I was really surprised by At World's End.

Rating: 10/10 (26 May 2007)

Turning a ride into a movie is risky. Turning that wildly successful movie based on a ride into an epic trilogy with budgets of $300,000,000 a piece and running times of almost three hours each is almost akin to investing in "Sahara". I agree that DMC definitely had its share of glaring problems (i.e. that entire waste of time with Jack and the natives). In addition, the shift in tone to from the more lighthearted aspects of the first one into the emotional and complicated story lines of epics was off putting at first. I enjoyed it, but it took another watching for me to appreciate the movie, and to fast-forward through the natives. At World's End did not suffer from any of these problems. Arguably, a few of the talky scenes could have been trimmed, but every other frame of the movie is used to masterfully tie up the three movies as a semi-cohesive and vastly entertaining trilogy. After the bastardization of Spiderman, I walked into another second sequel with an enormous cast and even larger budget with trepidation. I was blown away. The special effects were truly awe inspiring. Davy Jones continues to be the finest example of what CGI can do when used correctly, and the maelstrom finale is just jaw dropping. However, unlike Spiderman 3, the special effects do not move the movie or the storyline, the characters do. Despite the enormous amounts of money and time that goes into the final battle sequence, it is still about people, love, loss, fear, and that is why is so much more successful than Spidey 3 or X3. They did not forget that no one really cares about a glorified video game. Despite raising the bar for special effects to unimaginable heights, At World's End never loses sight of the fact that we really like these people and care about the story. Despite the complaints that the story is complicated and it does beg a few continuity questions, everyone involved gave everything they had to make this upward hill battle a rousing success.