Hopeful new venue for Johnny Depp

[Chris James]

The past ten years of Mr. Depp's career has been fraught with near misses, and yet I think many of us can agree the man has talent. So why the bad films? I mean the Lone Ranger was embarrassing to watch but at least it didn't have any pirates in it.

Depp films have been all over the place, mostly in the weird category. Early films like Edward Scissorhands, What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Finding Neverland, these were films in which I thought his acting ability was challenged and he did a credible performance. His next film arrives in mid-April:

http://youtu.be/QheoYw1BKJ4

Science fiction has been getting a lot of film time the past few years and this trailer of Transcendence makes the film look interesting. I certainly hope it's good. So much hype about films like Ender's Game only ended in disappointment. (No, Depp was not in that) Of course Johnny Depp has already been as low as he possibly can get if you saw the image of him as Tonto with a dead bird perched on his head.

I wish him luck, he certainly needs it.

[Merkin]

The problem with movie trailers like that is that by the time I've sat through it I feel as though I've seen the film and I lose interest. I am intrigued, however, by the aspect of contemporary cinema that uses film to deliver pop psychologies, pat answers, potted and distorted histories, and socio-economic mumbo-jumbo to mass audiences, thus relieving them of any urge to think for themselves.

[Chris James]

As one of my friends just said the other night: "Let's hope this isn't about the beginnings of the Borg." I think it is meant to be far more than that...we'll see.

[The Pecman]

Don't forget that Johnny did four Pirates movies that made over $4 billion, so I think he's doing just fine. That's assuming he doesn't do another $250M western that bombs as big as Lone Ranger. And Dark Shadows was horrible, too.

[Cole Parker]

I liked his first pirate movie. The others, not so much. In fact, I only saw the second and stopped at that point.

C

[The Pecman]

I liked his first pirate movie. The others, not so much. In fact, I only saw the second and stopped at that point.

I saw them all, and you are very wise. If you ask me, only the first one was any good; the others totally begged credulity to the point of being ridiculous. They also got rid of the Orlando Bloom character, which I think hurt the film because I thought it was an interesting idea to have a ne'r-do-well anti-hero with Johnny Depp, and then Bloom as the dashing, romantic hero. Having only Sparrow was a drag, since there was no contrast to his bizarre behavior.

I think everybody was kind of stunned that Disney managed to get a good movie out of a stupid theme park ride, but the other movies got progressively more and more horrible. Interestingly, I believe the third Pirates film At World's End, is the most expensive Hollywood film in history at $300,000,000. It made about a billion, so I'd say it still made a profit.