What is there to say about Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End? It is a film that so totally and completely defies logic that to discuss it in logical terms seems foolish. It is a movie that actually seems to taunt its audience with its lack of logic, almost daring those who watch to point out some of the rather gaping plot flaws so that it may laugh back at us.
To question why Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander) is executing pirates and their friends at the beginning of the movie in order to get them to sing a hymn that does he-knows-not-what is silly. To query how Beckett even knows of the hymn is even more foolish. To wonder why some characters are dispatched with little to no fanfare after doing virtually nothing for two movies is fruitless. To ask why the Kraken died is to mistakenly assume the import of plot points from any of the previous films. To even begin to contemplate why Jack Sparrow has some sort of multiple personality disorder and whether or not the multiple personalities are always entirely a product of his imagination or in any way real requires a complete and total misreading of the film.
At World’s End begins soon after the final scenes of the last Pirates movie, Dead Man’s Chest. We find our heroes, save Jack Sparrow, in Singapore, attempting to steal both a map and convince fellow pirate Captain Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat) to part with both a crew and a boat. Eventually, they get their crew and are off to save Jack, who is “at world’s end” in Davy Jones’s Locker. Sparrow is soon found, the crew escapes the Locker and the movie begins (probably about 40 minutes into its running time).
Meanwhile, it turns out that Davy Jones’s (Bill Nighy) true love, Calypso, isn’t dead, but merely imprisoned in human form as Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris); although there are attempts to deceive pirates that it’s actually Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley), the audience is assured that it’s not Elizabeth. In plot contrivances, twists, turns, loops, and swoons that it would take far, far, too long to go into here, it turns out that the nine pirate lords who form the Brethren Court are going to meet, and during this meeting a faction will push for freeing Calypso, who was imprisoned by said pirate lords’ antecedents during the first such Brethren Court.
Article comments
1 - Lisa McKay
Congratulations! This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net, which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States, and Boston.com, which will allow even more readers to enjoy it.
2 - Mary K. Williams
Thanks for the review TV&FG - still looking forward to it
3 - Mythophile
Now, now. You're being overly critical. Pirates is supposed to be a fun franchise, not a philosophical movie. This stuff is common in the fantasy genre. Granted some of the logic is stretched and too many characters take actions based on hunches(actually, I would find this in character for pirates). Several scenes are too long. There are, however, no actual plot holes; there are only gaps where things could have been explained more clearly.
Becket ordered Jones to kill the Kraken as a loyalty test, presumably to see if having Jones' heart would have any effect on Jones.
4 - saucyJack
I think that Jack may have lost his immature charm simply because this is the movie where he grows up after his little 'father-son' talk.
Still, they seemed to like to make him jerk-ish in the past two movies.