Pirates of the Caribbean At Worlds End Review (Originally posted June 10)

The wait was finally over. “Pirates of the Caribbean At World’s End” came on May 24th and, according to rumors, sailed the series off into the sunset. Taking place probably a few weeks after the huge cliffhanger of "Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man’s Chest" with Capt. Barbossa being resurrected by Tia Dalma and a quest to save Jack Sparrow from Davy Jones’ Locker was set in motion.

The quest to find Jack starts with finding the notorious Sao Feng, a ruthless pirate lord who controls the passages of the east seas from Singapore-- and what pirate wouldn’t be complete in these movies if they didn’t have one heck of a grudge against Jack Sparrow-- and coerce him into giving Barbossa, Elizabeth Swann, and Will Turner the navigational charts to “world’s end” to find Jack. After Will strikes a bargain with Feng the charts show the crew through crazy landscapes like frozen waters and down Niagara Falls.

Once finding Jack, a bit more out of his mind, back upon the Black Pearl, the crew is now “double captained” by Jack and Barbossa, acting like five year-olds, back to the Caribbean and Shipwreck Cove for a meeting of the nine Pirate Lords to debate about whether or not to go to war against the East India Trading Company and the Flying Dutchman. Barbossa proposes releasing the sea goddess Calypso from her imprisoned body and appeal to her good side to see if she could help them win the battle.

“At World’s End” is an entertaining movie in itself. There are several scenes where you can tell that the script writers were trying way too hard to try and make this a movie of epic proportions, as if the movie wasn’t going to be good enough itself, they needed to add in that extra nugget to try and push it over the edge… And it did; a bit too far over the edge.

The biggest downfall of this movie was the lack of suspense created when trying to have a secret created, but as soon as a secret is brought up the camera cuts straight to the person(s) of “mystery.” The secret of whom Calypso may be lasted all but 2/10’s of a second. The attack of the 50 foot Calypso was another piece of the overdone cake that was the plotline of this movie.

Two really big positives about this movie is the character development within Will and Will’s father Bootstrap Bill. Will becomes quite the sneaky lil fella and creates quite a few Jack Sparrow-esque plans to help his own cause. Bootstrap Bill becomes a very sorrowful character, slowly becoming attached to the ship like the crewman Exposition in “Dead Man’s Chest.” Bootstrap is made out to be a Gollum-like character. A character whom the viewer will feel sorry for him, but there’s a bit of evil that is being stirred up in him because of his deal with Davy Jones.

If there’s one big complaint about the movie is that is doesn’t drag you in as easily as "Curse of the Black Pearl" did. Throughout the movie you are constantly being teased to where you can be brought in and kick back and enjoy a movie, but then they do something like another rousing speech by Elizabeth to make you come to your senses and realize that you are watching a movie.

Visually “Pirates” is an amazing picture with a few good twists along the way. While running just shy of three hours there are several scenes that could have cut from the movie: i.e. a western homage on a long, random beach just before the big fight scene that could have saved about five minutes of the viewer’s time. The, supposed to be, big epic speeches given by none other that Elizabeth, continuing from origins of the character in the first movie, are just cheesy and are just obvious and not very gripping.


Overall “At World’s End” is far and away a better and more enjoyable movie than “Dead Man’s Chest.” There is a lot more originality, and a lot less rum jokes. Overall the alleged final installment of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” receives a B-.