At World's End review
I didn't walk out with a big grin (which I surely did after the first film), I was, in fact, sniffling, because of what ended up happening to these characters, who I love. I didn't love the movie and it wasn't purely the emotional kneejerk reaction to the married but mostly apart state of Will and Elizabeth (though it was set up organically enough) and Jack from the Pearl (woes!) nor Norrington from er, this life. I don't remember precisely how I felt after DMC, in lust with Norrington and willing to hold out for the final resolution, probably, but then DMC grew on me, as I picked up nuances in reviewing and assimilated events. I'm pretty sure that the same will happen with AWE, as I get resolved to what happened (I'm not crying out for a sequel to fix it. Is one likely?).
The film suffered from too many characters, threads and sub-plots. I mean, I could spend scads talking about my feelings about what happened to various characters, but the short version is that there was too much story for them all to get a fair whack (except maybe Will and Elizabeth?). I can understand James getting short shrift (he seemed to have reverted to Navy man James, only with with haunted eyes, and that felt a little much to me, I wanted a synthesis of the (scruffy) pirate, and more time spent on the fact that he gave Beckett (!) the power to be in charge of the seas (!!), dealing with that and making restitution, but instead he sacrifices himself for Elizabeth (a step back?) and gets killed and the sword is taken from him, and... But this trilogy wasn't his story.
More of an issue for the film therefore was that Jack felt subdued. Being in the the locker seemed to have affected him very little. I liked the surrealism of him hallucinating himself and of that staying with him, but he wasn't much madder than ever (hard to be so). I liked his character development, his realisation that he didn't want to live forever, his trust in Will 'what would the whelp do?' So Will got to play the noble hero (pirate version?), and I'd love to see someone else write some meta on their roles and Elizabeth's as protagonists/heroes etc. Jack's story ended/begun comedically, the rascal having taken off on a big adventure with a stolen map in a small boat, similar enough to the one that bore him when we were first introduced. Fine, apt for Jack himself. But when he has his big fight with Davy Jones, the camera goes off him for a good long while to deal with other stuff, and also it was ages before we came to him, and the story warranted that, but I missed him at the beginning, and then he came back, but my impression is that he didn't make as big a splash as he could have, though he was totally Jack and had excellent lines that I must rewatch the film to learn to quote at the opportune moment.
And then there was the rivalry with Barbossa…Oh, Barbossa, a shining, unqualified cause of glee throughout, his romanticism and connivingness and use of piratey blarney and wild-eyed looks and..and…and I loved him in this, even though I kept reminding myself 'EVIL!' And then of course he ditches Jack and Gibbs. Every time he was on screen, I wanted to jump up and go 'Arr!'. Not that I did, but I did find myself perched right at the front of my chair at times, which says a lot about how invested I am in this world.
I did get a bit tired of every man ever falling for Elizabeth. (Or so it seemed, I may need to rewatch Captain Chow Yun Fat's scenes, because if he was thinking she was Calypso, fine.) The reason for this is me being a canon shipper and Will favourer and proud of it. But it did give me a lot of glee to get to watch her be The Pirate King (and I loved the resolution of the Jack/Elizabeth, or rather disappearance. But the ending was a really bum deal for her - she gets to be pirate for a short while, indeed to be an uber pirate, but it's Will who is Captain and she on land at the end.
As for Will, well, I'm not going to pretend to be unbiased, there was a lot of reverting to shallow open-mouthed Orlando fangirling, and the costumes got ever more awesome. And things like the tea drinking! I thought he was being smart, and all driven to be the Captain of the ship that would save his dad even if he didn't know the half of what was going on. And becoming more piratey. But I really need to rewatch it to pay attention to what was going on with his character for my brain melted a bit with the hotness (I didn't remember the earring from before!) And that sword-fight-dance-wedding ceremony-dip-gag-smoking hot kiss was possibly only topped by the heartbreaking hot of the sunset beach scene. And they both stayed true! And 'you always had my heart' - guh! And the killing of Norrington made me, well, not believe that they'd kill Will, not really, though I could imagine Jack/Elizabeth fandom believing it, but that sealed what 'A touch of destiny meant. (And that fits,that Tia Dalma always knew). I didn't quite catch whether 'twas Jack and Will who stabbed the heart though. Did Elizabeth do it too?
