A Sequel to a Bad Movie That Was Based on an Amusement Park Ride

That's what the new Pirates of the Caribbean is. And don't worry, this isn't another review telling you that the new movie, second in the trilogy, sucks. That's been done by Salon, Slate, and most likely every newspaper in the country.

What I'm wondering is why anybody would be surprised. Am I the only person who thought the first one -- the first movie based on an amusement park ride, that is -- completely and totally sucked? It was two and a half hours of bad CGI, wooden acting, terrible, random plot twists, and Johnny Depp doing a completely random Keith Richards impersonation. That movie ended five times, each time more perplexing and less satisfying than the last. It wasn't a fun romp. It was a shitty mess that somehow hypnotized normally discerning people into believing that it was some kind of throwback rip-roaring yarn. Or something.

I'll give you Depp's Keith Richards imitation. That was, if nothing else, extremely entertaining. I distinctly remember the lightbulb coming on throughout the movie, thinking, "this is crazy, I mean, it makes no sense at all...but I swear he's doing a Keith Richards imitation here..." But that would be crazy, right? I mean, just completely random. Well, turns out that's exactly what he was doing.

So given that the first one sucked, the second one was bound to suck even more, in the same annoying ways, and new ones (such as, not to spoil the joy of reading Slate's bad review, a cliffhanger ending, a la Lord of the Rings), the question I'm wondering is not why Johnny Depp decided to play the pirate as Keith Richards. I mean, I guess that kind of makes sense, and Johnny Depp paid for Hunter Thompson's remains to be blasted out of a cannon, so the guy pretty much gets a lifetime pass from me.

The question I'm wondering is exactly how and why did Keith Richards turn himself into a pirate? I mean, Mick Jagger isn't some kind of modern day pirate, adorned with rings and scarves and other pirate-ous, um, adornments. So what the hell happened to Keith? When? It seems like this started sometime in the 80s, maybe around Undercover of the Night. Was this on purpose? Did he wake up one day and say, you know, why don't I just try a little more for that, um, pirate look? Is it the drugs? The booze?

Keith is cool. He's pretty much the definition of cool. But still, he used to be a rock star. Now he is a pirate/rock star. How did we get here?