And there goes another candidate for deus-ex-machina work: Father John Captain McKenzie and El Lightning Blue (and Dorito and Sauce-ke) are tied up with tentacle-fighting, with the Heart of Chaos clearly outside of the range of their d-e-m powers.
But then, one would have to assume that an ocean boiling with writhing, censorship-chocolatey tentacles wouldn’t really allow for full freedom of navigation – and that’s something that’s required for even this group of heroes. As long as the ocean is open, they can show up at any time at any place on the world…well, any place somewhat close to shore, that is. The limited speed of a sailing ship and its dependence on the winds are never a consideration – nor is the fact that a crew of fours is far too small to effectively operate a fully-rigged ship of this size. Such considerations are considered beyond the ken of the average B-movie audience, so they can be disregarded. But, yeah…even without any sort of knowledge of nautical matters, any audience would understand that you can’t readily traverse an ocean that’s roughly 30% tentacles by volume.
While they’re not making progress, at least they don’t seem to be in any kind of immediate danger. The same dismissal of crew size considerations mentioned above allows the crew of four to work 36 guns at the same time, with enough time left over for Captain McKenzie and El Lightning Blue to have a nice little chat…and for Sauce-ke to do the washing, as much as he resents that.
His question is easily answered, by the way: they never plunder appliances because that simply doesn’t look piratey enough. Chests filled with gold coins, jewelry and the occasional crown are where it’s at for a traditional movie pirate, practical considerations be damned.
Too bad that the flag isn’t dried yet, though – that ‘hoist the colors’ scene from PotC III is really quite rousing, recreating it here would have been a somewhat effective counteraction to the general depressive mood of this part of the story…
More on Thursday.