Film Review: "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End"
Warning: here be spoilers, some thinly veiled fangirling, and deviations into meta-ish rambling here are there. Arrr.
Random Comments
- KEITH RICHARDS. Ahaha. YES. Read the interview with him and Johnny in this month’s Rolling Stone. It’s hilarious. They spend a great deal of it comparing rock stars to pirates, so in the scene when everyone was shouting, “He’s rocking the ship!” I thought of that and just cracked up.
- Jack’s hallucinations in Davy Jones’s locker and all those crab things...Yeah, totally WTF, but kind of awesomely unexpected. I guess you can’t just have somebody trapped in some kind of underworld and cop out of actually coming up with something kind of original for them to be experiencing while trapped there. And this makes it official that these movies have had the most amazing designs for creatures and other computer-animated shit I’ve ever seen. Sometimes I will just get annoyed by special effects being the star of a movie, but sometimes I’ll choose to simply marvel at how far movie magic has come and appreciate all the creative work and love that went into every half-second of what I’m seeing. This time definitely called for the latter.
- So sad that Elizabeth’s father died. :( I should have known as soon as that was revealed that there’s no way Elizabeth’s going back to her life of corsets and propriety now. I have to wonder if there was a cut scene there or if they always meant for us to find out that way.
- Norrington :’( Noooo! I can’t believe it but I actually went to the bathroom during the part when he died. I came back and asked my sister what I missed and she said, “Well, not much. Oh, Norrington died.” I thought she was kidding and was like “WHAT?” The ending of the last movie made me doubt but I was sure he wasn’t going to end up being a bad guy. It’s clear from the final scene of CotBP that he really does care about Elizabeth and is not a total stinker. To think that he still loved her :( LOL, everybody wants a piece of Elizabeth. Including me hehe. She can’t help that she’s one of the only girls in the movie and there’s not enough to go around.
- The monkey is cute but enough with the monkey already, geez.
- Because I had seen the part in the trailer with Will asking Liz if she’ll marry him, I joked to my friends, “I predict that in a desperate attempt to make their relationship interesting, Will and Elizabeth will have Jack marry them in the middle of a battle on the ship.” Well, I was delighted to be sort of right and surprised by how totally awesome that scene was. I think it was actually better that Barbossa was the one who did it, because Geoffrey Rush getting more chances to do awesome things is good. :) “Just kiss!” LMAO.
- I was girl-crushing on Keira Knightley through this whole freaking movie. Even when she’s wearing men’s clothes she looks ridiculously beautiful. And I think she acted much better in this one than the first two PotCs. Nice to know once and for all that her Academy award-nominated performance in Pride and Prejudice wasn’t just a fluke.
- Too bad there wasn't more Chow Yun-Fat, but I guess they had enough major characters to juggle around as it is was. I cringed when he punched Jack! Damn! I want to know the story behind what he did to piss him off. Probably made off with his woman or something, hehe.
- The three main characters in PotC may not be your typical chummy, family-like hero trio like Luke/Leia/Han or Harry/Hermione/Ron, but I can’t help wishing we had seen more of Will, Elizabeth, and Jack actually acting like a team and seeming to give a damn about each other. Or at least, the secret Jack/Elizabeth shipper in me could have done with some more interaction of any kind between the two of them. (Just like with my strange fascination with Obi-Wan/Padme, I do not think that relationship has any place actually happening in the movies, but nonetheless I love how the movies have sort of flirted with the possibility. So give me something! Haha.) At the end, we did not even get any kind of indication that Will or Elizabeth may ever see Jack again. My <3 is :-(. I’m all for the end of a saga to be sort of bittersweet, a la Frodo sailing away to the Gray Havens, but I don’t really feel like that’s what they were going for.
- Biggest LMAOs: "Aye, we're good and lost now!" "I'm having a wonderful garden party and he's not invited." "Now we're being followed by rocks....shoo." "Up is down. Well that's just maddeningly unhelpful." "Are you here because you need me to help you rescue a certain distressing damsel - or damsel in distress?" And OMG, Elizabeth taking about ten minutes to disarm herself before they went in to meet Sao Feng, hehe.
- Sequel? Huh? Ending without Jack Sparrow on the Black Pearl. Now that is just painful and wrong, even if it amusingly wraps things up with the way CotBP began. I’m so concerned that if they keep making these they’ll just start being so crappy. But they can’t leave us hanging like that.
Captain Jack
I have to say I wasn’t very happy with what they did to Jack’s character in this. He became a cartoon, and practically all of his scenes were ones with just action or comedy relief. Of course he’s a funny and screwy character, and it was not only a good choice for Johnny to play him this way but possibly a choice that saved the first film from being close to awful. As Ebert said in his review of it, “To take this material seriously would make it unbearable.” But what happened to the Jack Sparrow who surprised me a little in my very favorite moment in all these movies, when he and Elizabeth are stuck on the island and he gives that completely serious, wonderful speech about “what a ship needs” vs. “what a ship is,” which basically says what these movies are all about? They are about freedom, which is what Jack represents. Elizabeth did not find herself attracted to him for nothing. Somewhere underneath that careless, silly, and slightly nutty exterior is an intelligent man with a real passion for the way he lives. It should have been him giving a riveting speech to all of the pirates instead of Elizabeth (even if she was pretty badass in that part and the kind of speech he would have done would have been quite different). I think we might have seen that more serious part of him for a total of...oh...ten seconds in this film. Blink and you’ll miss it.
Good vs. Evil?
I've always liked the way these movies are different from the Disney adventure movies you're used to because there is no definite good side and bad side. It's not a traditional good vs. evil story. Nobody is fighting to save the world, they're just trying to save their own asses and get what they want for themselves. Everyone is constantly changing sides and alliances. In the first movie, you can actually feel a little bad for Barbossa's crew because of their curse even if they're really nasty people - well, you know, pirates - and all of them end up teaming up with the main characters later anyway. Davy Jones is definitely a cruel motherfucker but also a very tragic character, and besides, all the trouble he causes for Jack in the second movie he brought on himself; he made a deal with the devil and he doesn't want to pay up. And even the redcoats like Norrington can be an awful inconvenience, but they think they're doing the right thing and all pirates are an evil that needs to be exterminated.
...Or so it seemed, at least. Lord Beckett has always been an idiot who wanted to hang Will and Liz for helping a pirate, but I was surprised at how evil he turned out to be. He was absolutely horrible and needed to die really bad. I was actually sad to watch him be a complete bully to Davy freaking Jones. (And btw it was a great way to show how much he's starting to take over everything when they saw dead!Kraken. Damn.)
I guess the idea of all the pirates having to actually unite, even when there's no honor among thieves and all that, in order to fight him was a kind of fun turn of events. And thank God, because the meeting of all the pirate lords was tons of fun.
Will and Elizabeth's Ending
I used to think it’s great how Will is kind of a dork who just tries so very hard to kick ass but always manages to get knocked out or do something to make everybody laugh at him. I like him being not quite pirate material, even if Elizabeth certainly is and this is ironic considering his heritage. It makes Elizabeth actually choosing him and a normal life over someone like Jack and a more dangerous life more interesting. I always figured that in the end they would both go back to living on land at Port Royal and get married, and her choice to do this would say a lot about the themes of these movies: that even a life consisting of some restraints, whether they be corsets or the responsibilities of having children, can have certain plusses that a life of complete liberty doesn’t have. After all, not everybody could be content living like Jack and be able to look where that compass of his is pointing and just go right after what they want, never minding morals, the law, or their loyalty to others.
Only Will did stop being a dork who Jack likes to introduce to others as a eunuch, and became a full-fledged, hardcore pirate. Now that it happened I wonder how I didn’t actually know to expect it. But still...when the fuck did that happen?