And there are so many other characters I could talked about - I wish they hadn't given Gibbs a teddy. While I was glad to see all the recurring naval faces, it cheapens the loss of James's ship and crew. DJ and Tia Dalma-Calypso was sort of the way I saw it going, apart from her being Calypso (which I wanted to be true rather than it being Elizabeth, though I liked TD as figuratively the sea just fine too). However, they were definitely an example of how there was a lot going on. The film was long and while I wasn't aware of that until I got out, I did feel it was full, chockablock, too much so, and there were definitely parts where I was confused. I mean, I think I got the gist of who wanted what, when and what they'd done to attain that, but I wasn't sure a lot of the time, and I thought this was a lot more tangled than DMC, too much so.
So much going on = confusion and under-development of some storylines, or discarding of them. And then there was the action set pieces. The maelstrom? Eh. Ok, the two ships attacking Beckett's Endeavour - everyone else got off! - was cool, until they went for the slomo of the splintering ship, with nary a bit actually hitting Beckett. Bad CGI moment, or bad pacing, because it gave me time to think about how they did it and no way would that really be an actor walking among such exploding debris and how it was obviously CGI and bad CGI, like I thought the final moment of Jack facing the Beastie was. So, bad call letting my mind wander there.
But…hmm…the opening. Was it me, (after thinking: 'that's not Elizabeth!' and 'Who is it? Is it a flashback? No. Then times are bad, Oh, James, what did you do, lovey?') or did anyone else think 'It's Pirates the Musical' (there was a touch of Les Mis.) And now that I think about it, Disney probably has someone writing the musical of the film already. I made the 50 foot Tia Dalma crack before, but I did think that was daft. But the crabs, the many Jacks, the flash of green, the maps…great. Singapore had its moments, the fortress was okay (I got so exited about the Brethren being mentioned). But I enjoyed the setpieces much more in the first two, I think.
There was a thematic thing about fathers going on. Bootstrap going metaphorically senile, or losing his memory as part of losing his identity. I thought Keith Richards was low key as Jack's pa, but probably nothing was going to live up to the moment I first heard the rumour that he'd be appearing as Captain jack's dad. Meanwhile, Governor Swann died - and they did their best, but apart from Will holding Elizabeth back, I didn't really get much out of that sequence, except a sense of where the film was going.
So obviously the new William Turner (I mean, she might have called him something else, but I doubt it) had to be a boy - and okay, nice parallelism with the random singing boy who opened things up.) But, I'm not sure of that.
By the way, it's really dark - one of Jones's killings is yeuch. There were other moments I adored like when whichever Mackenzie Crook's pirate name is, (is he Pintel or Ragetti?), him being the one to speak to TD like a lover (I thought it was going to have to be Will). About half of the cheap jokes worked (Jack's telescope anxiety:))- the other half were cheap jokes. The repeated references to sea turtles worked and the rum was only gone about twice :):):) And did I mention that Will Turner was well hot?
The film suffered from too many characters, threads and sub-plots. I mean, I could spend scads talking about my feelings about what happened to various characters, but the short version is that there was too much story for them all to get a fair whack (except maybe Will and Elizabeth?). I can understand James getting short shrift (he seemed to have reverted to Navy man James, only with with haunted eyes, and that felt a little much to me, I wanted a synthesis of the (scruffy) pirate, and more time spent on the fact that he gave Beckett (!) the power to be in charge of the seas (!!), dealing with that and making restitution, but instead he sacrifices himself for Elizabeth (a step back?) and gets killed and the sword is taken from him, and... But this trilogy wasn't his story.
More of an issue for the film therefore was that Jack felt subdued. Being in the the locker seemed to have affected him very little. I liked the surrealism of him hallucinating himself and of that staying with him, but he wasn't much madder than ever (hard to be so). I liked his character development, his realisation that he didn't want to live forever, his trust in Will 'what would the whelp do?' So Will got to play the noble hero (pirate version?), and I'd love to see someone else write some meta on their roles and Elizabeth's as protagonists/heroes etc. Jack's story ended/begun comedically, the rascal having taken off on a big adventure with a stolen map in a small boat, similar enough to the one that bore him when we were first introduced. Fine, apt for Jack himself. But when he has his big fight with Davy Jones, the camera goes off him for a good long while to deal with other stuff, and also it was ages before we came to him, and the story warranted that, but I missed him at the beginning, and then he came back, but my impression is that he didn't make as big a splash as he could have, though he was totally Jack and had excellent lines that I must rewatch the film to learn to quote at the opportune moment.
And then there was the rivalry with Barbossa…Oh, Barbossa, a shining, unqualified cause of glee throughout, his romanticism and connivingness and use of piratey blarney and wild-eyed looks and..and…and I loved him in this, even though I kept reminding myself 'EVIL!' And then of course he ditches Jack and Gibbs. Every time he was on screen, I wanted to jump up and go 'Arr!'. Not that I did, but I did find myself perched right at the front of my chair at times, which says a lot about how invested I am in this world.
