Okay, so intro … intro ... should I be funny? Er, try to be funny? Maybe just a quick “Avast, let’s review 2007’s Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End?” No, needs more than that.
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| Ceci n'est pas une Jack Sparrow. |
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| No, it's fine. You Always ramble on too long anyway. Keep the introduction short. |
What was that?
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| Don’t listen to him, you’re doing fine. |
Thanks! Wait, what? Well, never mind.
Okay, what to talk about … what to talk about ...
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| Do a plot summary! |
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| Oh for Christ's sake, no! No one wants to read a plot summary! Either they've seen the movie or they don't give a shit. |
The movie stars Johnny Depp as
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| Yeah yeah, the gang's all here: Bill Nighy is Squidward Von Spaghetti Monster, Jack Davenport is "Nobody Cares" Norrington, Tom Hollander is the other British guy I can't be bothered to remember. |
Wait, is he the new Spider-Man?
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| No, that’s Tom Holland - I can see how you’d get confused. |
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Doesn’t take much. Anyway, Tom Holland was probably
a newborn when this came out.
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Also in a somewhat expanded role is Naomie Harris as Tia Dalma, who turns out to be the human vessel for the goddess Calypso, former lover of Davy Jones. She is freed from her Earthly form, basically to have a reason for a giant whirlpool to appear in the middle of the ocean and serve as a backdrop for the protracted climax (“Maelstrom!” one of the pirates cries out, reminding me of a recently closed EPCOT attraction.)
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| No! No goddamn EPCOT references! Do you know how pissed I am that you shoehorned your whining about EPCOT Center
into the review of my amazing adventures
in Mathmagic Land!? Hey, stop linking! |
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| Oh sure, “amazing adventure”... nobody likes Mathmagic Land. |
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Hey! At least they liked The Three Caballeros post!
Not like you'd know anything about that,
Mr. Seven Views. |
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I’m a cult classic, so there.
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| Cult classic my ass, you stupid- |
Hey! I’m trying to write about Pirates!
How the hell is this any way to finish Pirates Week?
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| Pirates Week - nobody cares.
Just write an angry review with lots of swearing!
Everyone fucking loves it when you get mad!
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| That’s not true!
I think a lot of readers enjoyed the Goofy Movie post.
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| Pfft! The Parent Trap! The Lion King!
Most popular posts! He hated 'em!
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Well I didn’t actually hate The Lion King, I was just trying to point out-
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| Here, I’ll write the post for you: FUCK PIRATES! THIS MOVIE’S SHIT! DISNEYLAND HAS LOST IT’S WAY!! WAAH WAAH WAAH!! |
Stop it! I need to write something substantive.
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| Ooh, “substantive” - nice! Makes you sound so smart!
Use “nadir” next!
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| My apologies. |
Anyway … While still an over-bloated mess, At World’s End, unlike its immediate predecessor, at least seems to have a general focus. That being the exploration of the seven seas and growing influence of capitalism (exemplified by the East India Trading Company, portrayed like a vile 19th century Weyland-Yutani Corporation) means the end of piracy, and with it romanticism and mythology. This can be seen in the strange but somewhat touching scene as Jack and Barbossa mourn the once-fearsome Kraken, now a rotting corpse on a beach (apparently slain by the British once they’d taken control of the Flying Dutchman.)
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| Nice! I’ve missed the deeper connections you used to make.
Remember how you connected the history of the Disney company
to Candleshoe? That was lovely!
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Well, I wouldn’t call this a “deeper connection” - it’s all right there in the movie.
Besides, hardly anyone read the Candleshoe post.
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| Don’t pity yourself, it’s unattractive.
Also, the Alien reference may be stretching it.
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| Are you still sure the punctuation should go inside the parenthesis? |
No! I mean, yes! No more discussion about that! On this blog, I put the period inside the parenthesis, and I’m sticking to it!
Anyway, there are several sequences where audiences are treated to Jack Sparrow talking to multiple copies of himself, in what are most likely hallucinations resulting from his trauma from the land of the dead-
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| You mean that de-saturated Arizona desert?
What was with that?
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Now that you point it out, the entire sequence within Davy Jones’ locker (presumably a different destination than “regular” dead people end up in - I don’t know, it’s not explained in any way,) with dozens of Jack Sparrows crewing a grounded Black Pearl, seems like Disney cynically punishing audiences: “So, you want more Jack Sparrow? Well, here’s a bunch of him! Choke on him!”
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| Tee hee! |
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Yeah, none of those scenes made any sense.
Why didn’t Sparrowman just unfurl his wings
and fly out of there?
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| ... |
That’s not even funny - please stop. The portrayal of Jack Sparrow in this installment swings wildly from the cunning adventurer of the first film to a raving madman, which reaches a ridiculous zenith-
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| Zenith! I love it! |
-when two cartoonish “devil vs. angel” Jacks appear on either of his shoulders, arguing over whether or not he should captain the Flying Dutchman. I almost lost it at this point in the film, feeling that a shark (or some other CG sea creature) had been jumped.