And now I have no idea how I feel about the ending. No, not everybody can be like Jack, but okay, apparently Will and Elizabeth can. But are either of them really living a life that’s true to their nature? I am just about the least of a feminist you will ever meet and think there is no shame in a woman becoming a stay-at-home wife if she's happy that way. Yet the idea of freaking CAPTAIN Elizabeth Swann just spending the rest of her days peacefully on a shore raising her son is just a little maddening. This is a female character who has been way ahead of her time not just in her fondness for swordplay but the way she has no problems honestly expressing sexual frustration (“I’m so ready to be married”? LOL). You think she’s not going to go a little mad and have to have affairs every once in a while? Haha. Not to mention have to go out and kill something. The poor girl. :/
In Conclusion...
It may seem like I have more criticisms of this movie than good things to say about it, but I definitely was not let down. AWE is not as good as CotBP, which I regard as a nearly perfect popcorn movie, but a lot better than DMC. Overall, I think this trilogy has been a great cinematic achievement just because these movies are so much fun. I think it is a little appropriate that the conclusion to this story (maybe meaning just Will and Elizabeth's story, considering more Jack Sparrow movies seems a possibility) was released on this day, the 30th birthday of Star Wars. Whether you think the two sagas are comparable in quality or not, characters of PotC have become about as iconic as Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. The special effects used in Star Wars were unbelievable to see in the time it was made, and it's nice to know that even in an age when it seems anything is possible and has been done in movies, it's still possible for a creation on the screen to amaze me. The absolutely real-looking Kraken must look to us like flying TIE fighters did to moviegoers in 1977. It's movies like these that make me wonder what else will be possible to do in movie-making by the time I'm 50.
Something else I have realized about PotC is that unlike the Harry Potter franchise which I am constantly agitated to hear refered to as just "kids' movies," people do not seem to think of them as geared toward a specific age group as much. You have three generations of actors, some who are already very big names, as attractions in them. I did not grow up with or grow into these movies as many kids are experiencing with HP; I was 16 when I saw the first but do not think I could have any more affection for them no matter what what age I was. After all, something I always find very sad to think about is that there are people in poor countries who have never even been able to have the experience of seeing a movie, but it is not because of art films for sophisticated adults like Monster's Ball that this idea is so sad to me, but because of imaginative, spectacular ones like Pirates of the Caribbean.
Random Comments
- KEITH RICHARDS. Ahaha. YES. Read the interview with him and Johnny in this month’s Rolling Stone. It’s hilarious. They spend a great deal of it comparing rock stars to pirates, so in the scene when everyone was shouting, “He’s rocking the ship!” I thought of that and just cracked up.
- Jack’s hallucinations in Davy Jones’s locker and all those crab things...Yeah, totally WTF, but kind of awesomely unexpected. I guess you can’t just have somebody trapped in some kind of underworld and cop out of actually coming up with something kind of original for them to be experiencing while trapped there. And this makes it official that these movies have had the most amazing designs for creatures and other computer-animated shit I’ve ever seen. Sometimes I will just get annoyed by special effects being the star of a movie, but sometimes I’ll choose to simply marvel at how far movie magic has come and appreciate all the creative work and love that went into every half-second of what I’m seeing. This time definitely called for the latter.
- So sad that Elizabeth’s father died. :( I should have known as soon as that was revealed that there’s no way Elizabeth’s going back to her life of corsets and propriety now. I have to wonder if there was a cut scene there or if they always meant for us to find out that way.
- Norrington :’( Noooo! I can’t believe it but I actually went to the bathroom during the part when he died. I came back and asked my sister what I missed and she said, “Well, not much. Oh, Norrington died.” I thought she was kidding and was like “WHAT?” The ending of the last movie made me doubt but I was sure he wasn’t going to end up being a bad guy. It’s clear from the final scene of CotBP that he really does care about Elizabeth and is not a total stinker. To think that he still loved her :( LOL, everybody wants a piece of Elizabeth. Including me hehe. She can’t help that she’s one of the only girls in the movie and there’s not enough to go around.
- The monkey is cute but enough with the monkey already, geez.
