Disclaimer:

The movie I’ll be reviewing this week is rated: PG-13.

Be advised that there will be some gruesome images included in this review.

Before I start my usual film introduction, I’d like to thank you for joining me for 25 reviews already! It seems like only yesterday I just started this blog and yet here I am half a year later working on my second 5 film franchise. Throughout everything: the high ratings, the low ratings, the mid ratings, I’d say it’s been fun and I intend to keep going as long as you’ll have me. Thank you so much and let’s get into…this crap.

So it’s come to this, has it? Well, I’m not looking forward to this one. The funny thing is that if the last movie had the problem of too many pointless moments, this movie has the problem of just not having a point at all. Despite having a clear goal in going back to rescue Jack from Davy Jones’ locker, there’s pretty much no other reason for this movie to exist. It’s also the longest film of the series which makes it the most painful to sit through at 2 hours and 50 minutes with plot threads that make no sense, more boring characters, and hours of talking! Yeah, part of what makes this film so difficult to sit through is that most of its runtime consists of the characters just standing around yapping and not doing anything. I guess if you suffer from insomnia, this might be the treatment for you. At the time this movie came out there was at least the comforting thought that this was the last film in the franchise since they had been consistently marketed as a trilogy, but they ended up making 2 more movies anyway because they hate me.

Practically everyone agrees that this is easily the worst of the Pirates films and I’m inclined to agree with them so I kinda just want to fill this intro with as many words as possible so I can prolong having to review it. Moses supposes his toeses are roses, but Moses supposes erroneously. For Moses he knowses his toeses aren’t roses as Moses supposes his toeses to be. Okay fine! I’m sure you probably want to hear my take on this film which is probably clear from my disinterest in covering it, but I suppose my toes are ro- sorry.

Let’s see why we can’t have good Pirates sequels with Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.

Ah, the Disney logo. Surely we’re in for an enchanting time.

This is the first shot! Rewatching this movie after so many years I completely forgot how tonally inconsistent this film is with the rest of the franchise. Yeah, so apparently Lord Cutler Beckett (played again by Tom Hollander) has taken it upon himself to hang any person convicted of piracy, any person assisting a person convicted of piracy, and any person associated with a person convicted of piracy. When I say ‘any person’ I mean any person.

Good Lord, movie! You haven’t even bought me dinner yet!

Yeah, so this is markedly different from many of the other moments from the previous films.

*I got a jar of dirt!*
*I got a jar of dirt!*
*And guess what’s inside it!*

Now, I will say that I’d be more willing to get behind this if (a) Cutler Beckett was a more interesting, devilish, conniving, and/or ‘love-to-hate’ type of villain or (b) this is what the movies were intending to build up to from the very beginning. Concerning (a), Cutler Beckett is just boring. At no point in the previous film did he ever capture my interest outside of how brazenly obvious it was that the writers needed a villain for the movie. Besides that, there’s nothing that makes him stand out as unique and I highly doubt you’d want to watch a movie with him as the main villain. With that being said, it’s going to be a long movie for both of us.

For (b), it’s almost insultingly obvious how these movies are just being made up as they go along. At no point was anyone ever planning for the Pirates films to go in this direction because there was never meant to be more than 1 Pirates film. These people think that their audience won’t realize that they’re just doing whatever the heck they want so they can squeeze money out of them. This kinda worked domestically with Disney barely turning a profit on a budget of $300 million, but internationally is where the big bucks came in with over $960 million in ticket sales and most of the money that came out of domestic ticket sales was due to the fact they scheduled opening weekend for Memorial Day weekend in 2007. People caught on quickly to Disney’s shenanigans after opening weekend though with a precipitous drop in ticket sales the following week, so don’t think your audience is stupid Disney, they know crap when they see it!

So the convicted pirates, assistants, and associates start singing a song that I honestly kinda like. While I think it’s even more melodramatic than the Davy Jones stuff from the last movie I do at least find the melody sticking with me after I’m done watching which is more than can be said about any of the confusing plot details in this movie. Don’t worry, we’ll get to it.

*Lord Beckett, they’ve started to sing, sir.*

With our obligatory child neck break scene out of the way we naturally have our title card and then cut to Singapore. Okay, I will give this movie a slight bit of credit that Singapore has been mentioned twice in the previous movies.

*Clearly you’ve never been to Singapore*.

