Bring Me That Horizon: "Pirates of the Caribbean" - The Making of the Swashbuckling Movie Trilogy (Welcome Book): "Pirates of the Caribbean" - The Making ... Swashbuckling Movie Trilogy (Welcome Book)

As a "fan" of this kind of book, the films & the Disney attraction I looked forward to this particular offering and although found it a decent read, felt it to be the worst release yet from the publisher Disney Editions. It contains plenty of pretty cool photo's from the set, some good accounts from behind the scenes & an overall journey from the Disneyland attraction through to the final shot of the 3rd film. If you haven't read many books of this type then I'm sure you're find it pretty enjoyable but for me there just wasn't enough content to make it stand out from the rest.

One of the biggest negatives of the book is the number of full page & often 2 page official photographs from the movies. Whilst many may enjoy to look at these I can't help but feel I've seen enough publicity shots from the POTC movies to last me a lifetime - if I wanted a poster-book, I'm sure there's a licensed product out there to buy, however in a "making-of" book I want to see more behind-the-scenes stuff. Sure, there are quite a few photo's, sketches, etc but these should heavily outweigh the standard fare in this type of book.

The other main dissapointment with this book is the amount of pages dedicated to the lead actors. About 1/5th of the entire book details who they are, how great they were to work with, how professional they were, ete etc. This chunky part of the book is VERY corporate-friendly which I find too sickly-sweet as I've since seen Kiera Knightley on British tv clearly making it known that she'd long had enough of making this trilogy - she hadn't even seen the 3rd movie several months after release. After 30 pages of reading how all the key personnel were such a "joy to work with" it was funny to read about the animal actors & it was far more interesting to read how they got on on-set than Johnny & Co.

The author is also very keen to labouriously name-check crew members which maybe the decent thing to do when you've worked 24-7 with them for several years but it doesn't make for the most-interesting read. Just list them at the rear of the book - then, like the credits in the movies, the reader can decide if he wants to spend that extra few minutes seeing who got the Director his Starbucks every day.

In fairness, once the book makes it past the above & onto the actual on-set work it gets better. The only trouble is these parts are too brief & left me wanting more. Top marks however for not boring us all with too much CGI waffle, something which similar books on King Kong & Revenge of the Sith REALLY bored me to tears with.

In a nutshell the book's a decent read & a worthy addition to a collection if you're a fan. If you want a truly brilliant read however pick up Jason Surrell's "From the Magic Kingdom to the Movies". Whilst more heavily focused on the attraction rather than the movies, "behind the scenes" books do not get better than this.

PS - Although Bring me that Horizon does cover all three movies, the author only worked on the latter two movies so most of the focus is around these.

Bring Me That Horizon: "Pirates of the Caribbean" - The Making of the Swashbuckling Movie Trilogy (Welcome Book): "Pirates of the Caribbean" - The Making ... Swashbuckling Movie Trilogy (Welcome Book)

Michael Singer

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