John Guilfoil's Blog
Just a short post with some piracy…
The History Channel special, “True Caribbean Pirates,” was excellent. If you are a pira-maniac, buy it right now, and watch it because it is one of the best drama-documentary perspectives on the subject I’ve ever seen.
Update from July 8
And the winner, and new opening week champion, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.”
As predicted, the sequel rolled to an opening weekend of $132 million and broke the previous opening weekend record of $115 held by “Spiderman.” CNNMoney is reporting that the Pirates trilogy will fare better than “Back to the Future” in the 1980s, make it more like the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy which grossed over $1 billion in the box office. Though the ladder trilogy will more than likely remain above the other trilogies in award receipts.
Reuters is also reporting the significance of a successful and profitable pirate trilogy for the makers, especially Disney.
One thing I still don’t understand; what’s the deal with the jar of sand?
Also, for those of you pirate fans out there, the History Channel ran an excellent documentary on actual pirates of the Caribbean.
More undead pirates, more swordplay and more Keira Knightley. Not to mention three nearly sold out midnight showings on Thursday, July 6 at the AMC Fenway in Boston.
That’s the buzz around the swashbuckling sequel, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” which formally opened on Friday.
I had a chance to attend one of the Thursday midnight showings. (Theater 11, behind the guy who actually started talking on his cell phone during the movie.) I got to see first-hand what this pirate business is all about, and honestly, people go mad over this whole thing. One person even waved a black pirate flag and screamed “arrrr” during the movie.
Despite the fast-paced action and some great scenes, like a three-way swordfight inside an out of control spinning watermill, the movie was way too long, 150 minutes. Two and a half hours is just too long for an adventure comedy about pirates, and more time needed to be spent in the cutting room, taking out appendix-like scenes and clarifying the main point of the movie. The plot begins abruptly enough, with the arrest of Knightley’s and Bloom’s characters for helping Jack Sparrow escape at the end of the first movie. Bloom’s character, Will Turner, is immediately offered a way out of jail and execution by helping the East India Trading Company obtain Sparrow’s magical compass.
And then the whole thing gets mixed up with side plots like Elizabeth Swann searching for Turner and developing feelings for Sparrow, and there is just way too much time spent on developing the personality and finer points of the Jack Sparrow character. He’s a maladjusted, crazy pirate and Verbinski and company should have left well enough alone.
The movie does have some shortcomings, but this is the July blockbuster of an otherwise slow-so-far 2006 summer film season. The movie is predicted to match the original “Pirates of the Caribbean’s” $654 million worldwide revenue. This may seem amazingly high, but factor in that “Dead Man’s Chest” and the third installment in the pirate trilogy cost $450 million to produce. “Dead Man’s Chest” could gross over $100 million this weekend, bringing it close to “Spider-Man,” which opened to the sum of $115 million back in 2002.
“Dead Man’s Chest” will team up with the June success of “Cars” to round out Disney’s fiscal year. Shares of Disney stock closed down at just under $30 Friday.
Though it’s an affront to everything that is holy about Brian De Palma’s legendary film, imagine that Tony Montana survived the epic final scene in “Scarface” and has come back for revenge.
The above video was an E3 release and sent to subscribers of “The Insider”, Vivendi Universal Games’ newsletter.
Throw in the Grand Theft Auto “open” style of gaming and you pretty much have the premise of Vivendi Universal’s Scarface: The World is Yours.
Although much of the game seems to scream “GTA,” (drugs, cars, women) Universal has tried to make it be more story driven along the lines of The Godfather: The Game, which was another good looking free-form game. Scarface: The World is Yours will put you into a historically re-created geography that includes Miami, the Keys and the Bahamas, and your mission is to take back Tony’s empire.
The game will be available on Xbox, Playstation 2 and Windows CD-ROM. Rumors persisted of Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 releases. Best Buy even maintains an October 4 release date for the Xbox 360 version, but Vivendi is saying the game will only be released for Playstation2, Xbox and PC CD-ROM.
This game has been talked about for over a year with teasers seen at E3 2005 and 2006, and it looks like this fall will finally see gamers re-creating Scarface in their own image.
I am hopeful that Scarface: The World is Yours will have better replay value than The Godfather: The Game. Godfather was good. It recreated the 1940’s well and expanded on the original novel and movie. I spent four sleepless nights conquering every front, warehouse, hub and compound; executing every hit; and completing every mission. But after that, the game was basically over, (you even got infinite ammo after completing all the objectives, so, while it was fun to run around for a while, the challenge wasn’t there anymore) d I was disappointed with the lack of replay value.
What will be even more impressive than the geographic and historical recreations and graphics will be the people lending their talents to the game. 
Al Pacino will not voice any new lines, but many movie lines will be used. Original Scarface actors Robert Loggia, Steven Bauer and Al Israel will return and famous names like Jay Mohr, James Woods, Ice T and Elliott Gould will star in the game.
One interesting and smart marketing tactic being used by Universal is Myspace.com and allow independent musicians to submit pieces for the soundtrack. Scarface currently has nearly 70,000 “friends” on Myspace.
Vivendi has had a busy year trying to establish itself as a leader in the videogame industry. Their lineup includes a World of Warcraft Expansion Pack, Eragon, F.E.A.R., an expansion pack for F.E.A.R. and Timeshift, which recently launched for Xbox 360.
The success of Scarface: The World is Yours remains to be seen, but this game is well overdue and may miss it’s target, marketing-wise. Many major outlets have been covering it since its announcement, so there’s plenty of press behind the game. Gamespot and IGN started coverage in August, 2004.
The game will not be offered on any of the three newest consoles, (Wii, PS3, Xbox 360) so that will definitely play against the holiday sales of the game. The Myspace promotion was crafty, but we’ll see how the game does when it comes out.