*Singapore, that’s what I heard. Drunk with a smile on his face. Sure as the tide, Jack Sparrow turn up in Singapore.*

However, those movies mostly presented Singapore as some kind of vacation spot or place that our characters (Jack specifically) may have been to a long time ago. The main issue I have with this is that the majority of the first act hinges on what the characters do in Singapore. Not only is it visually, tonally, and culturally jarring from any of the previous locations of the films which of course took place in the Caribbean considering the name of the friggin’ franchise is Pirates of the Caribbean, but it doesn’t make any logical sense either. If you’ve ever looked at a map of the world, you may have noticed that the Caribbean Sea is over here.

And Singapore is all the way over here!

So AT BEST if you want to make a journey like that, you’d have to take a path kind of like this one by sea because this movie takes place before any of the world’s major canals were constructed!

While I’m not saying a journey like this in a time period like this isn’t possible, I’m mostly saying that a journey like this has enough content to fill a complete other movie on it’s own! How did the former crew of the Black Pearl manage to Magellan themselves across the world to Singapore?! I’d really like to know that detail! Also, why couldn’t whatever it is they were looking for have been back in the Caribbean anyway as to keep the story more focused? They literally ended the last movie without a ship to sail on, so how did they manage to get 2/3rds of the way around the world without a ship? The reason I know this is because Barbossa (played again by Geoffrey Rush) asks captain Sao Feng (played by Chow Yun-Fat) for a ship and a crew when they go to meet with him, so this just doesn’t make any SENSE!!!!!! We’re barely 5 minutes into this movie and I already can’t follow it! Please someone give me strength…

Speaking of strength, this movie already takes an odd turn with Elizabeth’s character (played for the third time by Keira Knightley). Before she wasn’t anything especially outstanding as far as self-defense was concerned. She had her quick wits and negotiating skills to get her out of tight spots in the first film and it wasn’t until the second film that she learned to sword fight from Will in-between movies, but now they act like she’s always been this Lara Croft / Elektra / Catwoman character out of literally nowhere. I know they’re trying to make it look more believable for when she eventually becomes Pirate Queen later in the movie, but if you have to change her character this drastically in order to make that work then the problem isn’t her character it’s the Pirate Queen choice. She eventually meets up with Barbossa so they can meet with captain Sao Feng like I mentioned earlier after this weird moment:

*THIEF. AND BEGGAR. NEVER SHALL WE DIE.*
Okay, dude! Jeez, you haven’t even bought me dinner yet!

As it turns out it already feels like the movie is punishing us for missing scenes that aren’t in the movie when the rest of the Black Pearl crew including Gibbs (played a third time by Kevin McNally), Pintel (played yet again by Lee Arenberg), and Ragetti (played once again by Mackenzie Crook) submerge themselves in the river and break into a sewer system in order to secretly assist Elizabeth and Barbossa in their mission. Whatever that is. Yeah, I have no idea what’s happening, and funny enough the more the movie explains the less I understand.

*The navigational charts*. *The route to the Farthest Gate*.
What?

*The song has been sung*.
Why are you saying ‘the song’ as if we should know what that is?

*We must convene the Brethren Court*.
Oh right, that thing that was so paramount to everything that’s happened in the series up until now! Wait, no it wasn’t. Huh?

[BARBOSSA] *As one of the Nine Pirate Lords*…
Oh, there are Pirate Lords now?

*Elizabeth Swann, there’s more to you than meets the eye, isn’t there?*
What’s *that* supposed to mean?

*Jack Sparrow holds one of the Nine Pieces of Eight*.
Okay, that’s just dumb. If there’s nine of them, why don’t you call them Pieces of Nine?

*He failed to pass it along to a successor before he died*.

Good Lord, can something happen already?!

Weirdly this action sequence involves more gun-play than sword fighting. If someone uses a sword in this scene it’s usually to slash someone or stab someone real quick before moving on to the next person. Maybe it’s because the movie knows we’re tired of them talking about crap we don’t care about and just want to see stuff move along, but it’s also a bit distracting. Sure other films have heightened and fast-paced action like in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, but the shots also allow you to absorb what’s happening in real time and hold long enough on the action to make you feel as if you’re really there experiencing it yourself. Not only are our leads in this film able to take out expendable pirates with one sword slash or stab, but the camera hardly ever holds on anything for longer than a few seconds before cutting away to something else. It’s hard to get engrossed in something when the filmmakers don’t give you enough time to get engrossed in it. Then we also get a brief moment from Tia Dalma (played again by Naomie Harris) giving us what I can only assume is a half-assed ride reference.

