Review of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) by Steve U — 08 Jun 2013

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END (hereafter AWE) is horrid. Morbid, excessively violent, and depressing, the film suggests that the only good Disney films left are the ones Pixar or Marvel makes for them. In fact, for a series with some of the most compelling characters in the history of cinema, what's amazing is not how bad AWE is, but how much it tramples the previously kooky Pirates films into the ground. What once was lighthearted, witty, and fun is now epic, sinister, and overbearing... not to mention impossible to understand. The saga was never rocket science, but with part three the filmmakers have turned it into the equivalent of a Rubik's cube. Originally, the pirate Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) kidnapped Elizabeth Swann (Kiera Knightley), forcing love-struck blacksmith Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) to enlist the aid of eccentric, rum-loving Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) in rescuing her. Elizabeth was rescued, Barbossa was killed, and Will proposed to Elizabeth while Jack went off to sail the seven seas. Will provided the plot thrust, but Jack was the real star of the show, with his sashaying demeanor and fey charm just this side of being coked off his rocker.

Equal parts crafty and idiotic, Sparrow made us laugh and cheer, often at the same time. Yet as the series continued, Sparrow's plight became darker, less humorous, and way too convoluted. The British East India Company (hereafter EIC) came looking for him, forcing Will and Elizabeth to help catch him. Jack, however, had bigger problems; he owed a life debt to the evil Davy Jones, a supernatural psychopomp who ferried lost souls to the afterlife beyond the world's end. When Jones came to collect, Sparrow tried to deceive Will into unintentionally serving Jones for him. Once Will realized this, he escaped Jones's clutches and vowed revenge on Sparrow. Sparrow, meanwhile, ran into Elizabeth, who wanted to save Will. But all three of them decided to find and destroy the heart of Davy Jones, which Jones had magically carved out of his chest and put into a box after his goddess girlfriend dumped him. (I kid you not.) Stabbing the heart apparently kills Jones, but it comes with a nasty price tag: whoever kills Jones must take his place, doomed to ferry lost souls forever and to enjoy only one day on land every ten years. When Jones gets the drop on our heroes, Jack dies bravely to save them all from the Kraken, Jones' giant pet squid. However, Will and Elizabeth are told by a Jamaican witch (Naomie Harris) that Jack can be resurrected if their crew can find him in the afterlife beyond the world's end. To prove her point, she revives the long-dead Barbossa, who can lead them to the afterlife because, well, he's already been there. Still with me? Sounds like a barrel of laughs, doesn't it?

Well, the laughs had begun to dry up by DEAD MAN'S CHEST, but that still offered a bit of self-effacing humor, like when a lunatic swordfight atop a spinning wheel caused all the characters to stop and stare in disbelief. AWE, however, refuses to wink at its audience; the only eye it has is for sadism and excess. The first fifteen minutes feature a child being hanged, a woman being shot in the face, and a gun battle that's edited to be chaotic, not swashbuckling. Later, we get to see frozen toes broken off, chests impaled by exploding debris, faces ripped apart by tentacle beards, and an obsessive, almost textbook preoccupation with the subject of death and dying. Parents, did I mention this is a three-hour movie? It's shocking how gloomy the film actually is, and double shocking how the actors register that gloom through their characters. Most films don't obtain their mood until the editing process, but AWE plays like the cast needed Prozac just to walk onset each day. As a prisoner in Pirate Hell, Jack Sparrow is deliriously morose, his once loopy mannerisms replaced by schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder. (The film's least funny joke is that his eternal punishment is to command a crew made of clones of himself; when he returns to the land of the living, they follow along and torment him.) Meanwhile, Will Turner is a bitter shell of a man, tired of pirates and marriage postponements. No longer the straight man to Jack's much-reduced comic relief, he sneers with vengeance and eventually suffers the cruelest, most insensitive fate any Disney character has ever suffered. As for Elizabeth, she seems capable of only two facial expressions: pouting and Valley-Girl. (When she delivers a "Braveheart"-style speech on freedom, the film becomes outright self-parody.) The only person who emerges unscathed is Geoffrey Rush, whose Barbossa shows more chutzpah than his lines even call for; simply put, he's the only likeable character, and he's dead. Not even the villains have anything to offer: Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander) is a prissy pencil pusher, Commodore Norrington (Jack Davenport) is reduced to cardboard, and the wicked Sao Feng (Chow Yun Fat) is quickly killed off in a minor sea battle. Then there's Davy Jones (Bill Nighy), who used to be the series's archetypal Satan; now, he's like a whimpering pit bull. The EIC threatens to destroy his heart if he doesn't do their bidding, which includes killing all the world's pirates so the EIC can control the entire world unimpeded. It's a devilish notion, this new world order, but how does Davy react? He complains to them about the girl who got away. Now really, it's just disconcerting to see someone like Jones whine about a bad date. It reduces his mythic stature so that he's just an oddity with tentacles. Throw in some pirate lords who rule the seas, an ocean goddess who wants revenge on them, and Hollywood's misassumption that piracy amounts to democracy in our 9/11-skewed world, and what've you got? A messed up, convoluted movie that initially tries to make sense, then degenerates into a bunch of loose ends and missed opportunities. (Case in point, the entire British fleet amasses itself to obliterate the world's pirate population. What happens? Two ships duke it out in a whirlpool, and the rest just watch. Come on! If you're going for epic, at least deliver it!).

The film goes from messy to mean spirited once we reach its infuriating ending, which I am going to address, so if you'd rather not know it, stop reading now. If you're expecting a satisfying conclusion, however, you're in for an eternal disappointment (and I mean "eternal"). Still reading? Okay, here goes... Davy Jones kills Will, but wait! As Will lay dying, Jack puts Jones' heart in Will's hand, helps Will stab it, and makes WILL become Davy Jones' replacement! Orlando Bloom fans can rejoice that he survives to marry Elizabeth (and sets a record for the shortest honeymoon ever), but the rest of us must accept that he's now an eternal prisoner of the seas, who'll get about eight days with his wife (maybe nine if she exercises and eats right) until he has to play Grim Reaper and ferry her soul to the Great Beyond. It's the type of ending screenwriters only come up with when they've lost interest in their characters and want to ditch them irreversibly. A funnier, savvier ending would've made Sparrow the replacement psychopomp, blessed to sail the seas forever but unable to go ashore for rum... But Sparrow is the film's biggest problem. After three films, the genre-busting scalawag has become his own cliché, and Disney is too scared to risk having him do anything except the same idiotic nonsense he's done before. But a joke can be told only so many times, and Jack isn't a bumbling idiot who hides an inner genius anymore; now he's an outright fool who spends the final confrontation swinging moronically from a yardarm while his crew fights his battles for him. It was then that I realized Jack Sparrow is a loser-he can't anchor the film-which is probably why (ANOTHER SPOILER WARNING) his new crew mutinies just like his old one did. In the end, Pirates of the Caribbean will be remembered as a curiosity that held an audience's attention for awhile and then sank, like all Hollywood franchises, under the weight of its own overkill. Jack Sparrow and Will Turner weren't movie characters so much as a marketing department's dream. That's what sold these films, coupled with the by-now ignominious Disney name, which I can't see representing "family" entertainment ever again. But I suppose stranger things have happened. I mean, what else can one say about a film series inspired by an amusement park ride?