PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END: All Men Are Drawn to the Sea, Perilous Though it May Be

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007) – Directed by Gore Verbinski – Starring Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Stellan Skarsgård, Bill Nighy, Tom Hollander, Chow Yun-fat, Geoffrey Rush, Jack Davenport, Naomie Harris, Kevin McNally, David Schofield, Jonathan Pryce, Mackenzie Crook,
Lee Arenberg, and Keith Richards.

If you want to argue that PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END is too bloated and too dark, you won’t get a huge fight from me; I will, however, counter that despite these problems, I still enjoy the movie a good deal. I find it works much better as a home view than it did in the theaters, as 11 minutes short of 3 hours is just too darn long for a fun movie-going experience.

And that length exemplifies what is both ill-conceived and admirable about AT WORLD’S END: they forgot they were making a popcorn movie.

When I saw this movie in the theaters I left bitterly disappointed at the various endings. For a series that had delivered so much fun, so many thrills, and such nice character growth, AT WORLD’S END is a downer of a movie: Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) is killed and becomes the new captain of the Flying Dutchman, meaning he and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) can see each other only once every ten years; Barbosa (Geoffrey Rush) has stolen the Black Pearl away from Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp); and Norrington (Jack Davenport) and Governor Swann (Jonathan Pryce) are dead.

Why? If there was ever a series in which giving us a Happy Hollywood ending would have been totally justified, it’s PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN. Yet the only character who really ends on a high note is Will’s dad, “Bootstrap” Bill Turner (Stellan Skarsgård), and the crew of the Dutchman, who stop being fish men and go back to being regular men.

Watching AT WORLD’S END now, however, I can better appreciate what Gore Verbinski and the rest of the creative team were attempting. Clearly, they want AT WORLD’S END to have a real sense of inevitable decline. At one point in the film Jack mentions he wouldn’t mind being the last pirate alive and Barbosa reminds him that one of the downside of being that last is that inevitably there will be no one left.

The idea that the “old ways” are becoming extinct has been at the heart of the PIRATES trilogy, and here we see that idea taken as far as it can go: Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander) has control of the Flying Dutchman because he controls Davy Jones’ heart, and he’s on a quest to rid the world of pirates. In response, the pirate convene a meeting of the Brethren of Pirates, bringing together the nine Pirate Lords to try and figure out what to do.

There’s just one problem – Jack Sparrow is one of the pirate lords and he didn’t name a successor before getting sucked down into Davy Jones’ locker. As seen at the end of DEAD MAN’S CHEST, Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris) has brought Hector Barbosa back to life to captain the Pearl‘s crew, Will, and Elizabeth on a quest into Davy Jones’ locker to bring Jack back.

AT WORLD’S END suffers from taking it’s sweet ass time getting anywhere. The opening sequence is an elongated negotiation/fight/team-up with Sao Feng (Chow Yun Fat), as Barbosa takes the crew to Singapore to ask this Pirate Lord. It’s a half hour before we even get to see Jack on screen, and then we get ten minutes of him acting bonkers.

The film needlessly has Jack, Will, Elizabeth … heck, nearly everyone switching sides to cut the best deal for themselves. I know this loyalty hopping has been a trademark of the series, but it feels a bit tired and unnecessary here because there’s just so much of it. Becket is the enemy yet Sao Feng, Jack, and Will all cut deals with him on the sly for their own benefit. It shouldn’t be this much work keeping track of who’s betraying who.

The movie suffers, too, from a bit of Keira Knightley worship. All the major male players but Barbosa have a thing for her (or Elizabeth Swann, I should say) and it gets a bit tedious to watch every single male try to get in her pants. I mean, I get it, she’s hot and all, but enough’s enough. By the time Sao Feng makes a play on her, I’d had it.

AT WORLD’S END continues the trend of having Elizabeth step into the main spotlight, and while can handle the smaller bits, she’s not very convincing as a Pirate Lord, let alone Pirate King.

Problems aside, the bloatedness of AT WORLD’S END is nearly completely forgotten by me when we get to the final battle between the Black Pearl and the Flying Dutchman. If there is a greater ship vs. ship battle in cinematic history, I have not seen it. The two ships battle in the wind and rain as they circle an oceanic whirlpool. It’s phenomenally great work from the CGI folk and a rousing battle. I could watch just this final battle on a loop and be satisfied.

In the end, however, I keep coming back to the fact that Verbinski and Company coated everything here in darkness. It’s a blast to see Keith Richards show up to play Jack’s dad, but there’s not enough of these moments. AT WORLD’S END is still an enjoyable movie because I like hanging out with Barbosa, Jack, Will, and Elizabeth and because the action sequences are amazing. It is admirable to see a trilogy go out with all guns blazing (as it were).

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PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN Review Index

POTC: THE BLACK PEARL: You Best Start Believing in Ghost Stories, Miss Turner, You’re in One
POTC: DEAD MAN’S CHEST: I’m Afraid Currency is the Currency of the Real,
POTC: AT WORLD’S END: All Men are Drawn to the Sea, Perilous Though it May Be
POTC: ON STRANGER TIDES: Does This Face Look Like It’s Been to the Fountain of Youth?

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST: I’m Afraid Currency is the Currency of the Realm

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006) – Directed by Gore Verbinski – Starring Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Bill Nighy, Stellan Skarsgård, Naomie Harris, Jack Davenport, Kevin McNally, Tom Hollander, Lee Arenberg, Mackenzie Cook, Jonathan Pryce, and Geoffrey Rush.

I find that PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST ages very well. This is perhaps an odd thing to say about a film that hit the theaters only six years ago, but when it was initially released I found the film to be a bit disappointing. Perhaps in the wake of CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, nearly any sequel was bound to be disappointing, but now, without the immediate pressure of being a follow-up, I’ve come to really enjoy the film for what it offers instead of how it fails to match its predecessor.

Clocking in at 2 1/2 hours, DEAD MAN’S CHEST is a huge movie, and while I wouldn’t mind seeing much of the “Jack Sparrow as King of the Islanders” sequence cut way back, I’m not going to complain too vociferously about having an extra 15 or 20 minutes with a fantastic set of characters. If anything, I’d have cut those minutes in the theatrical cut and then inserted them for a director’s cut; I don’t mind if a Blu ray/DVD version of a film is a bit too long because, unlike in the theater, I can hit pause when I need to use the bathroom or get refills on my Coke Zero and popcorn.

DEAD MAN’S CHEST isn’t quite as good as BLACK PEARL but it’s still a really strong movie that increases the darkness and CGI-content, but also de-emphasizes Jack in order to allow the Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann (Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley) characters more room to grow. Johnny Depp takes Jack Sparrow a big step down Self Parody Lane, relying more on weird looks, exaggerated gestures, and mumbled dialogue than in bringing anything new to the table, but Keira Knightley’s deepening of Elizabeth comfortably steps into that void.

Where BLACK PEARL rarely felt like anything more than Jack’s movie, DEAD MAN’S CHEST feels like Will’s movie during the first half and then morphs into Elizabeth’s film for the latter portions of the film. Where BLACK PEARL felt like the two young lovers had been shoehorned into Jack’s story, DEAD MAN’S CHEST feels much more like Jack has been brought into their adventure.

The movie opens with Will and Elizabeth’s wedding day being ruined by the arrival of Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander), who has warrants for their arrest for associating with known pirate Jack Sparrow. Unlike the villains in the previous film, Beckett has no redeeming qualities, nor is he given any sense of being anything more than a cardboard villain. Hollander plays it well, but Beckett working as an operative for the East India Trading Company in order to get Will to steal Jack’s compass for him is without motivation beyond greed. It’s a simple part and maybe it’s just what the film needs to highlight the freedom of a pirate’s life versus the hypocrisy of government work, but after the last film’s willingness to complicate its characters, Beckett is a bit of a letdown. He’s devious, sure, but it’s a deviousness without complication.

Will agrees to go get Jack’s compass, but when he arrives at the Black Pearl, he finds it beached on an island and he has to save them from the islanders I mentioned above. There’s some fun scenes here with Will and the crew, but the whole Jack-as-God angle is pretty tired. Once reunited aboard the Pearl, they head to the Louisiana swamps where they visit Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris), a voodoo priestess who tells them about Davy Jones’ locker, the titular “dead man’s chest” that contains Jones’ heart.

Jones, it turns out, was desperately in love with a woman, so he cut his heart out, put it in a chest, and then buried in the sand on some island. For safety, he keeps the key to the chest on his person at all times.

Of course. Who hasn’t been there?

Jack tricks Will into venturing onto a shipwreck, which Jack knows will end with Will being taken aboard the Flying Dutchman. The Dutchman is the ghost ship captained by Davy Jones (Bill Nighy). Jones travels the oceans and signs dead or dying crewmen to 100 year contracts to serve aboard the Cutchman and over that 100 years the sailors slowly lose their humanity and become … well, walking fish. Jones looks like he’s got a green octopus for a face, but then has lobster or crab claws for hands. On board the Dutchman, Will is reunited with his father Bootstrap Bill Turner (Stellan Skarsgård), who’s got a starfish growing on his face.

Bill was part of the Black Pearl crew under Jack’s leadership, and when he refused to join in the mutiny, he was tied to a cannon and tossed overboard, where he would have died except for the whole curse thing. Unable to free himself, Bill spent years trapped on the bottom of the ocean, only escaping when Davy Jones came along and offered to free him in exchange for 100 years of servitude on board the Dutchman.

Will is pretty much a dick to his dad, who sacrifices himself during a game of liar’s dice (a game you can play on the Blu ray against Pintel) to save his son. Will is like, “You’re an idiot, dad, because I just wanted to know where Jones keeps his secret key.” Will steals the key with his dad’s help and escapes. Which is a great plan, until Jones sends the Kraken after the merchant ship that rescued him. So, yeah, Will, good going. You just got people killed. Nice one.

While all of this is going on, Elizabeth escapes from the prison cell Beckett placed her in with help from her dad. She travels to Tortuga and ends up running into Jack and the Will-less Pearl. Jack has made a deal with Jones that will release him of his debt in exchange for Jack delivering 100 souls to Jones, so Jack and Gibbs (Kevin McNally) are tricking drunken degenerates into signing up to crew the Pearl without telling them they’re all going to be sacrificed to Davy Jones and spend the next century crewing a ghost ship and turning into fish men.

In Tortuga, not only does Elizabeth find Jack, but also her ex-fiance, Commodore Norrington (Jack Davenport), who’s resigned his commission when he lost his ship and crew in a storm while pursing the Pearl. Norrington has become a washed-out drunk, living among the people he hates and generally wallowing in self-pity and filth. Davenport is once again completely fantastic in his role and his arc is one of the highlights of the film. Norrington signs on to crew for Jack, seeing it as some kind of ultimate self-punishment, which is made even worse when he finds himself once again in the company of an Elizabeth who’s trying to save the man she actually loves instead of the man with whom she was engaged.

Everything comes crashing together as the Pearl, the Dutchman, and Will run to recover Jones’ buried treasure chest. There’s a three-way sword fight between Will, Norrington, and Jack on the white sand of that island that has Elizabeth looking on in frustration and Pintel and Ragetti stealing the chest, then the crew of the Dutchman getting it and, well, lots of wacky action hijinks. Could this sequence be trimmed? Sure could. Am I disappointed it’s a bit bloated? Not at all. This is what I paid my money to see, so if we get a bit too much of a good thing, it’s not a big complaint.

I must say that I don’t think Keira Knightley has ever looked hotter on film than she does in DEAD MAN’S CHEST; not only is she stunningly gorgeous, but her character also drives the action in the latter stages of the film. She plays a huge role in the battle against the Kraken and it’s her seductive teasing of Jack that causes the pirate to forego his own escape in order to come back and help his crew. Critically, when she realizes that the Kraken isn’t after the crew of the Pearl but Jack, she kisses Jack in order to both fulfill her conflicted yearning for the pirate as well as distracting him so she can chain him to the mast and leave him as easy bait for the undersea monster.

“The Kraken’s after you, not us,” she tells him, then tells the escaping crew that Jack has volunteered to stay behind and sacrifice himself so they can get away.

It’s a horrible thing for Elizabeth to do, but it’s also a wonderful bit of characterization as DEAD MAN’S CHEST continues THE BLACK PEARL’s theme of people being a whole lot more complicated than they appear. Will sees her kiss Jack, but doesn’t realize what she’s done, so he ends the film feeling all down and rejected, while Elizabeth ends it all down and dejected for what’s she done. The crew ends up back at Dalma’s, where she tells them there’s a way to save Jack, thereby setting up AT WORLD’S END. The crew agrees, but as they’re without a captain, she introduces them to the man who will lead their quest – Captain Barbosa (Geoffrey Rush), now back from the dead and able to eat apples.

There’s a whole lot to love about DEAD MAN’S CHEST; Nighy’s Davy Jones is a fantastic villain, there’s plenty of character development with Will and Elizabeth, and plenty of fun with Jack and the Pearl crew. The Kraken sequences look amazing and the individual battle scenes are thrilling, as well.

I love, too, how Norrington achieves the biggest victory, as he’s the one who ends up with Davy Jones’ heart, which he brings to Beckett in the hopes of getting a new commission in the Royal Navy.

There’s also this: few directors shoot the natural world with more effectiveness than Gore Verbinski. DEAD MAN’S CHEST looks every bit as beautiful as Ms. Knightley as Verbinski’s camera drinks both of them in and revels in their beauty. Any director can set up a camera and shoot wide angle shots of deserts and mountains and valleys, but Verbinski has an incredible ability to put his camera and characters into perfect symmetry with their environment and show off the best of both. I don’t think Verbinski gets nearly enough credit, either, for being a fantastic director. DEAD MAN’S CHEST is 2 1/2 hours but it’s a brisk, fun 2 1/2 hours, impeccably and inventively shot and cut together.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST is a film that I appreciate more with each new viewing. It’s not as fun as CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL but it’s a very good movie on its own and an incredibly fun watch.

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PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN Review Index

POTC: THE BLACK PEARL: You Best Start Believing in Ghost Stories, Miss Turner, You’re in One
POTC: DEAD MAN’S CHEST: I’m Afraid Currency is the Currency of the Real,
POTC: AT WORLD’S END: All Men are Drawn to the Sea, Perilous Though it May Be
POTC: ON STRANGER TIDES: Does This Face Look Like It’s Been to the Fountain of Youth?

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL: You Best Start Believing in Ghost Stores, Miss Turner, You’re in One

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) – Directed by Gore Verbinski – Starring Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Jonathan Pryce, Jack Davenport, Kevin McNally, Lee Arenberg, Mackenzie Crook, and Zoe Saldana.

There is a very small scene deep in PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL that best symbolizes why I love this movie as much as I do; Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) has been locked away in the captain’s cabin of the Dauntless. She’s agreed to marry Commodore Norrington (Jack Davenport) in exchange for Norrington attempting to rescue Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), whom she’s actually in love with but can’t marry because she’s the daughter of the Governor and he’s a blacksmith. (Plus, he’s a giant wimp and won’t admit to her how she feels.) Elizabeth’s father, Governor Swann (Jonathan Pryce) is outside the door. He’s off to the side of Norrington and the Dauntless‘ crew, allowing him a moment alone to speak through the door to his daughter. Swann has long wanted Elizabeth to marry Norrington; it is, as Elizabeth herself admits, a “smart match.” Norrington wants to marry Elizabeth, Swann wants him to marry Elizabeth, and now Elizabeth has agreed to the union, even though she’s clearly only doing it to save the man she actually loves.

In lesser hands and in a lesser movie, Swann’s moment with his daughter would play out as the knowing dad telling the rebellious daughter that even though she doesn’t think this is the right move, it will be, in the long run, for the best. And the scene certainly starts like that, but as the Governor continues talking to his daughter (she’s not answering because she’s too busy escaping out the window), his voice shakes slightly and by the end of his talk he’s implying that she doesn’t have to marry Norrington if it’s not what she wants.

It’s a fantastic bit of dialogue that’s wonderfully played by Pryce, but it gets lost a bit between action scenes, and even as Swann is talking, it’s largely background for Elizabeth sneaking out the window so she can personally go after Will. As Swann is winding down, another action sequence begins, but this small bit of monologue really shows off, in an admittedly small way, that BLACK PEARL cares enough about its characters to make them real people: Swann isn’t just the overbearing father, he actually does care for his daughter’s wants; Elizabeth is rebellious but also willing to put the needs of others above herself; and Norrington is a bit of a stuffy Naval officer, but he’s not a bad guy, at all.

It’s a wonderful display of creating real people instead of relying on stock characters, and it’s one of the reasons that BLACK PEARL is so rewatchable.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL is a fantastically fun movie that wonderfully weaves together four separate plots: Jack Sparrow’s (Johnny Depp) quest to get his ship, the Black Pearl, back from the mutinous Captain Barbosa (Geoffrey Rush); Barbosa’s attempt to end the curse that he and his crew were inflicted with when they stole some Aztec gold; the burgeoning romance of Will and Elizabeth; and Norrington’s hatred/pursuit of pirates. Characters wants and desires intertwine and it’s a blast to watch because PIRATES is written with the narrative formula perfected by Monday Night Raw: alliances are constantly shifting and no one is ever exactly what they seem.

It’s that constant shifting of alliances that keeps you on your toes and makes the film so much fun. There really isn’t a true bad guy in BLACK PEARL as nearly everyone has both honorable (or, at least, understandable) pursuits and dishonorable pursuits.

Take Jack. He desires to get his ship back from his mutinous crew (honorable) but is completely willing to sacrifice Will or Elizabeth to get it. By now, some nine years after the film’s release, Depp’s performance has become both legendary and ripe for parody, but it should always be remembered just how fantastic he is as Jack. Depp (often when he works with Burton), has been increasingly willing to take his performance down various rabbit holes without any real regard for doing what’s best for the film; simply pushing a character’s eccentricities to the breaking point isn’t always the wisest choice, and here in BLACK PEARL we see Depp at his creative best, perfectly blending the eccentricity of his character while still giving him broad appeal.

Or take Norrington. There is no real need for Norrington to be anything more than the stuffy British officer who we all recognize isn’t good enough for Elizabeth and who is clearly set up to be the binary to both Jack and Will. Jack Davenport clearly gives Norrington plenty of that snobby elitism, but he also gives Norrington a wonderful sense of dry humor and a true sense of honor. He does not see Elizabeth simply as a prize he deserves by rank; he actually does care about her and when he agrees to rescue Will in exchange for her agreeing to marry him, there’s a sense of defeat in his demeanor the rest of the way. He’s won the war, but lost the battle, as it were. His sense of humor is one of the film’s unexpected bonuses; not that it’s surprising Davenport can do comedy, of course, but that the film allows Norrington to have a few moments of genuine humor, such as when he’s watching Jack try to steal a ship and remarks, “That is, without doubt, the worst pirate I have ever seen.”

Will is a highly-skilled blacksmith who can’t take credit for his work because everyone thinks he’s just the apprentice. He hates pirates because his father was one, and it takes him the course of the film (and really, into the sequel) for him to realize that a man can be both a pirate and a good man, too.

Barbosa passes as the Big Bad of the film, but Geoffrey Rush plays Barbosa with such relish that he’s a complete blast to watch. (And how can you hate a guy who just wants to be able to eat an apple without it tasting like ash, or who has a hilarious monkey sidekick?) While he is certainly the bad guy for leading the mutiny that took the Black Pearl from Jack and left him stranded on a tiny island, his quest to return all of the stolen, cursed Aztec gold is completely understandable. He keeps Elizabeth as a prisoner because she has told him her name is Elizabeth Turner which, along with the cursed piece of gold she stole from Will when they were kids, makes Barbosa think she’s the daughter of Bootstrap Bill Turner, a former member of their crew. While he won’t let her go, he treats her to a private dinner in his quarters to save her from dining with the crew, which allows him to fully explain to her (and us) that this is a ghost story as much as it is a pirate film. Barbosa needs Elizabeth’s blood to lift the curse but instead of killing her, as you – and she – suspects, he simply cuts her hand to get a few drops.

Elizabeth isn’t Bootstrap Bill’s kid, of course, so the curse isn’t listed. They need Will, and Jack is happy to turn Will over in exchange for getting his ship back, and Will is just as willing to sacrifice Jack in order to save himself and Elizabeth.

And that’s what BLACK PEARL is about, really: what one is willing to do to get what they want. It reveals the best in Will and Elizabeth and the worst in Jack and Barbosa, but it also reveals some lesser aspects of Will and Elizabeth and some of the better aspects of Jack and Barbosa.

Gore Verbinski’s direction is spot on, perfectly blending the action and humor, and Klaus Badelt’s score is one of my all-time favorites. BLACK PEARL is every bit the perfection of blockbuster filmmaking: it takes you someplace fantastic to hang out with some great characters and tells one heck of a story. The acting and directing are top notch and while there are better films out there, few are as enjoyable and full of life as THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL.

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PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN Review Index

POTC: THE BLACK PEARL: You Best Start Believing in Ghost Stories, Miss Turner, You’re in One
POTC: DEAD MAN’S CHEST: I’m Afraid Currency is the Currency of the Real,
POTC: AT WORLD’S END: All Men are Drawn to the Sea, Perilous Though it May Be
POTC: ON STRANGER TIDES: Does This Face Look Like It’s Been to the Fountain of Youth?