That’s not how humans move, that’s how animatronics move.

Don’t worry though, the movie knows what we want.

*It’s an odd coincidence, isn’t it? The East India Trading Company finds me the day you show up in Singapore*.
MORE TALKING!!!

Eventually the movie decides we’ve had enough and we wrap up this action scene after Will (played again by Orlando Bloom) strikes a deal with Sao Feng to get a ship and a crew. Also, is it just me or does Tia seem…different?

*I cannot say. There’s an evil on these seas that even the most staunch and bloodthirsty pirates have come to fear*.

Yeah, she seems so much more serious and uptight than she was in the last movie. If I’m being honest, after watching Dead Man’s Chest I had hopes that if there were any characters that could help save this movie’s material it would be Barbossa, Jack, Davy Jones, and her. If you remember from the last movie, Tia had a pretty strong opening with a lot of personality. She was smiling evilly at Jack walking into her hut, flirted with Will, seemed to have an interest in the occult and macabre, and generally had an air of fun about her. Now she’s just another Norrington. That’s genuinely tragic because another thing that they do in this movie to get to Davy Jones’ locker is getting these navigational charts which just drags things out. It would’ve been much more fun if Tia Dalma already knew how to get to Davy Jones’ locker and they had to decipher her cryptic messages, magic spells, and thick accent to get to where they needed to go, because in terms of the story, why doesn’t she know how to get there? She’s literally Calypso, the Goddess that gave Davy Jones his power to begin with, so that’s just stupid! Also it doesn’t bode well for my ability to make it through the rest of this with my sanity intact. Just so we’re clear too, we’re now only 20 minutes into this 2 hour and 50 minute movie. If you have any alcohol and are of age, I suggest you drink it now.

*Why’s the rum gone?!*
You **know** why.

We have a brief moment of the Flying Dutchman destroying random ships to an overly dramatic version of Davy Jones’ theme. You know, it’s hard to get invested in these kinds of moments when we have no connection to what’s going on! Then we have another scene with Beckett, Mercer (played again by David Schofield), and Norrington (played a third time by Jack Davenport) but who cares? Back with the characters we care about, we find out they’re really cold. Fantastic. Also, what does it say about your movie when the best part is this:

Even then, who wants more talking?!

*Happens on rare occasion. The last glimpse of sunset a green flash shoots up into the sky*.

*It signals when a soul comes back to this world from the dead.*

If I wasn’t already so tired of dialogue at this point I might find this line kinda neat:

*It’s not gettin’ to the Land of the Dead that’s the problem. It’s gettin’ back.*
That’s the first, and I’m going to assume *only*, thing that makes sense in this movie.

Beckett and Mercer remind us they exist and Davy Jones is having an emotional moment at his organ when Beckett decides to threaten Jones with the prospect of death by premature heart blowy-uppy-itis. I think I figured out another reason why I can’t take Cutler Beckett seriously, because he acts less like a main villain and more like a side villain. I’m not acting like he’d even be a good side villain, but at the very least as a side villain he’d be given a lot less focus than he already is as a main one and we would have a lot less of his nasally Draco Malfoy meets Veruca Salt acting.

*Oh I’m sorry to hear that, because* I will.

*Because it seems to be the only way to ensure that this ship do as directed by the company.*

*And its* ***captain*** *is to sail it as* ***commanded***.

*The immaterial has become…immaterial*.
What does that even *mean*? If something’s immaterial then it doesn’t need to become immaterial because it’s *already* immaterial!

That and I’m just gonna be straight up: with Beckett pulling all the strings at this point it makes Davy Jones a way less fun villain. The good thing about Dead Man’s Chest was that Davy Jones had enough staying power to last on his own without support from another villain, and now that he’s being controlled by Napoleon Nigel Farage Bonaparte it takes all the badass points Davy Jones earned in the previous movie away. What’s there even to like about him anymore? I will give him some points for having a surprisingly interesting romance with Calypso that I wish the movie explored more with, but outside of that there isn’t much else.

Meanwhile with our main characters they’ve managed to get themselves completely lost. Give them some credit though, they need to be lost in order to find a place that can’t be found. Then they approach a waterfall. I think it’s supposed to be ‘the edge of the world’ or something, but it’s not well explained like most other things in the movie. Will and Elizabeth are not happy with this at all.

