Pirates of the Caribbean: At Wits End - A Film Review

[Coolhand]

Pirates of the Caribbean: At Wits End

Short Version. It has a shivering monkey. And that’s about it.

Long Version:

HERE BE SPOILERS! ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK

Trends. Great, ain’t they? Well not always.

Take for example the "Matrix Trend": First you make one very good, enjoyable stand alone movie that performs far better at the box office than anyone was expecting. Then, against all evidence to the contrary, you make dubious claims that you planned it as a trilogy all along, and film two sequels back to back.
At least one of the sequels must be absolutely appalling, maybe one of them will be slightly more enjoyable than that, but the important thing is that by the end of the trilogy you have utterly destroyed any credibility and goodwill that first film may have garnered you with the audience.

The Pirates of the Caribbean films follow this trend: A fantastic first film, an abysmal mess of a sequel, and a totally confused damp squib of a third movie.

POTC:AWA (yes, I’m THAT lazy) picks up from where POTC: DMC left off, with Jack Sparrow trapped in Davy Jones’ locker and the others trying to get him out. Things start off quite well with a reasonably entertaining action sequence in Singapore, a slightly underused Chow-Yun-Fat, and a bizarrely crass joke involving Keira Knightly’s nether regions. After that it’s off to sail to the land of the dead to get Captain Depp.

And from this point onwards, nothing much happens for two hours.

Oh, there are scenes, much of them pointless padding that could easily have been skipped. There is dialogue, much of it confusing and “mysterious”, apparently to disguise the fact that the writers have no frickin idea what’s actually going on. There are double cross, triple crosses, quadruples crosses…in fact so many crosses that every vampire on the planet has probably been repelled helplessly all the way out of the solar system at near light speed velocities…

But none of that is a substitute for plot: i.e for things happening that actually make an ounce of sense. I found myself sitting through it thinking things along the lines of “But if THAT’s what he wanted, why did he go through that vast complicated rigmarole of XYZ when he could have just done X and ended the movie?”

“Because we’ve still got two hours to fill!” scream the writers from the clouds of cigarette smoke floating around the laptops that Jerry Bruckheimer has chained them to.

Worse still, this is a film full of cop-outs.

For example, are you wondering how they deal with the Kraken, the BIG BAD in the second movie? They don’t. It gets killed off screen between the films. That’s like blowing up the Death Star between episodes 4 and 5, and just saying “oh yeah, Luke toasted it when you weren’t looking. Can’t believe you missed it, man it was COOL!”.

Worse still, the last act of the movie steadily builds towards the heroes assembling a pirate fleet to fight against the British Navy. We see them go to great effort to convince the various pirate lords to throw their ships together into one huge butt-kicking armada, and we start to drool at the prospect of the Pirates Vs Royal Navy all out smack-down which the film is blatantly heading for…

And then it doesn’t happen.

All the ships hang back FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER whilst the two flagships sail up and go mano-e-mano around a massive whirlpool FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER. Apparently no-one thinks: “Sod this, I’m not fighting in gale-force winds next to that whirlpool! Roll in the cannons, men, we’re bloody well out of here!”

And then, in the final act of utter nautical lunacy, the two good guys ships sail in parallel down either side of the bad guy ship at point blank range, blasting away, apparently unaware that cannon-balls have a tendency to go clean through a ship and out the other side!

Even I, with my limited knowledge of sailing ships, was in hysterics in my seat on seeing quite possibly the most half-witted navel tactic ever portrayed on film. They must have been getting military advice from some 18th century equivalent of Torchwood…

Lastly, some of the characters seem to have changed utterly since the last film. And not in a “character arc growth” good way. For example, the evil, growling Captain Barbossa from the first movie? Now a lovable rouge who marries Will and Elizabeth during the final fight. What kind of credibility destroying rubbish is that? It’s like having Hannibal Lector go vegan or Rambo go pacifist or something.

There’s more, there’s so much more that’s wrong with this movie but it would take me three hours to actually list all the problems and, quite frankly, I can’t be bothered.

The ONE saving grace is the bit with the shivering Monkey. If you’ve seen the film, you’ll know the bit I mean. How cute is that? Awwwww I want one….

“Barkeep? One Monkey please, extra cold!”

