***warning: here there be spoilers***

Pirates 2 was a strange movie experience for me. I hated the first 2/3 of it, but by the end I felt it was decent. Here goes:

• The discussion of how to pronounce "kraken" was very appropriate. I myself always pronounced it with a long "a", having seen the word in print (most notably, as a villain in the original Final Fantasy) long before I ever heard it spoken. When I did finally hear it - in a commercial for the Kraken roller coaster at Busch Gardens - it sounded so terribly wrong that I refused to accept it. I now assert, based on popular usage as well as the "rules" of the English language, that both pronunciations are correct.
• I'm pretty sure that Davy Jones, the immortal devil of the sea, doesn't sleep. The setup with the liar's dice game was good (especially because they played exactly by the rules), but the method of stealing the key was incredibly lame.
• I thought the execution of the plot was terrible. Having characters explain their motivations and actions through dialogue is the worst type of cinema.
• The subplot with the natives should have been cut. It had nothing to do with anything. How would the sailors know the tribe intended to eat their elected leader? Furthermore, why did Jack Sparrow talk in fake jargon, then suddenly use words the natives were able to understand? It was a waste of screen time.
• Why can Davy Jones only set foot on land every 10 years? Just because the writers say so? On a similar note, the use of a magical compass that can lead you to the thing you want the most is a bit of a cheap gimmick, even though it's a convenient way to develop the characters involved.
• Davy Jones, the immortal devil of the sea, ought to know when someone is hiding aboard his ship.
• From the discovery of the chest onwards, the movie becomes much better, although there are still significant holes. Why can Davy Jones's ship only sail against the wind?
• The subplot of Jack's morals vs. Elizabeth's is very good, especially given the choices that both characters make.
• Davy Jones, the immortal devil of the sea, ought to know the condition and whereabouts of his heart, not only because it is physically a part of him, but because it just happens to be his one weakness. When the chest was found with the key in the lock, I imagine his first reaction would have been to open it and look inside, which would have triggered an immediate search and probably prevented Norrington from escaping.
• Speaking of Norrington, his reappearance was an interesting twist. In fact, several characters who played lesser parts in the first movie and could have easily been written out of the script were brought back. This, at least, was a good move. I don't quite understand how Barbossa could have come back from such a certain death in the first film, but it was good to see him. I hope they don't use some stupid explanation for his return.
• I absolutely hate the idea of making a film simply to be the bridge between two other films. To be fair, I accept this in literature and TV, but I just think that movies - even ones with sequels in mind - should be self-contained. I don't think this ending was fair to the viewer in the sense that the characters' situtations barely changed in the course of the movie. There was some character development, but just enough to keep it from being awful. It was entirely too long (cutting the native scene would fix this), and overall I got the sense that everyone involved was just way too excited about the success of the original and wanted to make the sequel according to the same formula. The only problem is, no one ever expected the first movie to be successful, and it wasn't made according to a specific box-office "formula". It succeeded on its own merits, and the second one ought to be held to those same standards.

I suppose it was good enough. The ending felt good but it was so obviously setting up the third movie that I wonder how much longer viewers will tolerate this new shift in moviemaking. A good set of sequels has always been the exception rather than the rule, and in the meantime we have plenty to remind us (Matrix 2 and 3; X-Men 3) that it's still possible for the third Pirates movie to crash and burn.