*You’ve doomed us all*!
Well, yeah. In order to get to the Land of the Dead, wouldn’t you have to die yourself? How did you not see this coming?

*Don’t be so unkind. You may not survive to pass this way again, and these be the last friendly words that you’ll hear.*
Why does **no one** talk normally in this?!

So they go over the edge of the waterfall and they celebrate the death of every character on that ship with random audio from the ride. Yeah, it comes out of absolutely nowhere and is gone just as quickly! Look, in the previous films there was at least some rhyme and reason to the ride references that appeared. There were at least 3 in the first movie (maybe a fourth or a fifth I missed) and while they didn’t always tie into the story, they were still obvious enough to point out when you saw them and helped act as a kind of ‘source material seal of approval’ for the movie. In the second movie there was definitely 1 if not 2 and with fewer of them than the first one it helped indicate that this film was more of a divergence from the original source material than the first one. With this however, it’s just lazy. At the very least it does help us realize how far from the original source material we’ve come, but what are we even supposed to do with this? And why was it in this specific spot of all places? Is this what the movie is implying you’re supposed to hear when you pass from the land of the living to the plane of the dead? Dialogue from Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean amusement park ride?

It’s here that we’re given the most…surreal…Jack intro of the movies thus far.

Don’t worry, it gets better.

I guess you could assume that since Jack (played a third time by Johnny Depp) is in Davy Jones’ locker, this is supposed to be a punishment of sorts like Tia described before. Either that or Jack is just imagining other versions of himself crewing the Black Pearl to keep himself company with…himself. Sure if you decided to take that shot of rum I suggested earlier this might be funny, but even then it still goes on for way longer than it needs to. Naturally it ends with Jack being rescued by everyone else from before, but there’s so much dull weirdness that precedes it that doesn’t need to. Legit the movie holds you hostage here for a little bit.

*I have no sympathy for any of you feculent maggots and no more patience to pretend otherwise.*

*Gentlemen, I wash my hands of this weirdness*.

Despite Jack saying that, this scene happens to go on for another 4 minutes! I think we get the point, movie! What else is there for you to show us, the environment walking away?!

Alright, so we can finally get the story back on track! Wait, it was never on track to begin with. You know what, whether the film stayed in Davy Jones’ locker or not I’d still have to put up with hours of crap so I lose either way. [heavy sigh] Let’s just get this over with. So the reunion with the rest of the crew is also pretty drawn out, but it at least has this line in it.

*Isla de Muerta, remember? You shot me.*

Also, Elizabeth never told Will that she killed Jack! Scandalous! Wait, why would Will care? Not only in the last movie did he go out of his way to try and kill Jack on one occasion, he also thought that Elizabeth was cheating on him with Jack so wouldn’t the fact that she killed him actually clear all this drama up? Nope, because now we have to have a pointless rift between them for subplot purposes! In case you didn’t get the message: NOBODY CARES! I surprisingly have more of an investment in Davy Jones and Calypso’s relationship because it actually goes through peaks, valleys, and complexities despite having much less screen time than Will and Elizabeth’s relationship. Also, given the first film, why haven’t they gotten married at this point?

The last movie forced their marriage to get broken up by Beckett for plot purposes because they were forced to make a movie that didn’t need to be made, but at what point have Will and Elizabeth ever expressed the idea that they didn’t love each other? Even when there were moments of tension in their relationship (as poorly crafted as they were) they never lasted for longer than a scene at best. That and it just feeds into the ‘Will They/Won’t They” cliché the movie thinks is adding layers to the script but is really just dragging things out. This relationship was never interesting to begin with so what makes you think we’ll be interested now?

*They should be in the care of Davy Jones*.
Come on girl, *lighten* up!

So as it turns out, these souls can’t cross over to the other side since Davy Jones is under the control of the East India Trading Company now. There’s nowhere else for them to go so they just roam these waters aimlessly. What is with the tone of this film?

Wait, there’s boats now? How are you not following the rules you just established ***literally*** 45 seconds ago?!

