I know I am at least a few years late on this, but humour me. I need to vent.

On Friday night Emily and I were at her parents house and were wondering what movie to watch. We opened the cupboard and scanned the many titles before deciding to watch the entire Pirates of the Caribbean series sometime during the weekend.

Sunday was Pirates of the Caribbean day. We watched the first film in the early afternoon and the following two in the evening. I have to say that my opinions concerning the series really haven't changed. The problem with sequels is that movie producers are always left trying to out do themselves between movies.

The original movie is always fine and dandy. You have the story of a pirate crew who have stolen some cursed gold, a captain who wants his stolen ship back, and a casual love interest thrown in. Nothing outrageous right?

The second movie starts rather like the first, but has more mythological elements and is far, far harder to follow. Davy Jones comes up from the depths, the kraken is unleashed, and in the final fifteen seconds of the movie a character killed in the first film makes a reappearance. Not a good way to end a movie, but a good way to indicate that the franchise will be continuing.

The third movie is different altogether. People start traveling back and forth between the land of the dead, others learn how to walk through walls, and you can no longer follow the plot or any of the characters motives. The fact that Emily and I were enjoying some rum ourselves while watching this movie was probably the only thing that made it palatable.

By the end of watching all three movies it was kind of sad how far the series had run downhill in only three short movies.

What scares me right now is that I've read that there will be a forth Pirates of the Caribbean movie coming out sometime in 2011. I can't even imagine what they will introduce to make it bolder, edgier and more unpredictable than the last one. All I know is I'll probably have to drink more rum than Jack Sparrow does in order to get through it.

The gold standard for movie sequel degeneration is Smokey and the Bandit. This movie is about a couple of good old boys who steal a truck load of beer and try to smuggle it across state lines. One character drives the truck, the other drives a Trans Am and tries to distract the police. Good idea right? It is a sound premise and turns into ninety solid minutes of freeway chase scenes.

The sequel is just rather odd. Instead of stealing a truck load of beer, our two good old boys are transporting an elephant to the republican national convention. The film immediately loses all credibility. Stealing beer is proud and noble, but transporting an elephant? What gives?

Just when you thought it could get no worse, they released a third Smokey and the Bandit movie. This time, the actor playing the driver of the Trans Am decides his career is worth more than whatever they were offering to shoot this sequel sequel and does not return to this role. So instead the movie is simply the truck driver pretending to be the Trans Am driver while he attempts to antagonize one of the police officers from the other two movies. Ouch.