A beautiful, glorious, long mess (spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (4 June 2007)

Just saw it yesterday, and it was about what I was expecting. Too long, took itself too seriously at times, too overblown. There were some good bits, but if not for Johnny Depp this movie would have died quickly. Barbossa was welcome back, though I didn't cotton too much to him and Sparrow getting along and having meaningful conversations at one point. Keira Knightley was badass but way too pretty amid a vast crew of filthy pirates. The movie was far too long. They could easily have trimmed out twenty minutes of 'atmosphere' and battle scenes. Speaking of battle scenes, I had a problem with the big fight at the end. The Pearl and the Dutchman were firing at each other across the center of the maelstrom and blowing each other all to hell, but look at the ships-they are both tilted towards the center, which would mean the cannons would completely miss each other and hit the water below. The endings were great for everybody except Will and Elizabeth. That really sucked. Sparrow should have done the deed, as he had nobody to come back for. I guess it's better than Will dying, but it still sucked. This really made me miss the Curse of the Black Pearl. That was an awesome movie. This series has hit the same problem the Star Wars series faced--reacting to crowd response to a great original movie by trying to turn it into an epic saga. The result in both cases was a ludicrous plot that took forever to get anywhere. If I had Jack's magic compass, it would have been pointing to the theater exit.