PotC3 - world's end, blog's beginning!

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.

The premieres for heavily-fan-influenced movies are always interesting to attend. Pirates lined the floors of the local Cinemark theater for long hours just for the sake of being among the first to see the show. For the first time (that I can remember, anyway) the midnight premieres were bumped up to 8pm - presumably to allow for the younger audiences to enjoy and still attend school on friday morning. Well, screw enjoyment, the movie theaters still only care about the bottom line. But I digress.

This movie delivered. Over the past year, I have heard hundreds of theories, guesses, and added my own fan-ish desires to the melting pot. My only requests of the screenwriters was a tighter storyline and don't let Elizabeth and Jack hook up - sorry to the E/J shippers out there, but, Will's too much of a lost puppy without Elizabeth and it would be just plain bad writing and bad form to lose that character out of fandom-shippyness.

Now I'm not here to throw up spoilers and regurgitate a wonderful movie just to ruin it for everyone else. I'm a critic if there ever was one and my aim is quality over shineyness, a solid base and substance before the dazzle of the bullshit, thank you. So for the purposes of this review, suffice it to say that I got my hoped for storyline. This one felt less like a fanfiction fabrication and more like another installment in the 'Pirates' set. It was more finished and polished up with a lot of details that sent the trilogy's fans howling with laughter as they recognized the inside joke to otherwise common scenery or lines.

Characterization in this one was excellent as well, no more of the characters acting just-so and within a predictable set of behaviors that we already knew from the first movie. This time around, the characters went to the ends of the earth to grow a bit of dimension. Even Will took on an unexpected twist and I wound up very much liking that character by the end of it. In Dead Man's Chest, conversely, I just wanted to smack him every time he showed up. All we saw was this mindless little pawn of Elizabeth's private-stalker-club whereas now, tahdah, the darling boy has some depth to him, some meat on his bones to balance out Orlando's inner drama-fiend.

'At World's End' tied things up nicely and they were able to open up a door for a completely new story if they wanted to bring the franchise back for a fourth film. I've heard rumors that there will be a fourth one but I haven't checked in to it personally. As always, stick around until the credits have rolled. They either start the new movie or finish the third one. Either scenario, I'm happy with it. It did not leave the audience at that uncomfortable cliff with vital questions going unanswered. They completed a story, and what's better, they did it in an entire arch; each movie held it's own weight and was able to stand alone to a degree, but when folded altogether, we have continuity. That is so rare that studios will go out on that limb.

All in all, GOOD MOVIE!!