Disney Month IV: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)
Starring: Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley
Directed by: Gore Verbinski


At the time that Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End was released, the trilogy was the rage with franchises. With celebrated titles like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, making a movie trilogy that is universally regarded as near-perfection is the goal at hand. However, At World's End was released at a time when movie series like Spider-Man, X-Men, and even Shrek had negative results with their third installments. At World's End definitely fit into that category like a glove. This was a disappointing movie to end the (planned) trilogy with. What's the saddest thing to note is when you see how much effort went into it. They were trying to make this the best film in the series. Heck, they were probably trying to get a Best Picture nomination out of this film and it just didn't work. It's a failure. Bottom line. I could not watch Curse of the Black Pearl and At World's End and feel like they are proper bookends to an acclaimed movie trilogy. Instead, I could watch the two and prove how you can ruin the foundation of a great movie by milking the cash cow for all its worth. And to think, we haven't even seen the end of the sequels yet.

The last of the major characters three or four characters to talk about is Elizabeth Swann, played by Keira Knightley. Of the main characters, Elizabeth grows the most and you can certainly see Knightley come into her own as a rising young talent as these films progressed. Although, a lot that her character undergoes in this film specifically feels like about 2 or 3 movies worth of character evolution crammed into one. By about midway through the movie, she's gone full pirate to the point where she is completely against the side of the law. A smoother transition is more necessary for that. Of course she does have a revenge motivation due to the murder of her father, played by Jonathan Pryce. I'm willing to forgive the rushed extremes of her character since they're fueled by revenge.

A recent character addition to the franchise was in the form of Singapore pirate lord Sao Feng, played by Chow Yun-Fat. He doesn't add a whole lot to the film except that he is one of the nine pirate lords. He's in all of 3 scenes and for some reason, THAT earns him top billing with the rest of the main cast. Also, the stuff in Singapore seemed to be the main marketing point for the film's poster campaigns, which doesn't make sense since they're only in Singapore for the first 20 minutes of the movie.

It's odd to think how the villains have gone downhill since the first film. First it was Barbossa, and then Davy Jones. In At World's End, the main villain is Lord Cutler Beckett, played by Tom Hollander. He's not necessarily a bad villain, he just doesn't do anything exciting. All we know about his character is that he has power and has a history with Jack Sparrow. At least Barbossa and Jones would fight their enemies and were characters that were developed over the films.

Naomie Harris plays Tia Dalma. I wasn't too blown away by her character in the last movie, so I wasn't really expecting much from her in this film either. But man, they take her character somewhere that made me go "they jumped the shark." And believe me, they get there a LOT in this movie, but this was one of the strongest shark jumping moments. I kept saying to myself "cut her out of the movie and you can shave probably a good 20 to 30 minutes with all that they give her story arc." It's just some of that fat that needed to get trimmed to make a more cohesive story in a shorter runtime.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End doesn't really learn from the mistakes of Dead Man's Chest. In fact, it takes those mistakes and puts them on a grand scale. There's another movie full of a million different double crosses and alliances. They rely too heavily on an action-packed climax and special effects than getting down to a simple idea that would make for a good movie. Curse of the Black Pearl didn't need to complicate things with the plot. It was a fun, little adventure with a brilliant screenplay and memorable characters that pulled in a massive positive response from critics and audiences. I know there's a lot of diehard fans out there that have a nostalgia for the series as a whole, but take off the goggles for moment and admit that At World's End is a weak entry, possibly the weakest. They would have to try HARD to make a Pirates of the Caribbean movie worse than this one.


Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

This movie started off with such promise, but about midway through, you'll be begging for it to be over. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End has way too complicated a plot for its own good, and fails very hard at trying to deliver the most epic conclusion imaginable. The first movie didn't have to be overly complex to be a fun and enjoyable adventure, so I'm not quite sure how these sequels have had such a problem understanding that.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End and movie images are copyrighted by Walt Disney Pictures