Avast!
Well, I’m back from seeing Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End and I must say that I am pleased. It didn’t quite deliver the “oh snap!” factor but it was a worthy way to end the trilogy. I suppose now the question is how long until #4 comes out. Anyway, lets to a little review shall we? And just so you know, I will include spoilers, so if you don’t want any, skip the next few paragraphs. . .
First off, this movie is visually stunning. Not just in the quality of the effects but in the scale of the effects also. There are pirates flying all over the place on the screen whether from exploding ships, while boarding ships, or during fighting on ships. Maybe on a little nicer screen (ooooh I miss Cinerama right about now!) I would have noticed the computer effects more but it really didn’t bother me. My take on CGI is that when you see someone go flying through the air, reason and logic tell you it’s CGI so who cares if you can tell by the film or not. The only time the CGI made me cringe was when Jack is conversing with himself in the brig of the Flying Dutchman and it looks like he is having a conversation with a green screen. While that is pretty likely the way they pulled off the feat, it looked like the background was using different lighting or something because the foreground was sharp but the CGI Jack was all grainy. Probably my favorite scene visually however is the battle between the Black Pearl and the Flying Dutchman while they are in the maelstrom and are firing back and forth while circling.
When it comes to the plot, to be honest there were times when I wanted to yell at the writers, “Get on with it!” That was about my only complaint though. It would have been nice to see them spend a little more time building up the mythology behind the story and less time on everyone stabbing each other in the back before miraculously loving each other again but hey, it got the job done. My favorite writing has to be Barbossa at the helm of the Black Pearl as they circle the Dutchman. I love it when someone with a British accent is yelling half-crazed about going further up and further in. Geoffry Rusch is at his best in the film while snapping out orders backed by threats of eternal damnation and the fires of Hell. It would have been nice to see Chow Yun Fat have a bigger role since he is such an underrated actor in America but at least he was cool. The movie also followed a fairly predictable path so the twists and turns weren’t that surprising. Tia Dalma does in fact turn out to be Calypso but that whole plot line just kind of fizzles with the death of Davy Jones. It would have been cool to see her swamp the British fleet or something but instead she just clears up and goes away. Left me wondering why the pirates feared her in the first place. And what was with her growing to be 50 feet tall before turning into a boatload (yes, pun intended) of crabs? And last, it would have been nice to see the movie be either a little more childish or a little more adult. There were several points in the movie where you could tell the writers were trying to throw in a joke of some kind for kids to understand and laugh at but when the movie really is more for people in the teens and twenties who grew up on the ride, do we really need to include jokes for middle schoolers? On the flip side, they laid on the double entendre pretty thick at the end of the movie when Jack is talking about his “ship.” That whole conversation was just a little over the top. Anyway, enough spoiler talk. . .
I don’t know if I’m going to have another opportunity to go see the movie in theater or not. I probably would go for it but I won’t go by myself, only if someone else invites me to go. The only question in my mind is whether or not they will be able to make a fourth movie or not. Johnny Depp has talked about retiring the character of Jack Sparrow and who knows about the rest of the cast with the way people seem to jump ship from movie trilogies these days. All I have to say on that topic is if they make another one, I’ll definitely be in line to see it.