- Because I had seen the part in the trailer with Will asking Liz if she’ll marry him, I joked to my friends, “I predict that in a desperate attempt to make their relationship interesting, Will and Elizabeth will have Jack marry them in the middle of a battle on the ship.” Well, I was delighted to be sort of right and surprised by how totally awesome that scene was. I think it was actually better that Barbossa was the one who did it, because Geoffrey Rush getting more chances to do awesome things is good. :) “Just kiss!” LMAO.
- I was girl-crushing on Keira Knightley through this whole freaking movie. Even when she’s wearing men’s clothes she looks ridiculously beautiful. And I think she acted much better in this one than the first two PotCs. Nice to know once and for all that her Academy award-nominated performance in Pride and Prejudice wasn’t just a fluke.
- Too bad there wasn't more Chow Yun-Fat, but I guess they had enough major characters to juggle around as it is was. I cringed when he punched Jack! Damn! I want to know the story behind what he did to piss him off. Probably made off with his woman or something, hehe.
- The three main characters in PotC may not be your typical chummy, family-like hero trio like Luke/Leia/Han or Harry/Hermione/Ron, but I can’t help wishing we had seen more of Will, Elizabeth, and Jack actually acting like a team and seeming to give a damn about each other. Or at least, the secret Jack/Elizabeth shipper in me could have done with some more interaction of any kind between the two of them. (Just like with my strange fascination with Obi-Wan/Padme, I do not think that relationship has any place actually happening in the movies, but nonetheless I love how the movies have sort of flirted with the possibility. So give me something! Haha.) At the end, we did not even get any kind of indication that Will or Elizabeth may ever see Jack again. My <3 is :-(. I’m all for the end of a saga to be sort of bittersweet, a la Frodo sailing away to the Gray Havens, but I don’t really feel like that’s what they were going for.
- Biggest LMAOs: "Aye, we're good and lost now!" "I'm having a wonderful garden party and he's not invited." "Now we're being followed by rocks....shoo." "Up is down. Well that's just maddeningly unhelpful." "Are you here because you need me to help you rescue a certain distressing damsel - or damsel in distress?" And OMG, Elizabeth taking about ten minutes to disarm herself before they went in to meet Sao Feng, hehe.
- Sequel? Huh? Ending without Jack Sparrow on the Black Pearl. Now that is just painful and wrong, even if it amusingly wraps things up with the way CotBP began. I’m so concerned that if they keep making these they’ll just start being so crappy. But they can’t leave us hanging like that.
Captain Jack
I have to say I wasn’t very happy with what they did to Jack’s character in this. He became a cartoon, and practically all of his scenes were ones with just action or comedy relief. Of course he’s a funny and screwy character, and it was not only a good choice for Johnny to play him this way but possibly a choice that saved the first film from being close to awful. As Ebert said in his review of it, “To take this material seriously would make it unbearable.” But what happened to the Jack Sparrow who surprised me a little in my very favorite moment in all these movies, when he and Elizabeth are stuck on the island and he gives that completely serious, wonderful speech about “what a ship needs” vs. “what a ship is,” which basically says what these movies are all about? They are about freedom, which is what Jack represents. Elizabeth did not find herself attracted to him for nothing. Somewhere underneath that careless, silly, and slightly nutty exterior is an intelligent man with a real passion for the way he lives. It should have been him giving a riveting speech to all of the pirates instead of Elizabeth (even if she was pretty badass in that part and the kind of speech he would have done would have been quite different). I think we might have seen that more serious part of him for a total of...oh...ten seconds in this film. Blink and you’ll miss it.
Good vs. Evil?
I've always liked the way these movies are different from the Disney adventure movies you're used to because there is no definite good side and bad side. It's not a traditional good vs. evil story. Nobody is fighting to save the world, they're just trying to save their own asses and get what they want for themselves. Everyone is constantly changing sides and alliances. In the first movie, you can actually feel a little bad for Barbossa's crew because of their curse even if they're really nasty people - well, you know, pirates - and all of them end up teaming up with the main characters later anyway. Davy Jones is definitely a cruel motherfucker but also a very tragic character, and besides, all the trouble he causes for Jack in the second movie he brought on himself; he made a deal with the devil and he doesn't want to pay up. And even the redcoats like Norrington can be an awful inconvenience, but they think they're doing the right thing and all pirates are an evil that needs to be exterminated.
