You’d expect the star of POC: At World’s End to be Jack Sparrow. He isnt. Nor is the Will Turner-Elizabeth Swann romance the main attraction. Beastie Boy Davy Jones? Not a chance. The centrepiece of the third edition of the Pirates Trilogy is Gore Verbinski and his moral dilemmas. The cinematic questions director Verbinski wrestles with are as many-tentacled and fearsome as the Kraken. Should Jack kill Davy Jones or should Will? Should Elizabeth marry Will or Jack? Should Davy Jones be portrayed as man or monster? Choices, choices. And the biggest question that you can tell haunted Verbinski’s waking moments - will there be a fourth outing of the Pirates? The ending seems to suggest that there will be but just to be on the safe side Verbinki stuffs this maybe-final film with as many characters and as much action as it can hold and so many special effects that it positively bursts at the seams with CGI.
So what’s the story? The East India Company holds Davy Jones’ beating heart which puts him in their power. They band together to rid the world of piracy once and for all. The 9 pirate lords must unite to defend themselves against the combined forces of The Flying Dutchman and The Endeavour but wait - there’s a pirate missing. Captain Jack was swallowed whole by the Kraken and is now languishing in Davy Jones’ Locker with no company save the Black Pearl and himself - quite literally too. Jack Sparrow only appears well into the first half of the movie and to make up for it Verbinski hits us with multiple versions of Jack when he does turn up. It’s meant to be a plot device to portray Jack’s many-faceted personality splintered by his isolation in the Locker but it’s not half as entertaining as Verbinski thinks it is.
The resurrected Captain Barbossa leads Will, Elizabeth, Tia Dalma and the rest of the crew to rescue Jack from the Locker. How do they get a ship you ask? Quite simply really - a hop, jump and skip takes them to Singapore where they storm the bathhouse of Pirate lord Sao Feng, purloin his ship and leave him to join forces with the Company. After Jack is rescued it’s a mad whirl of subplots including: Will’s desperation to save his father which prompts him to cross and doublecross Jack, the release of Calypso the sea-goddess from human bondage in the form of Tia Dalma, romance blooms anew between Elizabeth and Will culminating in a wedding at sea and the truth about Davy Jones and his broken heart.
The central character of POC3 is the anti-hero and that description could apply to any of the many players that people the film. How many villains is too many villains? Verbinski doesnt know and obviously doesnt care. Jack is a lovable, rascally villain. Captain Barbossa is a funny, sarcastic villain. Sao Feng is a cruel, bad tempered villain. Will Turner is a lovelorn, misguided villain. Admiral Norrington is a villain in search of redemption. Cutler Beckett is a cold hearted, businesslike villain. Sadly, the most villainous of all, Davy Jones is reduced from the nightmarish proportions he assumed in Dead Man’s Chest to little more than a fish-faced lackey of the Company. All the villains are in cahoots and each double crosses the other.
Confused? So was the script which got lost somewhere between the doldrums and World’s End. But fear not - what the movie lacks in substance it makes up for in spectacle. Magnificent special FX achieve a mad brilliance in scenes including the Up is Down sequence in which the crew must capsize the ship so that it sails under water instead of over. Director Gore also discovers that CGI is a good way to keep a kiddie film from being a kiddie film. Gore is spilt unashamedly - pun intended – and the film is gut-wrenchingly disgusting at times. However, Jack’s and Barbossa’s antics are a reason to buy a ticket and popcorn. Rolling Stone Keith Richards’ turn as Jack’s daddy is another. Why, though, is he called Captain Teague when his son’s name is Sparrow? Unsolved mystery, just one of many in the movie. Why are there 9 pieces of 8? And why did Sao Feng assume Elizabeth was Calypso and not Tia Dalma? Many ends are left untied and POC3 is so weighed down by it’s own excesses that it barely manages to float. At it’s conclusion Gore Verbinski leaves you with a movie that takes on the personality of Jack Sparrow - it’s entertaining, crazy, complicated and will never achieve immortality.