Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is one of the most of the most convoluted and incoherent pieces of film I have ever seen. By the time credits started to role I accepted the fact that there had been some sort of resolution, but I didn’t know exactly who or how we had gotten there. Admittedly, I haven’t been a fan of the series thus far, but I think pretty much anyone who walks in the theater will acknowledge that even if they like this one, it’s blatantly the worst in the trilogy.
After the events of the previous film, Elizabeth (Knightly), Will (Bloom) and Captain Barbossa (Rush) have to travel to the land of the dead to rescue Captain Jack Sparrow (Depp). Meanwhile, Lord Cutler Becket (Tom Hollander) has conscripted Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) into his service by threatening him with the one thing that can kill him, his heart. In order to stop Jones’ reign of terror Jack, Elizabeth, Will and Barbossa decide to gather the pirate lords together in order to release the sea witch Calypso. Their hope is that as Davy Jones’ former lover she may help them stop both he and the East India Trading Company. Well when you write it out like that it just sounds ridiculous.
I had hoped that with the introduction of the pirate lords and the return of Barbossa that maybe I would be spared some of Depp’s Captain Jack, but alas that is not the case. In fact, there are multiple scenes where he hallucinates and I had toendure multiple versione of him. However, Geoffrey Rush is once again fantastic as Barbossa, while Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightly pretty much do nothing. She can’t pull of the “tough gal” role that’s needed here and he pretty much just squints during his minimal screen time. On top of these performances, you have all the secondary characters who seem to have gotten more screen time in this film and it is wildly unnecessary. They are called secondary characters for a reason, they’re secondary. We don’t need to have a reaction or comment from them regarding every action in the film. By the end when they’re shooting a monkey from a cannon and sets of secondary character are reacting to other sets of secondary characters, you just want some one to take a sword and run them through.
The real tragedy is that we don’t get to spend more time with the other pirate lords. Everyone one of them seemed more interesting than the characters we’ve followed through the three other films. It really is fairly shocking to see how little Chow Yun-Fat has to do in this movie. Surprisingly, I wanted more Keith Richards. As Jack Sparrow’s father, he plays it as more of a low key version of his son. Depp has always played the pirate as sort of a rock star, but it took the real deal to get it right.
This really comes down to just not having a quality script; if it’s not on the page it’ll never be on the screen. Instead of spending more time working the story out, a lot of effort was spent on special effects and fight scenes. That isn’t to say the effects are bad, because that would be a total fabrication. Gore Verbinski has made a great looking film, with visuals that are so good that it is actually bothersome to see them wasted here. That being said, the fight scenes, particularly towards the end, are overlong and become tiresome. By the time you get to the sword fight that becomes a wedding and the attack of the fifty foot woman you just don’t care. That coupled with the fact that every minute or so there’s an entirely unfunny and unnecessary joke with a wink to the camera. It’s bad enough that the audience already knows that no one here is in any real danger and all our favorite characters will survive, but when characters are constantly mugging to the camera there’s no chance to build any tension or suspense. With so many wonderfully macabre visuals, it seems like a waste.
Those who are hardcore fans of these films will probably not dismiss it as terrible, but they certainly won’t think it’s the best. Everyone else will probably pretty worn out and disappointed and by the end, luckily there was only one other person in the theater I was in who had to suffer. There’s only so much of the same thing over and over an audience can take or be willing to pay for.
The Grade
- Story: C
- Acting: C
- Visuals: A
- Originality: C-
- Enjoyability: C-
- Overall: C
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