In the process they come across Elizabeth’s father Governor Swann (played a third time by Jonathan Pryce) and despite not being in this movie for very long he’s trying a lot harder than he has to. Just based on his acting alone I really believe that he’s lost between worlds. Elizabeth of course tries to save him which doesn’t work and she breaks down. Boo-hoo. The next day they manage to make it back to the land of the living with Jack’s help by flipping the ship upside down. Wait a minute, didn’t Barbossa say earlier that it’s harder to get to the land of the living than it is to get to the plane of the dead?! That seemed to be surprisingly easy to do for something that’s not supposed to be easy! Even the movie takes a second to buffer on that one.

*Alright then*!
What do I even say to that?

So after rowing ashore they happen to come across the washed up corpse of the Kraken. Is the movie seriously trying to make me feel for the Kraken? The same thing that killed one of the leads in the last movie? No, movie. No. So they take a hike through the jungle until eventually they come across an ambush. An ambush by Sao Feng and his crew. As it turns out, Will double crossed the crew by making a deal with Sao Feng earlier so he could get the Black Pearl for himself to save his father. It ends up falling through though, because Sao Feng ends up double crossing Will and taking the Black Pearl himself. This results in another double cross when Mercer reappears and takes the Black Pearl again betraying the deal he made with Sao Feng. What just happened right there I think is a perfect summary of this movie. Also, Jack brings up a good point.

*Did no one come to save me just because they missed me?*

I mean yeah, weren’t these the same people who were crying over him at the end of the last movie? Granted Barbossa wasn’t a part of that, but everyone else was in tears at his loss and made a vow to go and save him by any means necessary because they cared so much about him. Sure it didn’t make sense for every character’s motivation, but at least it seemed like it was going somewhere. Another thing I think this and other Pirates sequels do is refuse to pick a direction. There seem to be so many ideas clashing in writing sessions happening on-screen in real time that everyone eventually just came to the conclusion that they’re going to grab their cameras and film whatever they have that wasn’t covered in countless sticky notes. Think about it this way too: what else is there left to do? They have Jack which was their entire motivation, so what now?

Let me give you the run-down as well. At this point in the movie we’ve broken a child’s neck, sailed to Singapore without having a means of actually sailing there, secured the navigational charts, secured a ship and a crew, had Beckett and Norrington exposition, pulled off a frost-bitten big toe, killed Elizabeth’s father, shown more of Davy Jones’ and Calypso’s relationship status, gotten some more basic birch Beckett acting, sailed off a waterfall, questioned our sanity in Davy Jones’ locker, rescued Jack, created a schism between Will and Elizabeth, got lost among a sea of souls, flipped the ship over, made it back to the land of the living, killed the Kraken, got captured by Sao Feng, had the Black Pearl change hands 5 times,

AND

WE’RE

NOT

EVEN

AT

THE

HALFWAY

POINT!

We’re only 1 hour and 5 minutes into this 2 hour and 50 minute movie and I’m practically at my wit’s end! I think that was the working title for this movie: Pirates of the Caribbean: At Wit’s End. Gone With the Wind felt shorter than this movie!!! So now that we’ve established that the plot has nowhere to go from here, what do we do now?

Oh right, I forgot the golden rule of Pirates sequels: When in doubt, capture Jack.

That and we forgot to include several more minutes of yakking…

*And if Davy Jones were to learn of your survival?*

and yakking…

*You agreed the Black Pearl was to be mine*.

and yakking…

*Perhaps you’ll consider an alternative arrangement. One which requires absolutely nothing from you but information.*

and yakking…

*Lord Beckett’s not going to give up the only ship as can outrun the Dutchman, is he?*

and yakking.

*There is no honor to remaining with the losing side. Leaving it for the winning side, that’s just good business.*

Don’t worry, I speak Badmoviese. Very basically what the movie is trying to say is that Beckett wants to use Jack to find the hideout of the Pirate Lords, Sao Feng wants to abandon the Pirate Lords since he thinks they’re a liability, Barbossa convinces Sao Feng that the Pirate Lords are still strong with Calypso on their side, and Sao Feng ends up bartering for custody of Calypso. See how easy that was, movie?! For some reason though, Sao Feng confuses Calypso for Elizabeth. Why? What made him think that Elizabeth was Calypso? He knows Tia is literally standing right next to her, right? Well whatever. The movie stopped caring ages ago so why should I? Jack escapes back onto the Black Pearl, he throws Will in the brig (where he’ll hopefully die), and Jones follows Sao Feng while Beckett follows the Pearl.