I did get a bit tired of every man ever falling for Elizabeth. (Or so it seemed, I may need to rewatch Captain Chow Yun Fat's scenes, because if he was thinking she was Calypso, fine.) The reason for this is me being a canon shipper and Will favourer and proud of it. But it did give me a lot of glee to get to watch her be The Pirate King (and I loved the resolution of the Jack/Elizabeth, or rather disappearance. But the ending was a really bum deal for her - she gets to be pirate for a short while, indeed to be an uber pirate, but it's Will who is Captain and she on land at the end.
As for Will, well, I'm not going to pretend to be unbiased, there was a lot of reverting to shallow open-mouthed Orlando fangirling, and the costumes got ever more awesome. And things like the tea drinking! I thought he was being smart, and all driven to be the Captain of the ship that would save his dad even if he didn't know the half of what was going on. And becoming more piratey. But I really need to rewatch it to pay attention to what was going on with his character for my brain melted a bit with the hotness (I didn't remember the earring from before!) And that sword-fight-dance-wedding ceremony-dip-gag-smoking hot kiss was possibly only topped by the heartbreaking hot of the sunset beach scene. And they both stayed true! And 'you always had my heart' - guh! And the killing of Norrington made me, well, not believe that they'd kill Will, not really, though I could imagine Jack/Elizabeth fandom believing it, but that sealed what 'A touch of destiny meant. (And that fits,that Tia Dalma always knew). I didn't quite catch whether 'twas Jack and Will who stabbed the heart though. Did Elizabeth do it too?
And there are so many other characters I could talked about - I wish they hadn't given Gibbs a teddy. While I was glad to see all the recurring naval faces, it cheapens the loss of James's ship and crew. DJ and Tia Dalma-Calypso was sort of the way I saw it going, apart from her being Calypso (which I wanted to be true rather than it being Elizabeth, though I liked TD as figuratively the sea just fine too). However, they were definitely an example of how there was a lot going on. The film was long and while I wasn't aware of that until I got out, I did feel it was full, chockablock, too much so, and there were definitely parts where I was confused. I mean, I think I got the gist of who wanted what, when and what they'd done to attain that, but I wasn't sure a lot of the time, and I thought this was a lot more tangled than DMC, too much so.
So much going on = confusion and under-development of some storylines, or discarding of them. And then there was the action set pieces. The maelstrom? Eh. Ok, the two ships attacking Beckett's Endeavour - everyone else got off! - was cool, until they went for the slomo of the splintering ship, with nary a bit actually hitting Beckett. Bad CGI moment, or bad pacing, because it gave me time to think about how they did it and no way would that really be an actor walking among such exploding debris and how it was obviously CGI and bad CGI, like I thought the final moment of Jack facing the Beastie was. So, bad call letting my mind wander there.
But…hmm…the opening. Was it me, (after thinking: 'that's not Elizabeth!' and 'Who is it? Is it a flashback? No. Then times are bad, Oh, James, what did you do, lovey?') or did anyone else think 'It's Pirates the Musical' (there was a touch of Les Mis.) And now that I think about it, Disney probably has someone writing the musical of the film already. I made the 50 foot Tia Dalma crack before, but I did think that was daft. But the crabs, the many Jacks, the flash of green, the maps…great. Singapore had its moments, the fortress was okay (I got so exited about the Brethren being mentioned). But I enjoyed the setpieces much more in the first two, I think.
There was a thematic thing about fathers going on. Bootstrap going metaphorically senile, or losing his memory as part of losing his identity. I thought Keith Richards was low key as Jack's pa, but probably nothing was going to live up to the moment I first heard the rumour that he'd be appearing as Captain jack's dad. Meanwhile, Governor Swann died - and they did their best, but apart from Will holding Elizabeth back, I didn't really get much out of that sequence, except a sense of where the film was going.
So obviously the new William Turner (I mean, she might have called him something else, but I doubt it) had to be a boy - and okay, nice parallelism with the random singing boy who opened things up.) But, I'm not sure of that.
By the way, it's really dark - one of Jones's killings is yeuch. There were other moments I adored like when whichever Mackenzie Crook's pirate name is, (is he Pintel or Ragetti?), him being the one to speak to TD like a lover (I thought it was going to have to be Will). About half of the cheap jokes worked (Jack's telescope anxiety:))- the other half were cheap jokes. The repeated references to sea turtles worked and the rum was only gone about twice :):):) And did I mention that Will Turner was well hot?