Last friday my wife took me to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. I loved the first movie, and the second was very good, but needed a good third to be great. It got it.
This movie was everything I hoped it would be and more. It had quite a few things that really surprised me, which surprised me. 🙂 One element I didn’t expect was weirdness. There was some really weird stuff in there.
If you’re a fan at all, you won’t be disappointed.
I am a fan, and I was disappointed.
They forgot what it was that made the first movie enjoyable … it wasn’t a moving story, it wasn’t a thinking man’s movie, it was entertainment. It rode on the strength of its character actors so that the bad guys were almost as likable as the good guys.
The third one is incredibly long and incredibly complicated. Entertainment is no longer the focus; now it’s on telling a dramatic story. In addition, there are so many different elements driving the plot that it’s just about impossible to keep track of them all. Whether you liked that or not, you have to admit it’s a departure from the first film.
The worst part for me was that I really don’t think there are any good guys in this film. Maybe Elizabeth and Barbossa (!) best qualify. Instead of a movie where you like both the heroes and villains, in this case you’re just watching a bunch of people double-cross each other to get what they want.
The filmmakers even acknowledge this … after Jack is rescued, he asks if anyone did it just because they liked him. Two no-name pirates and a monkey raise their hand. It was funny, but it also indicates how different this movie is from the first one, where Will risks his life just to set Jack free.
The only good thing I have to say about the second and third movies is that Davy Jones is in my opinion the best CGI character ever created. I was sympathizing with the emotion on the face of an octopus man!
That said, I decided a couple days after seeing the third movie, I said to Karly that I would prefer to only watch the first one and forget that they messed up the plot on the second and third ones.
I respectfully disagree. I thought that there was a TON of “character acting” in this movie which was well done by all. Sure, this third in a series is less innocent and the characters are more complex, but they were still quite entertaining. You don’t have heroes and villains as much because all the characters are deeper. Just like real life, people aren’t black and white. They’re more complicated and multi-faceted.
Sure, the first movie had Will rescuing Jack because he felt it was the right thing to do, but there’s a lot of water under the bridge since then and lots of emotional and personal history. He wouldn’t feel the same about someone who he thought had stolen the girl he loved and had been about to marry. Who would? Instead, he tries to help the next most important person in his life: his father.
In the end, I’d have to say that everyone reverted to their true natures. We watched them grow and develop (or maybe just got introduced to them) but their inner core did stay the same and their actions at the end reflected that heart that was shown in the first movie.
I felt that the second movie was more complicated or confusing than the third one. Once you got into it just a little and figured out what was going on, it actually had a logical feel to it. (At least to me.)
And I TOTALLY agree about Davy Jones. The emotions they were able to put into that CGI face (showing Bill Nighy’s face “through” it) were astounding. You really didn’t think you were looking at anything computer generated.
As for me, I’ve already got the DVD of the first two and I’ll be pre-ordering the third one. 🙂