A Great Film that needs a few barnacles scraped off (spoilers)

Rating: 7/10 (5 July 2007)

Pirates Of The Caribbean, Curse of the Black Pearl, was one of the most surprisingly great movies I think I've ever seen in cinema. It had everything; a great plot, terrific characters, clever action, and dialog that reeked of both classic filmography and modern wit. To be honest, I really didn't expect a sequel, and if there was one, I truly didn't think it would be nearly as good as the original.
Wow. Was I wrong. Pirates 2, Dead Mans chest, came like a mighty wind, building wonderfully on past material and introducing some fantastic new faces to the cast, including the stunningly animated squid faced maw of the unforgettable Captain Davy Jones. Many people bash the sequel, saying it doesn't live up to the first, but that's likely because the first was so memorable that the second just seems to be caught in the shadow of it's greatness. I took Dead Mans Chest in context with the first as an extension of the story, and for that reason, I enjoyed it immensely, and in some areas I actually feel that its BETTER than the original. I figured it out pretty quick that if there was an out of nowhere sequel that there would probably be a threequel, ala-"Back to the Future." I wasn't expecting the dark cliffhanger that "Dead Mans Chest" provided, but it certainly kept me in suspense about the third, and I was eager to see how the story would wrap up all the loose ends.
Finally, Summer of 2007, it came. Pirates of the Caribbean, At Worlds End.
And, Wow...it was...pretty good.
I wanted you to read my history with this series so you can better understand my feelings about the third installment. Perhaps with all the backtracking you can fully understand why I feel that pirates 3 is a good movie...but falls flat in the face of its predecessors. The hardest part of writing this review is that its difficult to pinpoint what's specifically wrong with this movie. Really, in terms of writing and acting, there's nothing fundamentally bad about it. But at the same time, there's nothing fundamentally GREAT about it either, and I think therein lies the rub.
As you watch this film, the first thing that might make you raise an eyebrow is the VERY abrupt and VERY dark opening. It's probably this, more than anything else, that damages the movie as a whole. You may remember with the first two movies the mysterious and intriguing openings that led you into the story, (No opening credits. YAY!) like in COTBP where you see young Elizebith singing a pirate song and in DMC with older Elizebeth alone at an empty, rained out wedding ceremony. In AWE, however, we're treated with something remarkably different. A bunch of men, women, and children getting hung mechanically by the British army for "consorting with pirates." I'm sorry, but this just struck me as a terrible way to begin the movie, especially one with such a wide audience age range. Plus, it just felt out of spirit with the series, which always had a sort of swashbuckling, light-hearted charm about it.
The entire script feels conflicted within itself. You get the distinct impression that there was some brilliant talent behind the keyboard, but they were working within a confined plot that was constantly holding them back. One can't help but wonder if they wrote all the cliffhangers in Pirates 2 without fully thinking out how they would work in the third. (I later found out on the internet that they didn't. The script wasn't even fully written before the filming started.)
Some stuff just feels pulled out of thin air, like the "Ten Pieces of Eight" malarkey or the idea that the extremely memorable voodoo witch from 2 is really the sea-goddess calypso in disguise. True, there was a super-hidden connection between Davy Jones and the witch in the sequel movie, and if you looked up the Davy Jones legend in literature you'd find out that Calypso was indeed the classic characters heart-breaking love, but the structure of this movie that leads to this discovery is shaky, to say the least.
There are some blazing moments of greatness in this film, most of them involving, you guessed it, Jack Sparrow. His dramatic return on a wave of netherworld crabs is truly awesome. And the ending battle is equally incredible, resulting in the most beautiful marriage of CGI and real-life combat animation you may see for a long time. Also, the dialog, while somewhat hindered by the confines of finally ending the series, is just as quirky and funny as before, with classic stooges like Jack, the two pirate guys, and those chumly soldiers from COTBP all returning in top form.
The ending, if you haven't seen it by now, is surprising. Very surprising. So surprising that many would say it sucks. I don't hold this opinion, but I will admit it irked me. I'll leave the final verdict on this little subject to you, the viewer.
Pirates 3 is probably the best threequel to come out of Summer of 2007, and that's a good thing. But at the same time, it takes some major risks with the franchise, and not all of them pay off. Pirates 1 still stands as a modern classic, if there is such a term, and its sequel is terrific as well. Unfortunately for Dead Mans Chest, its plot is irrevocable tied to its controversial prodigy, which I fear may drag it down to the depths of "meh" ness like a kracken dragging down a frigate.
Pirates 3 is a worthy addition to the franchise, but I can easily live with it not being added to my movie collection. But that's just me.