Jack Sparrow discovers he owes a blood debt to the legendary Davey Jones, Captain of the ghostly Flying Dutchman. With time running out, Jack must find a way out of his debt or else be doomed to join Jones's crew of mutant sailors. Making matters worse, Sparrow's problems manage to interfere with the wedding plans of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann, who are forced to join Jack on yet another one of his misadventures.
Dead Man's Chest is shot back to back with some parts of the third installment of Pirates and Nighy has nothing but good to say about their director. "It was an incredible undertaking," he says. "And Gore handled it so well... his attention to detail is remarkable - from the rings on your fingers to the design on the curtains, nothing escapes him."
This is evident in the sets, props, down to the costumes used in the movie. The captain's cabin of the Black Pearl has very exquisite details: the woodwork is made mostly of mahogany, there are gold-plated decorations and ornate candles, the skylight in the center was made of glass imported from Germany from the early 18th century.
The Bayou, home to the shack of soothsayer Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris of 28 Days Later), is set in a large soundstage. It's an entire swamp with a four-foot deep tank of water and surrounded by massive trees. The shack features a giant crocodile head, small lizards hanging, alligator skins, wax sculptures, crosses, spices, bats, and snake skins. The shack looked very rickety and looked to be made out of rotting wood.
According to Visual Effects Supervisor John Knoll, there are more than double visual effects shots for Dead Man's Chest compared to the first film. But Knoll's biggest challenge was the creation of a new character for both sequels, Davey Jones. Like much of the set designs, Jones and his crew are taken partially out of mythology and partially out of the designers' imaginations. According to Knoll, "[Jones has] got a whole octopus for a face (and) a crab claw hand."
"The design is really cool," Knoll elaborated. "[Jones] and his whole crew are collection of sea life. They are very complicated. [Building one character is] actually like building eight characters because they are a conglomeration of things. One character's got an eel growing through him? The longer you serve on the Dutchman, the more you sort of become of the sea. Someone who has recently joined the crews looks human, but someone who has served on the crew for 200 years doesn't really have a face anymore. It's a gradual placement of reprocess."
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest hits the big screen on July 12.
