"
"You protect her?" Tai gasped. Implied intentions to rape makes such good comedy, doesn't it, Disney?
Elizabeth then hit Tai in the head with a wooden mallet. "And what makes you think I need protecting, silly?" she giggled. Ah, she's cute for a bitch.
"Yourse master'ses expectin's us," the surprise ending of the second movie explained for expository purposes. "An unexpected deathses woulds cast a slight pallses on ours meetin'ses." If you're having trouble understanding what he's saying, it's because he's not speaking in an Asian tongue and that dictionary you bought to help translate this is useless.
As the Asians led Elizabeth and Barbossa through their peninsular tip of a home to meet their boss, under the boardwalk at the other end of town swam what looked like turtles, but weren't because that would be boring, no matter how much you might like them. But then the "shells" arose, revealing two gene-spliced laboratory mice, a childish brown squirrel, an older gray squirrel with a purse and green hat, a mime, and a bearded man, all breathing through snorkels fashioned out of bamboo stalks. The group made their way underneath a sewer grating, and watched as three common city pigeons, one nasty and gray (Pesto), one purple and naïve (Squit), and the last green and Robert De Niro-y (Bobby), flew overhead, singing "Steady As She Goes" by the Raconteurs with more talent than you might expect. Providing musical accompaniment was a capuchin monkey, Jack (White?), and wheeling a cart idly by was a slender gray housecat with a bandage over her tail and wait a minute how can a cat wheel a cart?
Gibbs, the bearded man and second mate to our absent-for-the-first-thirty-minutes main character, got his animal friends to help him begin sawing at the metal grating. This help, of course, was only possible in the first place because these particular animal friends had opposable thumbs, because they were cartoon characters in the roles of human actors, you see. "All right," Gibbs said, even though they hadn't accomplished anything yet.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth and Barbossa were talking amongst themselves about the man the former was about to meet for the very first time. "Have you heard anything from Will?" Yeah, bitch, talk about your fiancé's secret operation out loud, why don't you?
"I trustes young Turnerses to acquireses the chartses, ands youses to rememberses your placeses in the precenses of Captainses Sao Fengses," the verbally challenged villain of the first movie answered.
"Is he that terrifying?"
"He's muchses likes myselfses, buts absentses my merciful natureses and senses ofs fair playses." Sigh.
Meanwhile, the grating had been successfully cut through, and Gibbs was quick to point this out with his voice, because in this darkness, hand signals wouldn't be nearly as effective. He urged his shipmates to "make ready."
Meanwhile again, the Singaporeans had finished their journey from wherever they'd started to the entrance to Sao Feng's hideout. A slit in the wooden door opened, and to a pair of eyes, Tai Huang said "Hoi," and with that kind of multicultural research being integrated into the script so thoroughly, it's a wonder many of these Asian scenes were cut and censored away like some kind of…well, everything in China.
Anyway, Elizabeth, Barbossa, and the unimportant people around them entered Sao Feng's hideout, and even though this story takes place in the seventeenth century, the story is genuinely 2007, and in the post-9/11 world, that means even the bad guys get their own Department of Homeland Security goons to annoy the hell out of subordinate terrorist (or in this case, pirate) amateurs. Elizabeth and Barbossa handed Tai Huang their weapons (guns and swords), but just as Elizabeth was about to walk past Tai to meet Sao Feng, the guard put up a hand to stop her. "You think because she is a woman we would not suspect her of treachery?" he asked Barbossa.
"Noses," Barbossa said. He had a point: the nose does know. But that's probably not what he meant.
"Remove, please," Tai said.
With that, Elizabeth then went Rambo on their ass. No, I'm kidding—she merely removed her hat, outer coat, and boot to reveal a plethora of comically placed weaponry—but wouldn't this story be so much more exciting if she actually did waste some communist-sympathizing Vietcong? Just about the only thing more fun than killing commies is killing Nazis, as Brad Pitt will surely soon prove.
"Remove, please," Tai said perversely.
"Boys, go fig," Elizabeth said.
Because this movie is PG-13, and because Dot from Animaniacs is technically a minor, and because the curious can already see Keira Knightley topless in several movies, the next thing we see is not girl parts but the decidedly unsexy Sao Feng at his office of sorts. Sao Feng was a great big jade green hippopotamus enjoying a steam bath with his equally unsexy purple hippo of a partner. "Captain Barbossa," he said, making an unsexy, pudgy-fingered pass at his mate's obese thigh. The Spanish accent was the only sexy thing about this man, a la Antonio Banderas. Women brought to nudity by the voice alone were just as quickly transported, almost by forces of nature, back into their clothes upon seeing his not-so-hip body. "Welcome to Singapore." He turned to his wife and demanded, "More steam."