The Dutchman eventually catches up with Sao Feng’s ship and starts trying to destroy it with cannonballs. In a totally unbelievable coincidence, Sao Feng gets hit with a cannonball and is impaled on a large piece of splintered wood. Just before he dies though he gives his Piece of Eight to Elizabeth and proclaims her captain. Aren’t there several other able-bodied sailors who could fit that role much better?

*Remember me for my facial scar and weird hand movements.*

As it turns out, Elizabeth isn’t exactly ready to be a captain since she gets captured by Davy Jones’ crew and Admiral Norrington soon after being named captain, but refuses to stay in Norrington’s cabin out of a misplaced sense of superiority. Yeah, this is their half-baked attempt at trying to give Norrington a sort of redemption arc, but it ends up falling flat for 2 reasons. First, as I’ve already said several times in reviewing these movies: Norrington is boring. He’s never been a fully fleshed-out character and trying to give him layers in the past already didn’t work. If we as the audience had been invested in his character from the beginning in the sense that he was consistently torn between his duty as a Naval officer and the life of a pirate then that would’ve made him more interesting and this final ‘epic’ moment of his character would hit a lot harder, but since we aren’t, it’s just more side crap. In the first movie he wanted to marry Elizabeth, in the second movie he wanted his life back, and now he wants to make things right?

Second, Norrington has barely gotten any screen time in the movies up until now. Not only do we not really know him as a person, we’re never given the chance to know him since he’s only gotten a little more screen time than Governor Swann. Even when it comes to characters like Will and Elizabeth, while their characters also aren’t very well-defined, I’ve at least seen them a lot over the course of these movies and can get some form of emotional if they happen to go through something. What do they expect me to feel when I see him get stabbed and killed by a crazed Bootstrap Bill (played again by Stellan Skarsgård)? Sad? Angry? Guilty? No, I feel about as much as the cursed pirates felt in the first movie. That is to say: nothing.

You know what, I’m just gonna give you the Cliff Notes version of everything that happens up until the important stuff because it’s all filler. Elizabeth finds Bootstrap Bill in the Dutchman’s brig, Will escapes from the Black Pearl’s brig and leaves breadcrumbs for Beckett to follow, Jack finds Will and throws him off the ship along with his compass, Norrington lets Elizabeth and her crew escape until he’s murdered by Bootstrap like I said, Mercer takes control of the Dutchman, Barbossa takes a pass at Tia Dalma only for her to refuse and he locks her in the brig, Beckett has a meeting with Will and Davy Jones, and only now do we finally make it to Shipwreck Cove, the meeting place of the Pirate Lords.

They of course are arguing over what should be done about Calypso when Tia Dalma also gets a visit from her lover Davy Jones in the Black Pearl’s brig. Like I said before, whenever the focus is on the romance between these two, I weirdly enjoy it. Maybe it’s because they both have the weirdest accents in the franchise so they ironically complete each other that way, but also since both Naomie Harris and Bill Nighy are dedicated actors no matter what role they’re in, they manage to make the most of whatever material they’re given which helps make it that much more believable. These two have a legitimately complex relationship that’s hard to describe yet you want to see them together. Also it’s kinda funny how when Bill Nighy is finally given the chance to show his face, he’s still covered in so much makeup that you can’t see it.

Meanwhile our beloved Pirate Lords still can’t come to an agreement on whatever should be done about Calypso and Lord Beckett until we get a blatantly obvious cameo from Keith Richards. I’ll say, despite having only 1 good line, everything else he says leaves absolutely no impact on anything. The important thing about a cameo like this isn’t just to be a cameo, but also to offer some insight on what made Jack who he is. How do I know this? Because he’s literally playing Jack’s father! Offer some kind of insight on why Jack acts the way he does or what his upbringing was like. It’s no secret that Johnny Depp based his portrayal of Jack Sparrow off of Keith Richards, so why not do more with this? At this point I think I’d actually prefer if Keith Richards was just randomly on the island of Tortuga and didn’t have any lines at all over whatever this is.