...Or so it seemed, at least. Lord Beckett has always been an idiot who wanted to hang Will and Liz for helping a pirate, but I was surprised at how evil he turned out to be. He was absolutely horrible and needed to die really bad. I was actually sad to watch him be a complete bully to Davy freaking Jones. (And btw it was a great way to show how much he's starting to take over everything when they saw dead!Kraken. Damn.)
I guess the idea of all the pirates having to actually unite, even when there's no honor among thieves and all that, in order to fight him was a kind of fun turn of events. And thank God, because the meeting of all the pirate lords was tons of fun.
Will and Elizabeth's Ending
I used to think it’s great how Will is kind of a dork who just tries so very hard to kick ass but always manages to get knocked out or do something to make everybody laugh at him. I like him being not quite pirate material, even if Elizabeth certainly is and this is ironic considering his heritage. It makes Elizabeth actually choosing him and a normal life over someone like Jack and a more dangerous life more interesting. I always figured that in the end they would both go back to living on land at Port Royal and get married, and her choice to do this would say a lot about the themes of these movies: that even a life consisting of some restraints, whether they be corsets or the responsibilities of having children, can have certain plusses that a life of complete liberty doesn’t have. After all, not everybody could be content living like Jack and be able to look where that compass of his is pointing and just go right after what they want, never minding morals, the law, or their loyalty to others.
Only Will did stop being a dork who Jack likes to introduce to others as a eunuch, and became a full-fledged, hardcore pirate. Now that it happened I wonder how I didn’t actually know to expect it. But still...when the fuck did that happen?
And now I have no idea how I feel about the ending. No, not everybody can be like Jack, but okay, apparently Will and Elizabeth can. But are either of them really living a life that’s true to their nature? I am just about the least of a feminist you will ever meet and think there is no shame in a woman becoming a stay-at-home wife if she's happy that way. Yet the idea of freaking CAPTAIN Elizabeth Swann just spending the rest of her days peacefully on a shore raising her son is just a little maddening. This is a female character who has been way ahead of her time not just in her fondness for swordplay but the way she has no problems honestly expressing sexual frustration (“I’m so ready to be married”? LOL). You think she’s not going to go a little mad and have to have affairs every once in a while? Haha. Not to mention have to go out and kill something. The poor girl. :/
In Conclusion...
It may seem like I have more criticisms of this movie than good things to say about it, but I definitely was not let down. AWE is not as good as CotBP, which I regard as a nearly perfect popcorn movie, but a lot better than DMC. Overall, I think this trilogy has been a great cinematic achievement just because these movies are so much fun. I think it is a little appropriate that the conclusion to this story (maybe meaning just Will and Elizabeth's story, considering more Jack Sparrow movies seems a possibility) was released on this day, the 30th birthday of Star Wars. Whether you think the two sagas are comparable in quality or not, characters of PotC have become about as iconic as Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. The special effects used in Star Wars were unbelievable to see in the time it was made, and it's nice to know that even in an age when it seems anything is possible and has been done in movies, it's still possible for a creation on the screen to amaze me. The absolutely real-looking Kraken must look to us like flying TIE fighters did to moviegoers in 1977. It's movies like these that make me wonder what else will be possible to do in movie-making by the time I'm 50.
Something else I have realized about PotC is that unlike the Harry Potter franchise which I am constantly agitated to hear refered to as just "kids' movies," people do not seem to think of them as geared toward a specific age group as much. You have three generations of actors, some who are already very big names, as attractions in them. I did not grow up with or grow into these movies as many kids are experiencing with HP; I was 16 when I saw the first but do not think I could have any more affection for them no matter what what age I was. After all, something I always find very sad to think about is that there are people in poor countries who have never even been able to have the experience of seeing a movie, but it is not because of art films for sophisticated adults like Monster's Ball that this idea is so sad to me, but because of imaginative, spectacular ones like Pirates of the Caribbean.