Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action/adventure violence and some frightening images.
reviewed by Christopher Lyon
Arrgh. Avast. Matey. Yo ho ho. Um, eye patch. Just trying to get all the required pirate verbiage out of the way up front. Apparently, there’s some kind of “writer’s code” that requires it, judging by every “Pirates of the Caribbean” story out there. Oh, and “swashbuckling.” That should do it.
Story
If you haven’t seen (or don’t remember much about) the first two POTC films, you should just give up right now any hopes of trying to follow this one. Even if you take a few minutes to brush up on the plots points of POTCs 1 & 2, you’ll likely feel a little lost. Here are the basics:
When “Dead Man’s Chest” finally ended with absolutely zero resolution, Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) was dead after being betrayed by Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley), among others. Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) was freshly back from the dead, thanks to the creepy witch Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris). Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) had promised to free his father Bootstrap Bill (Stellan Skarsgard) from the watery clutches of the squid-faced Davy Jones (Bill Nighy + computer geeks with expensive toys). And the whole gang was ready to find a way to bring Cap’n Jack back from Davy Jones’ locker. (Hint: It’s not a store at the mall selling pirate footwear.)
As POTC 3 opens, Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander), the head of the government-backed East India Trading Company, is using his leverage over Davy Jones to control the seas. Together, they’re hunting down and destroying every pirate and pirate ship in the known world. To make a stand, the remaining “pirate lords” are planning to join forces at Shipwreck Cove to hatch a plan or make a last stand.
Meanwhile, the attempt to rescue Jack takes the crew of the Black Pearl to Singapore to get some maps and then to the mystical “world’s end” to find him, rescue him, and find a way back. After that, everyone immediately starts working against each other in order to accomplish a whole menu of outcomes. Captain Jack might want to become the next Davy Jones. Will Turner wants both the love of Elizabeth and to keep his promise to his dad to rescue him from Jones. Elizabeth hopes to avenge the death of a loved one. Barbossa wants to free a “pagan goddess” of the sea named Calypso in order to save the pirate horde. Davy Jones wants revenge/reunion on/with his former true love. And Beckett wants Captain Jack and all the other pirates dead, dead, dead. Oh, and argh.
Verdict
For those of you scoring at home, I really liked POTC 1 and was mostly disappointed with POTC 2 due to its thin storyline and skimpy character development. The stunts and action sequences were all fun and amazing to look at, but they were also endless and a little pointless. For me, “At World’s End” falls closer to “Dead Man’s Chest,” but I also liked it a little better.
Director Gore Verbinski and his writers take more of the nearly three hour running time to focus on the characters and to explain the darkish story they’re all trapped in. We watch Jack’s broken psyche as his mind creates multiple versions of himself while imprisoned alone in Davy Jones’ locker. He returns more serious, less flippant and goofy than before his “death.” We also get a little deeper into the hearts and minds of Davy Jones, Elizabeth, Bootstrap Bill.
Those moments give some added weight to the still-impressive special effects and action stunt spectaculars. You still want to duck when the zinging canon balls send beams splintering in a hundred directions through four or five significant sea battles. You still wish you could swing through the air with the acrobatic battling pirates. The not-quite-final showdown between the Pearl and the Flying Dutchman in a swirling maelstrom is especially stupendous.
Still, POTC 3 suffers from some of the same weaknesses of the second film. The story is often just baffling. Not only are you trying to remember what each character is out to accomplish, but you’ve got to keep track of all of their secret arrangements with each other, as well as the supernatural “rules” they’re working with. For instance, if someone stabs Davy Jones’ heart (the one in the locked chest), that person must take his place as captain of his ship. And in order to free Calypso, all nine “pieces of eight” must be gathered from all of the pirate lords. Oh, and don’t forget who betrayed whom and how and why.
With no clear good guys to root for or absolute bad guys to root against -- and with the knowledge that the plot could easily reverse itself at any moment, even if someone dies -- I eventually just gave up caring who came out on top along the way. Only the film’s ending really satisfies, partly because it’s truly heroic and romantic, and partly because it’s an actual ending. Finally!
The movie’s PG-13 brings all the pirate violence, high body count, and supernatural ookiness you’d expect after seeing the first two movies.
Worldview
Two worldview issues jumped out at me during “At World’s End.” First, I had to remind myself again that real pirates are, you know, bad. They steal things not their own. They often kill, rape, and injure innocent people. They can devastate local economies by making it unsafe for businessmen to sell their goods. They’re still out there working the trading routes in parts of the world right now.
More interesting is what these anti-heroic, corporate bashing pirates themselves are really after as the third episode wraps -- eternal life. From the first film to this one, they’ve given up searching endlessly for treasure and now hunt the high seas for a way to forever avoid death. They’ve discovered, along with Solomon, that wealth not only fails to satisfy, it does you zero good “on the other side.”
Captain Jack, Barbossa, and the others have all had a taste of immortality in a bad way -- cursed to live as ghosts or to exist alone in Davy Jones’ locker or, in Jones’ case, to forever shepherd souls to the afterlife. Two have died and come back and now they want to find the path to a happier immortality.
Of course, their only hope is to cheat death through pagan curses and supernatural magics. Maybe the fourth film will tell the story of a pirate missionary delivering Jesus’ map with the only path to a deathless afterlife: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” (John 11: 25-26)
You’re right. Disney will never go for it. Maybe we could make our own pirate franchise (on a smaller budget). Something like “Pirates of the Great Lakes Region.” Or “Pirates of Waterpark.” Or something. Avast, it’ll be argh.
Questions:
* On a scale from one to ten, how would you rank each of the three POTC films?
* Be honest. Have you at any time since the first film came out engaged in a debate about the relative “hotness” quotients of Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom?
* Have these films made you more or less interested in going on an ocean voyage? Firing a canon? Wearing an eye patch?
* What do you think about the way the films romanticize piratehood? It is “just a movie,” or do some people really think it’s cool to “Take what you can; give nothing back.”
* Do you believe there’s any such thing as real eternal life? If so, how can we get to it?