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| Obviously, I’d say you did lose it, buddy.
The rum probably didn’t help.
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I only had a little!
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| Your drinking alone does concern me… |
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Yeah, I can hear him now: “But it’s Pirates Week!
I’m entitled!” What’ll be the excuse next time?
“Oh, it’s Lalla Ward’s birthday! Let’s watch City of Death
and down a bottle of White Zinfandel!”
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Quiet, both of you!
The visuals in this film-
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| Too vague! |
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| Talk about Keith Richards! |
No. The single most baffling moment in this film (and so far of any other film I’ve reviewed) is right after Barbossa steers the Black Pearl over the “edge of the world” into the land of the dead, and before the forced “weirdness” of the Davy Jones’ locker sequences: as the ship plunges into darkness, the screen goes black and a brief “sound collage” of music and vocals from the original Disneyland attraction are heard. I actually had to shake my head and back the movie up to make sure I wasn’t imagining it, so out-of-nowhere came this … what do I even call it? Big budget fanwank? The movies are already filled with a number of “shout-outs” to the original attraction; besides the first films “jail scene” and treasure cave, the sequels include Tia Dalma’s cottage resembling the ride’s blue bayou scene, and half of the dialogue spouted off by Barbossa (“It be too late to alter course now, mateys,” etc.) The random blast of Walt-era audio here, however, is extremely strange.
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| Yeah, that was bizarre. |
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| That was more fucked up than
when I turned into a penis!
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| Would you stop talking about the
damn Caballeros movie already? It’s pathetic.
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| Listen, man-in-leotard: once you’ve generated
billions of dollars in T-shirt sales,
then you can talk to me about who’s pathetic.
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| That’s enough - we’re distracting
from the creative process!
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"The creative process!?" Hahahahah!!!
On a blog chock-full of copyrighted material?!
Hahahah!!
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Hey! Fair use … or something.
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| Speaking of which, there haven’t been any pictures yet. |
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| Hilarious caption! |
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| Oh, brother. Talk about pathetic... |
Yeah, this entry’s a disaster. I’ve got two pages of viewing notes and instead of an insightful or entertaining review, I’ve got nearly five pages of me prattling on with figments of my imagination.
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| Did somebody say Imagination!? |
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| No! |
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| No!! |
No! Well, maybe I’ll throw out some random thoughts-
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| Business as usual, then. |
Uhm, Chow Yun-fat thinks Keira is Calypso, tries to rape her, makes her captain of his ship and dies … that’s weird. Then she’s voted pirate king and gives some half-assed speech to inspire all the pirates to fight the British. Elizabeth and Will are married by Barbossa in the middle of a frenetic battle scene … that’s, uhm … stupid. By the time Jack is arguing with himself in the brig, we’re all sick of him - a real shame for such an instantly iconic character. I really thought Will’s father, “Bootstrap” Bill (Stellan Skarsgård) was going to stab Jones’ heart, but instead Will does it and becomes captain of the Flying Dutchman (after a conjugal visit with Elizabeth on some random island,) in the process returning Jones' crew to human form. So apparently they were ludicrous-looking fish people because Davy Jones refused to do his job? Why didn’t they mutiny? Did they like looking like Street Sharks?
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| Don’t throw out a bunch
of rhetorical questions, it’s lazy.
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| I believe it’s called modus operandi. |
The film’s finale (before a protracted denouement of almost Lord Of The Rings redundancy) features the villainous Cutler Beckett doing a slow-motion catwalk across the deck of his ship as both the Black Pearl and Will-captained Flying Dutchman blow it to smithereens around him. His miraculous march - as chunks of splintering, flaming wood fly around him - is as close as these films come to the destructo-porn that is a favored in modern blockbusters (Man Of Steel, the Transformers series, etc.)
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| We’re running rather long -
bring it home, succinctly.
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Uhm, critics hated it, audiences emptied their wallets, ensuring that we’d keep getting increasingly worse sequels in the coming decade-
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| Hey, you haven't seen On Stranger Tides or Dead Men Tell No Tales - you can't make that assumption! I thought you were going to watch all of them this week? |
No! I can’t take anymore Bruckheimer buccaneers!
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| That’s clever, I like that! |
I think I’ve had too much-
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| Rum? |
No, too many over-indulgent blockbusters all at once! I think the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies broke my brain! Look at me! I’m talking to a cartoon duck and a Michael Crawford!
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| You alone can make my song take fliiiiight… |
Oh God, now one of them’s singing. Anyway, soon the beast would come to eat it’s own tail, so to speak-
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| What!? That makes about as much sense as the end of The Three Caballeros. Have you heard of that one? It’s great! |
-as in 2006 the original Pirates attraction at Disneyland (as well as its shorter cousin in Florida) received its own Jack Sparrow and Captain Barbossa animatronics, thereby making it a ride based on a movie based on the ride that’s now about the movie. I think I’ve gone cross-eyed.
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| …help me make the music of the niiiiight! |
I’m done. Goodnight.
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| Adios, amigo. |
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