Eventually this all leads to the Pirate Lords voting on who’ll be the Pirate King of the Brethren Court which results in Elizabeth being crowned Pirate Queen courtesy of Jack. This seems promising. Also I’d like to get this off my chest real quick: how is Barbossa a Pirate Lord? In the first movie the only reason he was captain of the Black Pearl was because he mutinied against Jack, so how would he also manage to become a Pirate Lord because of that? I thought he was just going to be the guy who helps them get Jack back, so how does he also have a foothold in the Brethren Court with a Piece of Eight ready to go as well? Right, I forgot, the more I ask questions the more it shows I care. So, by order of Pirate Queen Elizabeth Swann (that still sounds so weird) the Pirate Lords and their crews prepare to face off against Lord Beckett. However, there’re quite a few more ships than they were expecting.

To improve their odds, the pirates go to negotiate with their enemies, and -

Okay, so for a movie that’s really lacking in good comedy, I would’ve loved to see Davy Jones Walk his way onto land using water buckets! This image on its own is friggin’ hilarious and I wish there was more stuff like it in the film. With Davy Jones, Lord Cutler Beckett, and Will on one side and Barbossa, Elizabeth, and Jack on the other they agree to trade Jack and Will. Great news everybody, Jack is captured again! Now that he’s in the Dutchman’s brig, we see -

Do I need to file a restraining order against you, movie?

While that’s going on the rest of the pirates release Calypso onboard the Black Pearl in a pretty cool visual.

She doesn’t seem to be happy because she spews all the swear words she can think of at them before bursting into a frack-ton of crabs. They fall back into the ocean, and…was that it? Kinda pathetic for a literal Goddess. As the pirates start to lose hope their new Pirate Queen tries to motivate them, and I don’t believe it for a second. I’m not saying that Elizabeth doesn’t have leadership qualities or that she doesn’t have the ability to be inspirational, but the way they do it is so ‘not Elizabeth’. Given the character you’ve established she is over the course of the past 2 movies, I don’t believe she would be the one yelling orders at her crew members. I’d sooner believe that she would approach them honestly and earnestly before screaming at the top of her lungs. Heck, that’s more or less what she did in the first movie when they tried to outrun the Black Pearl. She took charge in a way that was more from an area of cleverness and creativity and only raised her voice when she was stressed. I’m in no way bashing on Keira Knightley’s performance, she does put everything she has into this speech, it just isn’t well-directed.

***HOIST THE COLORS!!!!!!!!!!!***
That image alone is just so weird to look at.

Alright, so with all this buildup, an entire fleet of East India Trading Company ships including the Dutchman versus every pirate on the planet, and a giant maelstrom courtesy of Calypso, what do we do? Force 2 ships to fight. Yeah, the Black Pearl and the Dutchman dive into the maelstrom and everyone else just sits back and does nothing. Isn’t that majorly disappointing?! To be real, after literal hours of talking, exposition, and annoying character moments, actually delivering on a fight of this scale could be worth the price of admission on its own. However, they don’t do that. Instead we get two ships swirling around in the ocean’s toilet. Fantastic. Despite not being especially creative or interesting, the climax is at the very least the most fun part of the movie. That’s especially weird to say considering this is the same movie that opened with killing a child.

Sure it definitely doesn’t deliver the fight they were promising, but it does bring back some of the shenanigans that we’ve grown to love from this franchise and it’s really 1 long drawn-out action sequence. At the very least it brings energy into a movie that had none, so that’s something. Although it does bring up another problem: only now do we have our first sword fight of the movie. Yeah I know back in Singapore they slashed and stabbed people with swords, but the focus was more on guns than swords, and that’s the only other example of sword usage in the film. This is a Pirates movie, let them have sword fights! After Jack breaks out of the Dutchman’s brig, he gets cornered by Davy Jones on the main mast and they have a sword fight together. This is also pretty funny:

*No, you don’t*.
I think the *movie* forgot who had the key there for a second.

Also, I will give a small bit of credit that for a PG-13 film this has some of the most R-rated action I’ve seen from Disney.

Will and Elizabeth also have Barbossa marry the two of them in the middle of battle because remember: we hanged a kid at the beginning of this movie! Uh-oh, but Will gets stabbed by Davy Jones! Oh, the heartbreak! Funny thing is that Jack managed to get the key from Jones before this happened, opened the chest, and threatened to stab Jones’ heart right before Jones stabbed Will. Why didn’t he just stab the heart in the first place like he wanted to? Also hasn’t this heart been through all manner of battery and blunt-forced trauma up until now being rattled and banged around by people carrying the chest? You’d think Davy Jones would’ve felt a jostle or 2. Anyway, to save Will (because Jack wants to save Will for no discernible reason whatsoever) Jack forces Will’s hand to stab Jones’ heart resulting in Jones falling into the maelstrom and Will becoming the Dutchman’s new captain. Jack parachutes away with Elizabeth back onto the Black Pearl because they forgot to show the scene of the Pearl escaping the maelstrom and Cutler Beckett swoops in to finish the job. What, with his entire armada in tow? No, he’s just gonna take care of this himself.

