Cinema Hype

The new Pirates of the Caribbean movie must have been hard to write. How does a writer, or a team of writers, take a big, complicated story and make it bigger and more complicated without sending the audience over the edge? As Captain Barbossa himself says, it would strain credulity, at best. And so it appears that they went the other direction: they took the audience over the edge–literally–and started from there. The result, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, is a flawed film. But it’s the best kind of flawed film: meaty, ambitious, confident to the point of arrogance, and really, really fun.

First off, I have two main areas of disappointment with this film. First, there’s the lack of well-choreographed duels. The first two Pirates films each have at least one creative sword fight on a small scale: in The Curse of the Black Pearl, Jack and Will get to know each other over swordplay and witty banter in Will’s blacksmith shop; in Dead Man’s Chest, the three-way (so to speak) between Will, Jack, and Norrington is practically a ballet with sharp objects thrown in for good measure. These kinds of sword fights are versatile because they let individual characters work out their own plot lines, and they’re fun for the audience because we like to see what the choreographers can come up with. Fighting in the rafters? Check. Shifting allegiances? Great. Why don’t we throw in a giant hamster ball? Yes, why not? They’re fun, useful scenes, especially for a series with a master swordsman and his girlfriend as main characters. At World’s End has a lot of action–gunfights and melees aplenty–but it’s surprisingly and disappointingly short on the precision swordwork. Doesn’t Elizabeth deserve some duellish action by now? And yet…there are more cannons than epees in this installment. There is one fairly satisfying fight towards the end–the climax, really–but one good duel in three hours of screen time seems like a sad proportion.

And then there’s the Jack/Will/Elizabeth plot. We come out of Dead Man’s Chest with a truly interesting set-up: Elizabeth has pretended–or maybe not pretended?–to seduce Jack, and in doing so, condemned him to a smelly and dramatic death. Does anybody else see endless potential for entertainment and character development in this scenario? Girl appears to cheat on devoted and gorgeous fiance by leaving pirate-y friend to be eaten by giant sea-beast? Anyone? Elizabeth’s actions at the end of Dead Man’s Chest were probably the most surprising and interesting moment in the series, from a writer’s perspective. And yet it feels like the writers lost interest or simply didn’t know what to do with their own story in the third installment; there’s a strange lack of action and deliberate intent in the resolving of that story.

Other than these two points, At World’s End is a big, fun piece (I’m reluctant to call it the end of anything) of a big, fun series, emphasis on series. The script walks that fine and elusive line between reinventing the wheel and feeling like yesterday’s underwear–new situations give the audience something to get excited about, but the use of jokes and characters from the previous films offer a sense of familiarity, improve the realism of the Pirates world, and save precious screen time. Saving time here is no small thing. The movie clocks in at just under three hours, and while it wears its length well (the slow patch, if there is one, is at the beginning), it’s just as well to not re-explain who’s doing what, and why.

Part of the reason the movie is so long is that, as the series has grown, so has the cast. At World’s End has plenty of Johnny Depp action, but it’s no longer the Jack, Will, and Elizabeth Show. And while a little more depth to the main story lines would have been appreciated, director Gore Verbinski doesn’t waste what he has–many of the best scenes in the film deal with characters and relationships we haven’t seen before. We get Elizabeth and Bootstrap Bill Turner (Stellan Skarsgard), Davy Jones Bill Nighy) and Calypso (Naomie Harris), and great moments from Elizabeth’s father (Jonathan Pryce), Gareth from the BBC Office Ragetti (MacKenzie Crook), and Norrington (Jack Davenport) (who, it must be admitted, may be my favorite character in the series. More Norrington, I say!). The starring cast is slightly less consistent–Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom are charming and endlessly good-looking, but end up totally (and unsurprisingly) outclassed. Chow Yun-Fat sounded like a good idea at the time, but doesn’t contribute much except as a plot point, which is disappointing. On the other hand, Depp is fantastic, as if there were any other option, and Bill Nighy continues his quest for a new Academy Award category: Best Actor Hidden Under Prosthetics and Animation. Geoffrey Rush isn’t any kind of revelation, but I’ll say that he gives the best “YARRRRRRRRR!” in the business. Even Naomie Harris as Calypso shows her stuff under a thick Caribbean accent and some truly terrifying teeth.

At World’s End is a big movie. It’s noisy, colorful, complex, and packed with special effects and striking moments–exactly what the third (and currently final) Pirates movie needed to be. It isn’t perfect, but it gets the job done with enthusiasm, confidence, and spectacle, and that’s just what a pirate would want.

And for the eager beavers out there, a few more comments, in list form:

SPOILERS AHEAD! BIG, JUICY, IMPORTANT ONES! IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN AT WORLD’S END AND DON’T WANT TO KNOW, SKIP THE FOLLOWING SECTION. CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED.

- The teaser scene carried just the tiniest whiff of cheese with it, but still: striking. Pirates: The Musical! Poor kid, though.

- Davey Jones’s Locker is one cracked-out place.

- What’s with the crustacean theme? Weird. Who knew that floods of crabs could be so impressive? Also: the Black Pearl crashing over the dunes. Cool.

- MacKenzie Crook cracks me up, but I’m so glad he got a Moment in this episode. Talking to Calypso like a lover, and all. You know Gareth would be stoked.

- I thought the best scenes tended to be the quieter, slower, sadder ones: Elizabeth trying to save her father, Calypso and Davey Jones in the brig, Elizabeth and Bootstrap Bill. There’s some pretty emotional stuff going on here, and I liked what we got to see of it.

- Fun fact: Keira Knightley plays Queen Amidala’s stand-in in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (when Queen Amidala switches places with her handmaiden, remember?). When Sao Feng dresses her up like Calypso, the Natalie Portman resemblance is kind of uncanny. Well done, Star Wars casting folks!

- KEITH RICHARDS. HA!

- I was really surprised that they killed Will off. Why do they kill the pretty one? Of course, he comes back wearing that silly pirate bandana, which I assume comes with the position of Undead Captain for All Eternity. I sat behind a crowd of high-school freshman girls, which means I’ll always associate that moment with the Gasp Heard ‘Round the World. Hear, hear, girls. Hear, hear.

- I would very much like to be the Pirate King.

- Did you stay to watch the ending scene after the credits? Never leave before the credits. Didn’t you learn your lesson from X-Men 3?

SPOILERS END HERE. BUT THEN, SO DOES THIS REVIEW.

Pirates of the Caribbean, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Keira Knightley, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, movie reviews