Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is a feast for the eye. It is a heavily layered action-adventure film complete with a cadre of tie-ins that will make Disney boatloads of money. The film labors a bit under the swelling cast, as most sequels do, but familiar faces from the previous films help to offset the crush of new pirate captains. Its plot is so intricate and there are so many characters crossing and double-crossing each other that the audience is left scratching its head. Not that this makes the film bad in any way, it simply guarantees that viewers will watch the movie several times to sort out who is doing what and where everyone ends up. In essence a perfect summer blockbuster, easy to watch with impressive looking special effects and entertaining to boot.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End picks up where the last film left off with Captain Barbosa, Geoffrey Rush, leading a band of pirates on a rescue mission to bring Jack Sparrow, Depp, back from Davy Jones’ locker to take on the nefarious East India Trading Company. At World’s End is a tour to Singapore and off the edge of the map and the scenery is breathtaking. The ships and characters are all familiar now so Verbinski is able to get down to business laying out an elaborate plot that some might say by the end leave several head scratching perplexities, but the story of these characters, at least in their interactions with each other, seems complete.

It is pleasant that audiences know and remember the major characters like Elizabeth Swann and Will Turner, as well as the other entertaining stalwarts of Sparrow’s crew like Marty and Mr. Cotton’s parrot. There are almost too many great pirates to mention as Knightly and Bloom and Depp and Rush are joined by a mass of other pirates including Bill Nighy’s Davy Jones and Ken Watanabe’s Sao Fang. It pleases on many levels though none of the newly introduced characters is particularly memorable. Even Keith Richards’ much hyped cameo feels more like a serviceable performance by a bit actor and less like a cameo by a world famous musician.

In this film Davy Jones’ locker is less a crushing death than a physical and psychological torture chamber which gives Verbinski the opportunity to experiment with visual mind games and some stark imagery. It also gives Johnny Depp the kind of opportunities to explore further a character that he has by now become comfortably, almost tediously, capable. Here a crew of Jacks squabble and kill each other as Depp plays numerous facets in what was probably an enjoyable bit of acting for him. For the audience these existential tangents are a bit of a bore, good looking, but not forwarding the story any.

At nearly three hours the inclusion of dreamscapes and nightmares certainly doesn’t diminish the story. There are a lot of threads here and Verbinski takes his time in getting to them laying things out in a way that though not easily clear, is at least complete. There is a rescue by an unlikely band of misfits with their own agendas, a meeting of the pirate captains, and a sea goddess named Calypso all of whom may or may not work together to take on the East India Trading Company to fight over control of the seas. The film moves along somewhat slowly at points saving its energy for the final battle between the Black Pearl and the Flying Dutchman. The sea battle hinted at in previews, and requiring months to film, is of drawn out intensity and every bit as impressive as the previews would lead one to believe.

Now for those who are aficionados of the pirate film genre, or subgenre of action/adventure films, there are a number of plot devices that may annoy casual watchers. Without giving anything away I will admit that I liked the direction that the film took and that it reminded me of such pirate gems as Against All Flags and The Black Swan, both Maureen O’Hara films, far more than the previous movies. Depp of course is luminous as Jack Sparrow but it is Kiera Knightly who holds her own space on the screen as the now bronzed and lethal Elizabeth Swann that keeps the plot moving and makes the comparison to the original Technicolor queen of the pirates apt.

Orlando Bloom has had the fortune to be part of two of the biggest and best trilogies in the history of modern filmmaking which is somewhat surprising when one pays attention to his parts in the films. Bloom is more of a reactor than an actor and here in At World’s End he is in serious jeopardy of being swallowed by the colorful pirates around him. His part seems noticeably smaller than in past films and it can only be attributed to the fact that Bloom’s Will just isn’t that interesting when compared to the likes of the blowhard Captain Barbosa, the eccentric Jack Sparrow, or even his betrothed the tough Elizabeth Swann.

At times the weight of the characters feels as heavy and claustrophic as a room full of pirate captains sniping at each other. The story is tremendously complex and will leave behind many filmgoers. But that does not mean the film is displeasing. On the contrary, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End lives up to its predecessors as a thrilling amusement park ride of a film that provides a blend of actors and CGI imagery combined with just enough story lines to thrill, amuse, and generally entertain. Most importantly for fans of the films, the scribes behind these memorable characters leave audiences feeling satisfied and the story resolved while leaving the characters available for countless other profitable adventures.

Related posts:

1. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest