Post by rra on Jan 5, 2008 1:55:48 GMT -5
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END (2007) - ***
For a Disney-released "family" movie, the opening is pretty surprising grim. Scores of pirates, or suspected of piracy, are hanged in an automatic process much like the Nazi death camps. Civil liberties under English law are suspended as the corporate monopoly rules this domain of the British Empire.
A kid, facing the noose, starts singing the pirate's song. The rest follow in harmony, defiant to the last drop.
Alot of people hate this movie, but how many despised movies have such a great opening? It's the best-shot sequence in Gore Verbinski's trilogy, and it serves its purpose: This conglomerate and its CEO are dead certain in their cause to rule the waters of our world. This may be a Mouse House production, but not even the children are safe from the villains.
I do agree with many detractors that this film is pretty overlong, the plot is very convulted, the action is all over the place, and the movie at times is more interested in showing off how much money Disney spent on its budget (reportedly $250 million) than actual storytelling, and you know what?
I say the exact same thing about the first PIRATES picture, and I enjoyed that one....and I like this one too.
Maybe while people loved the first movie, I rode it for what it was....a B-adventure movie. The most expensive probably in history, but it delivered the swordfights, cannon-fire, and wenches. The story went off the plank, but I was satisfied. The sequels are much the same, except the fans are exposed to the reality, and mutiny. It's TEMPLE OF DOOM* all over again.
The difference though that the PIRATES pictures have from other B-pirate fare is the dedication from the filmmakers to jam incredibly complicated as hell details into a very simple story.
What originally were cheap jokes actually mattered a few pictures later.
Fact is, it all makes sense once you learn everything from the dialogue and actions. I must say, I gotta give credit to producer Jerry Bruckheimer, regularly a sworn enemy of mine, to actually stick with this grand plan of density that Verbinski and scriptwriters Ted Elliot & Terry Rossio had cooked up.
The problem though with AT WORLD'S END, as with the rest of the trilogy, is that all this information and tidbits fly straight at us through quick expositional, and very unnatural, dialogue. Get distracted by a crying baby or ringing cellphone in the theatre, and boom you're already screwed.
Add the fact that you need to have seen the other pictures to connect the dots, and for an audience used to simply coasting through the visuals and narrative roller coaster, I don't blame them for becoming irritated at their lack of understanding what the hell is going on.
That said, at least all this confusion adds to something substantial ultimately through concentration and repeated viewings, right? It's like what the MATRIX movies promise, but never delivered.
There are some glaring flaws that sorta bug me. After Davy Jones takes back his boat, why do the remaining redcoats onboard still fight the pirates on? Surely after their boss literally gets plugged, they would know that if their side wins, they would become fish food. Why do two background characters from the first movie return?
Plus I didn't like Norrington's exit, that the great Chow Yun Fat is again shafted by Hollywood with a pitifully limited role, and the ending itself.
Reportedly, the fates for Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom's characters switched during production, and I wonder if they should have stuck with the original plan.
Certainly AT WORLD'S END obscenly tries to point towards this possible destiny for Depp, and seems more fitting. Maybe the switch occured because Verbinski wanted to pull the rug on our expectations, or because Bruckheimer needed an opening for Depp to return for a fourth PIRATES picture, leaving behind his (too expensive) co-heroes.
Then again, maybe the ultimate ending is more unintentionally poignant. Captain Jack Sparrow may indeed accomplish his immortal desires, but not as he expected.
In further possible solo-cinema stories, he'll continue to be funky, always scheming and backstabbing friends and foe, fighting menacing well-designed CGI monsters, and somehow coming out on top. Even if Depp abandons this star-vehicle, Sparrow could continue on as the James Bond for the high seas.
He'll have the license to sail.
*=The "TEMPLE OF DOOM" Scenario, as I call it, is where a really good garbage movie is disguised as a great, or highly-shot, picture by its window curtains, like RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. It's fans get peeved off when the sequel opens up the curtains and is much more open of what it is....like TEMPLE OF DOOM.