The wife, nameless until I say so otherwise, nodded and pulled down an overhanging cord, which caused "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" by Steam (as promised) to begin playing in the background. Old folks reading this story are going, "I remember that song! Billy, hand Grandpa his dentures."
Nearby, the taller of the two gene-spliced mice was approaching a tremendous creature that made the average American look like, well, somebody not lounging in front of the TV wondering who the next national Idol will be while remaining ignorant of the corrupt bureaucracies in their lives and steadily growing more and more plump as their years progress ("Billy, give Grandpa his dentures, damn it!"). Except this creature wasn't a grossly overweight hippo like his superiors, but a grossly overweight Asian man.
"None of that," Gibbs said, easily pulling Ragetti away because of the latter's tiny murine stature. "If things don't go the way we want them, we're the only chance they've got!" And now the audience knows.
"I understand you have a request to make of me," Sao Feng said.
"Mores of a proposalses to puts to yeses," Barbossa replied. That proposal was not to fake an engagement so as to avoid deportation back to Canada, which makes no sense, because Ryan Reynolds is Canadian, not Sandra Bullock, who, by the way, was also in attendance at this meeting for some reason. "I haveses a ventureses underwayses and happens to findses myselfs in needses of a shipses ands a crewses."
"This is an odd coincidence," Sao Feng said, attempting to scratch the back of his head and failing.
"Because you happen to have a ship and a crew you don't need?" Elizabeth said.
Sandra Bullock coughed in the background to help a sister out. It didn't work.
"No," Sao Feng said. "Because, earlier this day, not far from here, a thief broke into my most revered uncle's temple, did a bad-ass dance to avoid the high-tech laser security, and single-handedly saved the sequel from sucking despite an amazing, talented ensemble cast." I could give you Ocean's twelve reasons why Sao Feng was disappointed with that sequel, but by the time I finish, you'd be an old geezer ("Billy, if you don't give Grandpa his dentures right now, I swear I'm getting the rifle!") and would likely be suffering from Alzheimer's and will have forgotten the past eleven reasons as soon as I finally finish explaining the twelfth one. "Anyway," Sao Feng continued, "he tried to make off with these." He picked up a series of rolled-up scrolls sitting beside him on the rim of the bath, and without unfolding them, showed them off to Elizabeth and Barbossa. "The navigational charts." And now the audience knows. "The route to the farthest gate." If said gate is anything like Heaven's Gate, the trip probably isn't worth it. "Wouldn't it be amazing if this venture of yours took you to the world beyond this one?" Wait, so you're saying there are journeys beyond this world that aren't amazing?
"Its woulds strains credulities at thats," Barbossa said. You said it, man. I mean, it's gibberish, but you said it.
Sao Feng snapped his fingers, which were wrinkled like a senior citizen ("I've got the gun now! You can run, Billy, but you can't hide!"), and the subordinate minorities (redundant?) pulled a man-dog, similar to Elizabeth with his black body and white face and gloves, dressed in period clothing except for the red baseball cap atop his head and the same-colored tongue sticking out of his mouth, out from another, smaller tubful of hot water at the other corner of the room. "This is the thief," Sao Feng said, pointing an accusing finger at the Wakko who'd been foolish enough to try and skirt customs. "Is his face familiar to you?"
At this query, Elizabeth and Barbossa both shook their heads, forgetting that in some cultures that actually means, "yes." It didn't mean that here, but it was still a bad response, because, if you'll pardon the bad paragraph break to follow:
"Then I guess he has no further need for it," Sao Feng said, reaching into the tub to pull out a gigantic, mighty sharp-looking sword, oddly enough the same color as his body, whose bottom handle was hidden underneath the steaming water along with the bottom half of his unsexy body, and whoa, this is a Disney movie, come on! "Wow, this is heavier than I remember." Thematically, yeah, it's starting to head in that direction. Yikes. "Can a brother get a hand?" Consider for a moment that this is an elderly Asian hippo with a sexy Latino dialect attempting to talk like a cool urban youth.
"I'll help," Elizabeth said as she walked up to help the fat man. She daringly put her hand into the boiling water, drawing the ire of the wife. "Ow," she said understatedly as he hands began burning. "This is going to be a touch job. What are you going to do to him, anyway?"
