It’s only been 5 days since Mike Newell was named director of the first installment of Disney’s heir apparent to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and already the guy’s raising eyebrows (the good kind, the bad kind and, um, the confused kind).  (The Good):  In an interview with Rotten Tomatoes, the director stated that “It's not a video game movie, it's a great story. If you had read the script, you would know that it wasn't a video game. It's very exciting and it's immensely romantic and … it takes you to somewhere you've never been." What’s most interesting about this is that he didn’t say it’s not like other video game movies, he says it’s NOT a video game movie. 



What, you don’t want to be associated with this?

When you consider the epic fail that is the video game movie sub-genre, this can be viewed as a good thing, except for another thing that he stated in the interview (the Bad): He has an assistant playing the games to fill him in on key details.  Does this mean he has no real exposure to the franchise or the story before this?  Despite his impressive and diverse directorial resume (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Donnie Brasco, Four Weddings and a Funeral), many fans are worried that their favorite franchise will be mishandled by a guy who seems to know nothing about the source material...



But when has that ever happened before…

Oh yeah, and that other thing?  The confusing one?  That would be this quote:  “You know what Stonehenge is? Stonehenge is a machine that tells you that the world will survive because every year the sun comes up in exactly the same place."  What this has to do with PoP, I guess we’ll have to wait and find out.



Stranger things have happened...