Awesome Movie Review: Pirates of the Carribbean: At World’s End

I would like to approach this Awesome Movie Review of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, if I may, via scenes from each of the Clerks movies. In Clerks 2, Randall describes the Lord of the Rings movies as three movies of people walking. Replace walking with sailing and you’ve pretty much got At World’s End

At the start of the movie, Captain Jack Sparrow is in Davy Jones’ locker, so Barbossa, Will, and Keira Knightley have to go rescue him. But before they can do that, they have to go to Singapore and talk with Chow Yun-Fat. They need to know how to get inside Davy Jones’ Locker and since Chow Yun-Fat is Asian, he naturally knows all the mystical secrets to the universe. After Singapore, they sail to Davy Jones’ Locker, rescue Jack and then they have to sail back out in the real world again. Then they have to sail to Shipwreck Cove to meet with the Pirate Lords. (I could probably write a dissertation on the ridiculousness of this Pirate Lords bullshit. First of all, both Jack and Barbossa are Pirate Lords, but they both served on the same crew. It always seemed that Barbossa’s mutiny was a fairly recent event in the time line of the films, and he had to have spent the bulk of the time after the mutiny hunting down the cursed Aztec gold, giving him very little time to establish himself as a Pirate Lord with enough clout to summon and moderate the Brethren Court. So it would seem that Jack and Barbossa would have to have been Pirate Lords at the same time, serving on the same ship. Why would there be two Pirate Lords on one ship? And why would two relentlessly arrogant and self-promoting men like Jack and Barbossa not once see fit to mention the fact that they are Pirate Lords? It doesn’t make a lick of sense.)

After the Pirate Lords are discovered by Davy Jones, who is being controlled by a prissy Englishman from the East India Company, everyone has to sail out into the middle of a maelstrom for the climactic showdown. Then, as an epilogue, Jack and Will, separately, sail off into the sunset. The end. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is just a bunch of people sailing from once place to another, for a variety of bullshitty reasons.

Moving on to the second Clerks moment, which come, ironically, from the original Clerks movie, when Randall questions the ethics of destroying the second Death Star. Randall’s basic argument is that by destroying the unfinished Death Star, the Rebels killed untold numbers of innocent workers, who really had no vested interest in the rebellion. That, to an extent, is something that happens in At World’s End.

The first two Pirates movies involved our beloved heroes fighting pirate ghosts and pirate fish-people, respectively. While the pirate fish-people return in At World’s End, the real enemy is the East India Company, led by a prissy Englishman and his malevolent henchman, who hide behind the human shields of rank-and-file soldiers. So instead of fighting and killing pirates, in this movie our not-so-beloved heroes are fighting and killing random sailors, who are just trying to earn an honest living making the seas safe for merchants.

And to makes matters worse, none of the characters in the film have noble causes. Barbossa wants to consolidate power and rid the seas of prissy Englishmen who attempt to hinder pirates. Keira Knightley wants to clear her own conscience. And Will is willing to sacrifice anything and anyone to rescue his deadbeat father. In fact, will goes so far as to desecrate corpses, strapping them to barrels and tossing them in the ocean, so the East India Company can follow the Black Pearl. And I’m supposed to be happy when he marries Keira Knightley in the middle of a sword fight?

Really, the only character in At World’s End who isn’t a completely selfish douche is Captain Jack Sparrow. All he wants is his ship, which is a more than reasonable request. Unfortunately, Captain Jack plays a relatively minor role in the film. He’s is really nothing more than a bargaining chip, tossed between the other characters as part of their selfish machinations. Barbossa’s monkey and the little janitor from Scrubs play more important roles than Captain Jack, which is quite pathetic.

The filmmakers seem to recognize the dearth of Captain Jack in the film, so they try to make up for it by having Jack hallucinate multiple versions of himself. This is put to good use in Davy Jones’ Locker, as Jack is essentially in purgatory, so envisioning a worthless crew of his own doppelgängers is not all that far-fetched. However, throughout the rest of the film, when Jack sees little version of himself hanging from his hair and the like, it’s a little unnecessary. Captain Jack Sparrow doesn’t seem like the type of person who regularly suffers crises of conscience.

Despite the best efforts to stuff in as much Captain Jack as possible, At World’s’ End ends up being a movie about Will Turner. After conniving and double-crossing his way through the film, Will finally proposes to and marries Keira Knightley. Then, in a predictably Shakespearean in magnitude fashion, he promptly gets himself killed, only to be revived as the new Captain of the Flying Dutchman. So, instead of devoting his life to the sexy lady who loves him and has risked her life for him on a number of occasions, Will decides he’d be better off sailing around with his accursed murderer of a father. But every ten years he gets to come back a fuck Keira Knightley for one night. And I’m supposed to like this guy? This is what passes as a tragic and bittersweet romance these days?

I’m sure that a lot of people will think that I’m blowing this out of proportion. After all, Will Turner is played by “Tony” Orlando Bloom, who is the hottness. It’s pretty much the status quo for people as handsome as “Tony” Orlando Bloom to be allowed to treat sexy ladies like shit. So even though he abandons Keira Knightley, fundamentally transforming her from wife to fuck bag, we’re still supposed to like the guy. Well I’m not going to stand for this. Keira Knightley deserves better.

The Curse of the Black Pearl was a quality flick, a ridiculous concept made enjoyable by quality performances and effects. Dead Man’s Chest was way too long and had far too much of Captain Jack mincing about trying to be silly. At World’s End is also way too long and suffers from not enough of Captain Jack mincing about trying to be silly. Barbossa, Will, and Keira Knightley do not mince about, nor are they particularly silly. And that is the fatal flaw of this film. Instead of making a triumphant end for what might arguably be the most enjoyable original film character of this young century, the filmmakers made a film stuffed full of Geoffrey Rush’s generic pirate inflections and the wooden acting of an overmatched supporting cast. Despite the presence of the little janitor from Scrubs and some tragically brief appearances by some sexy Asian ladies and Keira Knightley’s scrawny legs, At World’s End just isn’t that good of a movie. On my scale of one to five tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein, I give it two tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein.