so, i'm a nerd...and so is my best friend.

so, this weekend i saw pirates of the carribbean: dead man's chest...twice. i really liked it. the first time i saw it with my family at the employee showing where my sister works. woo hoo for perks.

the second time was for my best friend at home's sister (get all that?) and her birthday. well, we were supposed to see it all along, but her sister pooped out at the last second (and by last second, i mean we didn't know if she was going to get there or not until the previews were over...). me, amanda, brandon (lab partner 4 life), and ian (one of amy's friends...poor ian) all stayed and watched.

to say it bluntly, amanda and i are movie nerds. well, nerds and general, but film is our specialty. we are huge fans of the star wars trilogy as well, and in our viewing of pirates (she has seen it twice too), we noticed some distinct parallels between pirates and star wars, especially with dead man's chest and episode 5: the empire strikes back. if you have not seen both films, stop reading now and go to the movies, or to blockbuster (although, if you haven't seen the star wars trilogy at this point, you probably should just be beaten repeatedly with a copy of the VHS trilogy until you do). SPOILER ALERT WITH BOTH FILMS

Character parallels:
william turner (orlando bloom) = luke skywalker (mark hamill)
elizabeth swann (keira knightly) = princess leia organa (carrie fisher)
captain jack sparrow (johnny depp) = han solo (harrison ford) *double swoon*
bootstrap bill turner ( stellen starsgard) = darth vader / anakin skywalker (james earl jones / david prose)
davy jones (bill nighy) = emporer palpatine (clive revill)
pintel (lee arenburg) = r2-d2 (kenny baker)
ragetti (mackenzie crook) = c3po (anthony daniels) (please...his eye keeps falling out and c3po is falling apart throughout the entire film.)
these are stretches...mr. gibbs is equivalent to chewy, and tia dorma is somewhat equivalent to lando. these come mainly from their association to captain jack sparrow and the other characters association to han. loose...forgive us.

more similarities: well, there's the obvious that will is trying to save his father, bootstrap, in the same manner that luke was trying to save his father in episode 6: return of the jedi. both fathers are good men at heart, who simply made some poor choices that they have become physically and mentally disfigured by. another similarity is the ships. captain jack's black pearl is extremely important to him, as han's millienium falcon is to him (he looks like he's going to vomit in episode 6 when he lets lando, who was the original owner, fly it to destroy the new death star). also, both ships were gained through somewhat scandelous means. the flying dutchman is equivalent to the death star, in ways i need not explain. classic epic of good versus evil where the good guys are kinda bad and bad guys are very bad, blah, blah, blah. finally to end out both films, jack and han's fates are unknown when the credit's roll. han is frozen in carbonite to be sent to jabba the hutt as a piece of home decor, and jack may or may not be in the belly of the craken (kraken?). the craken also looks strangely like the sarlac from return of the jedi.

all we need for "pirates of the caribbean: at world's end" are some cute and cuddily creatures and a fat worm. woo woo.

check out the "olivia dehavilland" link for the original concept, created by my best friend from east penn, amanda smith.

check out our joint blog "spoiler alert!". we'll talk about movies. it's what we do anyway. the link is on the side as "pseudo-siskel and ebert".

i'm peachy.