Drowned due to lack of creativity

Rating: 4/10 (21 December 2014)

"Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" is the third installment of the franchise and the last that featured director Gore Verbinski and actors Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley. The film managed Academy Award nominations for its visual effects and makeup work, but I found it quite a downgrade compared to the two previous installments. It was the fourth most successful in the United States in terms of box office and continues right where the second film finished one year earlier, namely with Jack Sparrow's (alleged) death. With the return of Barbossa at the end of film number 2, it left me with high hopes for the third. Almost all of them were disappointed. Maybe one reason was that these films kept getting longer and the third did almost hit three hours and had many insignificant scenes that could have been completely left out.
The Navy now is in complete control of Davy Jones as they have his heart. This was one of the major letdowns. Davy Jones was a pretty interesting villain, but when they showed him as a string puppet controlled by the Navy, who also is shown quite vulnerable in the face of a previous love affair with Calypso (useless character in my opinion), all the magic is gone. He was nobody who needed any more character development. What he needed was to be scary and ruthless just like he was in the second film. Captain Sparrow won't appear until 30 minutes into the movie. I am not a great fan of Depp as an actor, but he does a good job with the franchise I believe and when he is off screen, there is just something missing. Bloom does not have the talent or personality to carry a film like this. Also the whole reviving Sparrow story felt a bit shoddy to me. Also why would people, seconds after they don't kill each other because gun powder got wet, act like colleagues, almost friends again. This did not make any sense.
Then there is the whole Yun-Fat Chow Asian related subplot. None of this wowed me at all and even the parts intended as funny in-between, like the foul breath sending him down the plank, couldn't really make me smile. The main villain here was a real human for the first time and I did not like that. Barbossa and Davy Jones were just so much cooler. Visually, there is not much wrong with this one, but storywise it is all a huge mess. Elizabeth Swann's sudden rise to power felt really unrealistic. Her being a Japanese Kriemhild was cringeworthy at times and that was really the problem of the script, not of her acting. Many people close to her were dying here: the former Commodore and Swann's father to name only two of them. The Brethren Court did not feel interesting at all. There are some pretentious quotes included like the one about living (with yourself) forever and Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones discovering his acting "talent" in his late 60s was just so random and weird.
On a more positive note, the monkey and the parrot had some funny moments and the 3 vs 3 meeting with nobody else around was okay too. However, there is really not many more positive things I took from this film. It really dragged a lot and the emotional ending with Swann and Turner on the island just did not manage to deliver the way I hoped it would after everything that happened in this film before. The marriage proposal earlier was also downright bad and felt really thrown in without much thinking from the writers. They must have run out of ideas here. What a shame, especially as the script comes from the same people who did a fine job on PotC 1 and 2. Maybe the story just did not have enough substance for a third movie. I am glad the fourth turned out better again and I hope the same can be said about movies 5 and 6. So far, "At World's End" is the weakest installment from the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series. It is a disappointing ending to the initial trilogy.