Stuff I noticed while watching DEAD MAN'S CHEST tonight

Yeah, up at a late hour: working on something that I'll probably be talking more about soon on this blog.

I haven't really admitted it here as much as I really should, but I will now: the Pirates of the Caribbean movies have become one of my most favorite film series ever. I love, love, love everything about them. Well, earlier this evening Lisa and I put in the DVD of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest that I gave her for Christmas (here's my review of it from when it first came out last summer). A few days ago we watched the first movie The Curse of the Black Pearl so we'd be freshened-up on everything about Captain Jack Sparrow, Will, Elizabeth and all the rest.

So I'm watching Dead Man's Chest for the second time and this go-around I noticed some things...

- What did Sparrow give Tia Dalma in exchange for the compass? Well, why are all of Tia Dalma's people standing with lit candles in honor of Sparrow's memory toward the end of the movie? A theory suggests itself: it's been stated somewhere that Sparrow used to work for the East India Trading Company but was kicked out... because he refused to transport slaves from Africa. I'm thinking that Tia Dalma and all those others were intended to be the slaves that Sparrow would not send into bondage. He gave them their freedom... and Tia Dalma gave him the compass in gratitude. That's just a theory though.

- When Sparrow and the others first visit Tia Dalma, he gives her Jack the monkey. I totally missed this when I saw the movie in the theaters, but when Tia Dalma releases the monkey from its cage, it runs into the adjoining room where there's a bed... and someone lying atop it. All we see of this person is his boots. Who could it be and why would Jack the monkey run to it? The very last shot before the credits roll answers that question.

- Davy Jones has a musical locket he keeps atop his hideous pipe organ. A locket shaped like a heart. It is said that whoever has Davy Jones's heart - the one he ripped out of his own chest and hid on Isla Cruces - controls Jones and thus controls the world's oceans. But what if that's not the real heart that the legend speaks of... but it's his locket instead?

- Speaking of lockets, I thought I saw one that looked a lot like Jones's in Tia Dalma's place (is this woman more important to the story than we yet really know?).

- When they meet in Tortuga, Norrington tells Gibbs that his life is just like Gibbs, just "one chapter behind". Maybe that's how Gibbs went from being in the royal navy at the beginning of The Curse of the Black Pearl to being a pirate: did he get thrown out of the navy too?

I'm probably going to watch Dead Man's Chest at least a half-dozen more times between now and May, when the next chapter At World's End comes out, so this list may wind up growing some (or a lot). And when At World's End does come out... what y'all think: should I go to the theater dressed as a pirate? :-)