[Movies] Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Trilogies are always a bit tricky. The first one is normally the "pure" one since it's designed to stand on its own. The second one is usually a bit cramped since it has to connect the first and the third movies together. The finale normally has so much work to do that it tends to gloss over a lot of things just to, well, end everything. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End somewhat suffers from this same syndrome, although not painfully so.

At the end of the day, this is all about entertainment - check your intelligence at the snack counter.

When you plan out a big final, and end to a multi-million dollar movie franchise, there are certain things that normally happen.

(1) Get all the characters involved. At World's End has so many prominent characters, it's dizzying. They even bring some back from the dead just so they can appear in the last movie. What do we end up with? Too many cooks just standing around waiting for their one meaningful speech or to die. Seriously.

(2) Story integrity is sacrificed, to an extent. With all these characters around, there's no real time for character development so they tend to polarize into simplified versions of themselves. Even Jack Sparrow wasn't quite up to snuff as compared to how he was in Dead Man's Chest.

(3) The ending will be rushed. Most of the movie was a bit slow since they were struggling to balance all the characters in the movie while having the story move along somehow. Once you get to the big finale, there's little time left (out of the 3 hours you end up making the audience sit through) so you have to rush to finish things. Sure, you tie up all loose ends but how pretty are the bows?

So let's not be too mean and remember this is a movie that plays on entertainment. While the second movie had some of the most creative and hardcore sword fights, this one had more outrageous ones, pushing the limits of both technology and human reason. Despite all the rushing and the character overload, it's a fun movie. It's something nice to see if you want to unwind.

Although it really helps if you've seen the first two movies beforehand. Seriously.