"I'm going to tear him into a million tiny pieces," Sao Feng replied, after which Elizabeth and the reader realized what the former was grabbing inside that tub and screamed in response. "A-ha!" True to his exclamation, the hippo then took on Elizabeth and Barbossa as they had tried to take on him. "So, you come into my city, and betray my hospitality!"
"Saos Fengs, I assures youse, I hads noses ideas…" Barbossa stuttered, trying to sound innocent, but that was hard to do when no one had any idea what he was saying, except for the part about them somehow understanding everything he says.
"That he would get caught?!" Sao Feng said, proving my point. He rose out of the tub, covered up his monstrous I won't say it with, of all things, a hand towel, and walked over to Elizabeth and Barbossa. "You intend to attempt a voyage to Davy Jones' locker! When I cannot help but wonder, why?" Why, to make money, of course. Need I remind you that this is the third movie in a franchise?
Barbossa tossed a piece of eight into Sao Feng's gigantic hand, where it was nearly crushed. "The songs hases beens sungses," he said. ("And it remains the same," Elizabeth remarked. I like Led Zeppelin, too (and Led Zeppelin II), but this isn't the time and place, bitch.) "The timeses is upons uses." ("And it has come today," Elizabeth added, and you could almost hear The Chambers Brothers music playing in the background if only we'd gotten the rights to use it here.) "Wes musts convenes the Brethrens Courtses. As ones of the nines pirates lordses youse musts honors the calluses." (Why are their nine pieces of eight? And why can't Elizabeth make that kind of observation? That bitch.)
"More steam," Sao Feng ordered his wife, and even as the "na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye"-s got louder, he continued to demand, "More steam!"
Down below, our childish brown squirrel friend hit our grossly overweight Asian man (not our friend, hence the action to follow) in the head with a shovel. You might think, with those buck teeth of his, that "shovel" was a descriptive metaphor for his incisors, but that would mean Marty (the squirrelly subject of this sentence and paragraph) would have to give a forehead hickey to the wannabe-American. And while I'm all for progressive politics, we all know that that kind of relationship never works out in the end, and if you need a reference, I suggest you look up a certain incident involving a squirrel that went berserk in the First Self-Righteous Church in the sleepy little town of Pascagoula, Mississippi. Man and Skippy (Squirrel) were never meant to be, but man and Skippy (peanut butter), you bet.
Sao Feng continued: "There's a price on our heads, it is true." Insert your own bit about this being an analogy for the acting salary of these salacious actors (except Flavio and Marita). "Since it seems the only way a pirate can turn a profit anymore is by betraying other pirates…" Well, considering the very idea of piracy is to not make a profit, yeah, that sounds about right. Sao Feng is probably glad he downloaded that copy of the Hannah Montana soundtrack before the Pirate Bay turned on him the way many a young woman did, with the same lack of reciprocation.
"It's Elizabeth!" Ragetti, the more slender of our two gene-spliced laboratory mice, whispered as he looked up poor Elizabeth's skirt, at the organs that confirmed that she was, indeed, a bitch. Arguably, anyway; it's not like a catchy song is going to change the fact that we haven't a clue what she or either of her compatriots are, except, of course, cute.
"Wait for the signal," Gibbs replied.
Up above, weapons were being taken out of their rolling containers in preparation for some kind of fight sequence. (Don't worry, they read the script, they know what they're doing, although the why is a tad iffy at this point.)
"The firsts Brethrens Courtses gaves us ruleses of the seases," Barbossa said, destroying in one fell swoop not just the historical credibility of the story, but also the moral one. And, of course the Brethren Court gave the rulesses of the seases to pirates, the Brethren Court is pirates. "That rule has been challenged by Lord Cutler Beckett." Oh no! The law is doing their job! Whoever will stop them?
These guys.
Yeah.
LOL.
Crap.
"Against the East India Trading Company, what value is the Brethren Court?" Sao Feng asked. Some dude in the audience is going, "He's right. What's the use?" "What can any of us do?" "What can they do?" "Shut up, Steve."
Stepping forward because she's a tough girl, Elizabeth growled cutely to Sao Feng's face, "You can fight!" For your right…to piiiiiirate! One of Sao Feng's guards grabbed Elizabeth's shoulder to pull her away from the big boss man, only to have his minority status and her bitchiness simultaneously reinforced when she threw said hand off of her ("Get off me!") and then talked down to Sao Feng by needlessly reminding him of who he was ("You are Sao Feng, the Pirate Lord of Singapore!").