[Rane Longfox]

Well, I liked it

[Circus Cranium]

It’s like having Hannibal Lector go vegan


he he he he

I'm gonna go see it this week. I'm not sure why everyone hated the second one, I thought it was better than the first. Aside from having to watch Kiera Knightly do that duck thing with her lips all the way through.

[HoopyFrood]

Yeah, seriously, that girl has one expression...gritted teeth and pouted lips.

Oh, and her dramatic, courage-inspiring speech. Yeah...that's what it was. Absolutely.

I totally agree with the double crossing, triple crossing, more-crosses-than-you-can-shake-a-stick-at. The cinema in which I watched the film had an intermission and I had to use the respite to think "Right...so...what the hell's going on?!"

I, too, was all set for a fantastic sea battle between the pirate ships and the British fleet. I mean, really, what's the point of getting them to unpack their boats and set them out at sea if they're not going to fight? A huge all-out sea battle would've made a much better ending than the oh-so-dramatic fight in a whirpool. But then the British fleet turn tail and run away anyway..."Oh no, we've lost one of our ships! Despite outnumbering the pirates by about three to one, we'd better scarper!"

However...yes, the shivering monkey. Very cute. And Davy Jones in a bucket. Fantastic.

[Joel007]

I was wondering about the cannon elevation when they're firing straight at each other while being mast to mast...

[Coolhand]

Originally Posted by HoopyFrood

And Davy Jones in a bucket. Fantastic.

Odd thing is, when I first saw that i thought "Oh thats a clever way of getting around the curse." But then it started to raise all sorts of logic questions like "so, can he stay in a swimming pool? A bath? What if someone threw some sand into the water? Does mud count? What if there was a flood?"

It ended up hurting my poor little head. I suspect I may have been over analysing somewhat...

Oh, and I totally forgot to whine about the cannon thing! Kudos to Joel007 for catching that one!

[Rane Longfox]

Cannons in that sort of ship could be elevated up to about 20 degrees, iirc. Awkward, but it would still work.

[Joel007]

Ever seen Master and Commander on the Far Side of the World?
they can only fire the cannons once at that elevation, because the kick makes them plough through the decking

[manephelien]

Great review! The real movie was, of course, called PotC at World's End, but I must admit that At Wit's End describes my emotional state at the end of the movie so much better.

Oh, and I assume you didn't stay for the scene at the end of the credits?

[HardScienceFan]

Thanks everybody for their thoughts,I know enough now,and my initial misgivings seem to be correct.
Saved some bucks!!!
Sequels,yikes
M & C with Russell,now that was some movie,hey Joel.

[Coolhand]

Originally Posted by manephelien

Oh, and I assume you didn't stay for the scene at the end of the credits?

Ah, I heard about this. I didn't actually stay for it in World's End. I did for Dead Man's Chest, sat through what felt like hours of credits and all I got was a dog on a chair. So I didn't bother for World's End. I read about it afterwards on this forum though.

Apparently, the post credit bit for Worlds end would have made a lot more sense if they'd left some crucial dialouge in the final cut of the last film, rather than removing it in the final edit. (Typical, the one line of dialouge that makes sense gets frickin' CUT!)

[Annie]

I thought it was OK. I enjoyed it at the Cinema for the expereince, but if I had it on dvd at home, I wouldn't have sat there for 3 hours.

[Rane Longfox]

Originally Posted by Joel007

Ever seen Master and Commander on the Far Side of the World?
they can only fire the cannons once at that elevation, because the kick makes them plough through the decking

I learn about Tall Ships by sailing them, not by watching horrifically bad adaptations of unrealistic books, sorry

[Winters_Sorrow]

Originally Posted by Annie

I thought it was OK. I enjoyed it at the Cinema for the expereince, but if I had it on dvd at home, I wouldn't have sat there for 3 hours.

This about sums up my feelings about it as well. I agree that really it's two sequels that weren't needed and the third one was certainly an hour too long - I actually thought the movie would have worked much better without Sao Feng bit at all. Barbossa going "hey, we need to go to this conflab at shipwreck bay, people" would have saved about 45 minutes on it's own

I enjoyed the movie for the spectacle it provides but it's definitely a "leave your brains at home" movie.

[Firefly]

To be honest I found it laborious, over worked and hugely disapointing. Too may pointless characters dragging out the woeful plotline along with a predictable ending the audience actually started talking two thirds the way through with a sigh of relief at the end, not a good sign.