Naturally the Dutchman bursts out from under the waves with Will as its new captain and alongside the Black Pearl they manage to take down Beckett’s ship. Also, this is way too cool a death for Beckett. For this movie and the last one he’s been nothing but forgettable, bland, and annoying but not in a fun way, yet for some reason they treat it like we’re taking down the Dark Lord Sauron himself. His kingdom crumbles around him, he whimpers at his fall from grace, his minions abandon him, he walks dramatically through the remains of his empire, and his body lands on a floating EITC (East India Trading Company) flag. Wow, you really thought he was going to make the classic Disney villain lineup, didn’t you? Unfortunately I already forgot his name. Rest in obscurity, dude.

So the rest of the armada decides that there’s nothing they can do about this and leave all the pirates be.

So we have a denouement with Will and Elizabeth banging on the beach before Will leaves to be cursed at sea. Wait, why doesn’t Elizabeth keep being a pirate? They literally made her the Pirate Queen, so why can’t she see Will anymore? She could sail on her own ship, keep Will’s heart chest on that ship at all times, and even deliver items and whatnot to Will at sea while still looking after their son. This movie takes every opportunity it can to not make sense. Not only this, but we also have a scene with Jack being left behind by the rest of his crew again with nothing but a dinghy. At least they gave him that much this time. Back on the Pearl, Barbossa teases the next movie by presenting the idea of the Fountain of Youth, but Jack stole the map for it. Yep, that means we’re free to exploit sequels even more! YAY!!! As such, Jack sets out on his dinghy to find the Fountain of Youth and I think it is a little fun that these 3 movies create a sort of cycle for Jack’s character by ending in the exact same place Jack started at the beginning of Curse of the Black Pearl. Also seeing Jack row away on his dinghy is kinda cute, but that’s unfortunately as likable as this movie gets. This was rough to get through.

Okay…pros? Well, I guess there are some cool effects here and there, Davy Jones and Calypso’s relationship is surprisingly engaging, the music is still good, and the climax (while not delivering what it promised) does still have energy to it. The cons though…are massive. The writing is ABSOLUTELY out of control, the characters are as interesting as cardboard, any cool ideas presented in the previous 2 movies are almost entirely abandoned, the tone is all over the place, and the characters won’t shut up! There’s way too much explaining in this movie which ends up amounting to hardly anything and even the rules that are explained can be changed as quickly as 1 minute later. It’s painfully obvious how little these movies were planned out since trying to follow anything in this script is like trying to follow a polar bear in a blizzard.

To think that we started this franchise with a promising film such as Curse of the Black Pearl only to see it go to impressive lows like this is genuinely surprising. At the same time, I can’t say it wasn’t foreseeable though. For any sort of film that works well on its own, stretching it into a duology or trilogy or saga that it was never meant to be never works out well no matter how much money you think you can make off of it. Out of any company on the planet, you’d think Disney would be painfully aware of this at this point, but clearly they aren’t as this franchise still isn’t over yet. Despite the fact this film was intended to end the Pirates trilogy at the time, considering it was literally called a trilogy, Disney Disney’d its way into another 2 sequels that the franchise didn’t need resulting in two mostly forgettable films that I’ll take a look at in due time. Nothing will ever erase the bad taste this film left in my mouth however, and for your time, I’d recommend not wasting it on these really bad eggs.

I feel inclined to give this film a 1/5 Pirates of the Caribbean rides. Given the tone I’ve had since the beginning of this review, I’m sure you assumed that the rating of this movie was going to be low, but there are still some (if not few) good things in this movie. There are still movies out there that have no redeeming qualities, and I will be fair and say that this movie isn’t one of them. However, there are certainly not enough for me to consider rewatching this ass-numbingly long train wreck again though.

Other Pirates Reviews

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

(I make no claim of ownership for any of the images used in this post)

(Each of them are owned entirely by their respective copyright holders, which are not me)

(I’m just a humble blogger who talks about movies, I do not make them)

(Yet)