Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Finally, our long national nightmare is over. This Pirates shit is over with.

For now, anyway.

For all the talk about how confusing this movie is, you can follow the plot if you make sure to listen carefully to every gutteral utterance by every tiertiary character in the goddamn thing. The real problem is that all the backstory and mythology that pops up out of nowhere in this, the third movie in the trilogy, is introduced in a string of awkward, leaden expository dialogues that make keeping up a chore that offers no real rewards. Even if you understand the plot, who cares? The stakes of the plot are so hazy (the evil British guy wants to rid the seas of piracy...and that's a bad thing?) that it's impossible to muster any interest. As for the characters, well, if any of the actors asked director Gore Verbinski what their motivation was in a given scene, he probably answered "Fuck if I know, dude." The characters shift allegiences at the drop of a hat and for muddy reasons (Johnny Depp wants to be immortal, Orlando Bloom wants to save his father, Keira Knightley wants to save piracy...until they don't anymore, of course) and you just want to say to the screen: "who gives a shit, blow something up already." And, indeed, when they finally do blow shit up, it's pretty cool.

The weirdest part of the movie is that it is objectively pro-piracy. Keira Knightley gives a big Braveheart speech to all the pirates near the end about how they were fighting for their freedom...persumably their freedom to steal shit from people after shooting them with canons. What with the bad guys being representatives of the East India Company, there's a possible anti-capitalist subtext at play here. The pirates talk alot about their "code" and their "honor," and as anyone who has read his Marx knows, capitalism is the ultimate destroyer of tradition: there is no "code of honor" in a capitalist system, only profit rules. However, there could be a Libertarian gloss to this, as well, since the East India Company wasn't an independent corporation, but rather a franchise of the British government. None of this is intentional, of coures, it's just the inevitable byproduct of making a series of films based on a theme park ride about pirates.

Whether inspired by Emma Goldman or Ayn Rand, At World's End is the film equivilent of doing your taxes: long, aggravating, and confusing, but it leaves you with a sense of accomplishment when you finally finish it.

Score: 6.0


Also, I saw the first full-length trailer for the Transformers live action movie and may I say: goddamn you, Michael Bay, for making me want to see this thing.