Shortly after Elizabeth stepped forward but before she bitched again, Ragetti called Pintel over to have a look up her skirt through the wooden floorboards (I won't make a wood joke here, it's way too hard). Alas, Elizabeth was replaced in her place by the minority who would soon grab her shoulder and later go home crying, feeling inadequate, because he got cut down to size at work today by some stray bullets and is now too severely injured to ever live a full life but not injured enough to die from his wounds and escape his pain. Did I mention that he'd find his wife making love to another man when he opens that door? Anyway, the unsanitary pubes of this guy soon to have a very bad day were what Pintel, the shorter, squatter-headed of the two gene-spliced laboratory mice and the Brain of the outfit, saw instead of vaguely doglike female genitalia. What sexual interest would two mice have in a sort-of-dog? None. Nothing. Nada. If you hate n-words (racist), zip. This unimportant moment only occurred because the script must be honored. Personally, I honor it daily on my toilet paper roll, but maybe you have different preferences.
"…Would you have that era come to an end on your watch?" Elizabeth snapped at Sao Feng. In response, he checked his watch. "What time is it?" she said, thankfully putting an all-too-brief stop her overacted lines as she glanced at the timekeeper. She gasped.
"Whats is its, Elizabeths?" Barbossa said.
"It's…" she said with a dramatic pause accompanied by Hans Zimmer's overrated musical brilliance, "…Hammertime!" "U Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer replaced Steam on the airwaves, and appropriate dancing to the early nineties rap hit followed for the next several minutes until the song ended and the story needed to continue again. To Sao Feng, she said: "The most notorious pirates from around the world are uniting against our enemy, and yet you sit here, cowering in your bath water!"
"I'm out of the tub now," Sao Feng said, lifting his index finger. Circling her, he added, "Elizabeth Swann, there's more to you than meets the eye." So she's a transformer? "Isn't there? And the eye does not go wanting." My eyes didn't like Revenge of the Fallen either. "But I cannot help but notice: you have failed to answer my question. What is it you seek in Davy Jones' locker?" Profit, duh.
"Jack Sparrow," William Turner said from his compromised, semi-tortured position above the hot water, his hands tied to a pole. The uttering of that name caused Sao Feng's wife to giggle, and the fact that Jack Sparrow—Jack Sparrow!—hit that is telling. So telling, in fact, that I will never be able to enjoy salami ever again. "He's one of the Pirate Lords." Well, gee, that's convenient.
Apparently having had some knowledge of his wife's extramarital affair, Sao Feng then bellowed to Will and the others that "The only reason I would want Jack Sparrow returned from the land of the dead…is so I can send him back myself!"
"Jacks Sparrows holds oneses of the nines pieceses of eights," Barbossa said. And again, I ask, why are there nine pieces of eight? "Hes failedses to passes it alongs twos a successorses befores he dieds." Where there's a will, there's a way. And if there's not a will, there's always a Will in its place. But if that Will fails, then you're forgetting they were being deceptive assholes and completely unlikable main characters who don't deserve Sao Feng's help. "So wes musts goes and gets hims backs." Can they bring back the hard-earned cash of everyone in the audience while they're at it?
"So you admit, you have deceived me!" Sao Feng exclaimed. I noticed that a while ago, but then again, I'm the narrator. To his men, he demanded, "Weapons!" and they did what every Asian does when tests come their way: pass with flying colors. These guys didn't need calculators on their math tests.
"Weapons!" Gibbs shouted to his shipmates underneath the floorboards, and they did as they were told, too, but without valedictorian recognition awaiting them in the not-too-distant future.
"Saos Fengs, I assureses youse, our intenses ares strictly honorables," Barbossa (could it be anyone else?) said, and a second later Gibbs and friends tossed swords up through the crevices in the floorboards right into Elizabeth and Barbossa's hands. It's funny because honorable people typically don't get into swordfights with others.
"Drop your weapons!" Sao Feng said, grabbing a random Asian guy and putting a knife to his neck, though simply opening his mouth and showing off those terrifying hippopotamus teeth of his might have sufficed. "Or I kill the man!"
"Kills hims, he's nots our manses," Barbossa shrugged, looking at Elizabeth and Will, who were equally ambivalent rather than the decidedly more honorable "Hey, man, what gives?"
"If he's not with you," Will said, "and he's not with us…" Cue an ominous pause, scored by the wonderfully overused talent of Hans Zimmer. "…Who's he with?" Some dude in the audience is going, "Who is he with?" "Shut up, Steve."
