Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!

This film suffers from a case of toomuchitis. It is a prime example overindulgence in cinema and it brings the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy to a far from satisfying conclusion.

Lord Beckett, now in possession of Davy Jones’ heart, uses Jones to track down and kill as many pirates as possible. The pirates, of course, are not happy about this and sing a creepy pirate song to summon the nine pirate lords to council together to take action against Beckett. The only problem is that Captain Jack Sparrow is one of the pirate lords and is, well, dead. Sort of. He is trapped in Davy Jones’ locker, so his friends and associates band together to rescue him.

To do this they need to steal a map from Sao Feng, a pirate lord from Singapore. There is lying, stealing, action and adventure that all starts out the film making very little sense. It is very hard to figure out what is going on and it is even more difficult to try and piece together the plot as it is dispensed piece by piece throughout the film. Deals are made and broken; agreements are made and abandoned; and it’s all so long and confusing that it barely makes any sense.

The first hour focuses on rescuing Sparrow from Davy Jones’ Locker, which features Jack commanding a ship crewed by multiple versions of him. This essentially drives Sparrow and the audience a little bonkers. One Jack is enough, thank you very much. Their escape is bizarre and long-winded.

The story next moves onto all the swindling, double-crossing, deal-making and fighting. None of the double-crosses and the numerous sub-plots play out as well as Disney hoped they would. Instead of an inspired tale of twists and turns, I was left to ask “Huh?” far too frequently for any movie.

It’s sometimes hard to tell what is driving the characters as well. Are they acting upon old information we were supposed to remember from the first two films or is there something new going on? Speaking of characters, several supporting characters have reduced roles and either fade to the background or are rubbed out of the story completely.

Most of the visual effects are pretty good, but there is a sense of “been there, done that” in At World’s End. It’s hard to make naval battles look fresh and original in the third installment of the series, and the music falls back on familiar themes and never really hammers home the action with fresh beats or twists on the old familiar score.

So, in some ways, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End suffers in excess, but those same examples of excess are also examples of not enough. While the film is nearly 3 hours long, there’s not enough action or cognizant story to make it all worthwhile. While there is an overabundance of neat CGI work, there’s not enough character and emotion behind it all to make you care one way or another about the characters.

The final two insults come at the end of the film.

First, Will Turner (played by Orlando Bloom) is killed by Davy Jones. Will gets some semblance of revenge by stabbing Jones’ heart, thereby taking over as captain of The Flying Dutchman, but as captain he may only step foot on dry land once every 10 years, royally screwing up any kind of happy ending for Will and Elizabeth (Kiera Knightley). It’s a very dour way to conclude your story. Evidently there is a clip at the end of the credits that undoes all of this, but that seems to fly in the face of all the information given to us in the film.

Secondly, it’s left somewhat open-ended. Jack is cast off the Black Pearl yet again but he first steals a map pointing the way to Florida and the supposed location of the fountain of youth. This leaves the door open for Disney to make yet another Pirates film should they choose to do so. This essentially leaves us like the first installment left us- with some form of resolution, but not enough to go home and be completely satisfied and assured that the tale is over.

To be frank, At World’s End does a poor job of wrapping things up from Dead Man’s Chest because it adds too many new things to the mix to iron out evenly at the end. It is too long, too twisty-turny and spends too much time reveling in Jack Sparrow because it thinks that is what we want.

If you have only seen the first installment, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, stop where you are. Parts 2 and 3 will only dilute the fun and satisfaction of the original.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5