movies: pirates of the caribbean: at world's end

Obviously I'm just supposed to get all panicked and flustered for no good reason before each and every visit to Gold Class... well, any visit that is planned in advance... the first visit was fine...

And even if it was a whole entire week early Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End was still worth it.... and paying nearly triple what we normally pay at the movies was worth it...

So much more Jack (quite literally in fact)... so much wet and edible Will Turner (mmmm wet)... so much swashing and buckling Elizabeth Swan... *sigh*... it be good, says I!

If I was going to rank the three movies, I would say The Curse of the Black Pearl first, then this one, and Dead Man's Chest would come in last of all... maybe it's because the second movie was basically the second act of a three act "movie"... so the second act basically sets up all the stuff for the final chapter... I dunno... I do wish I hadn't rated the second instalment at 9 out of 10, since I really have nowhere to go with this one... this instalment wasn't a 10 out of 10, and I don't give half measures... lets call the second one a low 9...

Anyway... I will say that I got chills more than a couple of times throughout the movie... the call back to small, odd, singing children gave me the first chill of the movie, and that was within the first five minutes. And going from one extreme to the other, if you go and see this movie DO NOT get up and leave until the very, very, very end of the movie and the little "tag" scene... we knew something was coming, because each of the movies has had one, and even though both Ma and I desperately needed to go to the bathroom (a coffee, a bottle of water and a two and three quarter hour movie will do that), I am SO glad we stayed put until the very end... I even shed a little bit of a tear.

Oh, and the thing with the stone crabs and the Black Pearl... I had shivers all up and down my timbers!

I will say that I felt a tiny bit lost for maybe the first twenty-ish (maybe less, it's hard to judge when you're in the movie) minutes... they didn't pick up where they left off in the last movie, and it took a little bit to reorient (no pun intended, seeing as they start out in Singapore) myself to what was going on... but that was more to do with letting the audience in on the plot slowly than anything else.

Keira, Orlando and Johnny all get brilliant character introductions, although of the three, I have to say that Johnny's is possibly the best of the lot, and possibly the best character introduction in all of the three movies.

It was also nice to see the subtle refinement of the CGI on Davy Jones... even though I now know how it was done (as opposed to last time when I wasn't sure if it was a mix of real and CG elements), it still looked very realistic (or as realistic as a man with a face like a plate of calamari can look).

The one really flat spot was a scene towards the end of the movie where they tried to pay homage to a scene in the first movie with Johnny and the two soldiers, Mullroy and Murtogg, where they're guarding something and he comes to steal it from them... and, to be honest, it just felt shoehorned in there... it sank like a lead weight and I wish they hadn't bothered. Yes, it was nice to have the two characters in the final movie and to have that little payoff and callback, but you could at least have written them something decent!

My only other bugbear is a similar one to the one I had last time... although I don't seem to have mentioned it at the time... there were certain parts, when all the big action is going and the wind and the rain and the swashing and the buckling are all in full swing, some of the dialogue gets a little lost in the melee.

I will say that even with the 168 minute running time, the movie never really seems to lag... partly because it is one action scene after another after another, but sometimes with movies like that the brief spots in between can drag... but not with this movie, or at least I didn't think so. But then I was enjoying myself... any movie will drag if you're not having a good time.

It's just a shame that's the end of the franchise... not that I would necessarily want another four Pirates movies... but it's a shame we have to bid farewell to them all... at least they went out well.

yani's rating: 4 heathen goddesses out of 5