'Pirates Of The Caribbean 3 - At Worlds End' - Pirates Wins CG Supremacy Battle
By: Tim - aurora - Dunn

As the old saying goes 'three strikes and your out' and this surely applies to 'Pirates Of The Caribbean - At Worlds End'. Pirates 1 and 2 struck gold and three blows them both out of the ballpark! So how should we count those three? In gross income, naw I can't count that many zero's? In major swashbuckling enjoyment or what about in CG brilliance with out peer? Hmm, that's three right there too and yes Pirates 3 shines tall and bright on top of this Disney trilogy.

 

 

Pirates 3 starts up a short while after the end of Pirates 2. The newly resurrected Captain Barbossa, Tia Dalma, and the crew of the Black Pearl find themselves in Singapore looking for maps, ship and a crew to venture into the realm of Davy Jones Locker to free Captain Jack Sparrow from his ultimate Purgatory. Here we begin an extremely mind numbing cross, double cross triple cross, ultimate back stabbing party. In fact my one suggestion in regards to this movie is bring a score card and pen to try and keep up with who is on who's side.

 

 

So why is it so difficult to keep track of who is doing what for whom? Well we obviously have the Pirates side, but wait we find that there are nine pirate Lords forming a Brotherhood (with sisters!) But being pirates its take what you can get and give nothing back, meaning its everyone for themselves. We have Davy Jones and his cursed crew. We have Lord Beckett who's out to destroy all pirates. Then we have Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann. In addition we have several smaller sides in this huge game. Least we forget we also have a parrot, monkey and dog, oh and billions of crabs! However this mess of who betrayed who and who shall rule them all is the core of how things work out for this trilogy and its not poorly done either.

 

 

After the first pretty decent battle we are off to find Davy Jones Locker which lies past words end. We find an even more insane Jack then ever before, who believes his rescuers are just part of his nightmare. We find the Black Pearl in one piece and even looking pretty dang decent considering how torn up we last saw her sinking out of sight. But getting into the realm of the dead is a lot easier then getting out. Along this journey out of Davy Jones Locker we learn the true origins and nature of Davy Jones as well as his original job role. We also learn about Davy's great love and why he and his crew are cursed.

 

 

Once back to the land of the living and thanks to the mass slaying of pirates and anybody/anything that appears to never have meet a bar of soap, a calling of the pirate lords draws all to their strong hold, Shipwreck Cove. With all the pirate lords assembled its now up to them to decide the course they should take death to the way of the pirate or fight. Naturally there are nine lords so there's at least ten different opinions. In the end they name a pirate king to rule them all, or at least so the Pirate Codex claims it should be and if nothing else pirates honor the code. For good reason they honor it too, the keeper of the code is one scary pirate. Oh and he happens to be someone's daddy and man mom sure does not look so sweet anymore!

 

 

With the shocking appointment of the new pirate king, not shocking as to who it is but that one was actually named, it's off to settle all debts. From here I leave the enjoyment of the movie to you to discover. This is a fast long movie. At dang near three hours its a long movie, long time wise and because it does draw a little slow in the middle. Not that its bad nor boring, it's more that this is Pirates and we expect action and we know its coming. And come it does. The last 30 to 40 or so minutes of this movie is worth the wait! We have the grand daddy of all pirate battles, oh and a special event in the mist of the battle.

 

 

This final grand battle is well worth the money and wait because its all out insane. I bet that's exactly what the magical crew at ILM felt, insane as they worked long and hard on this. I also must mention that the team at Digital Domain also helped out too! The effects in this movie are exactly what we have come to expect, something new and mind numbingly delicious. We see ILM's might and magic all through the film as we have seen before, only shinned to a high gloss now, but the ending pulls the plug and drains the energy from you as you watch in awe. Naturally we have the creepy crawly crew of the Flying Dutchman as well as Davy Jones himself and a lot more of them as we were promised. Naturally we have even more and improved water/particle effects as were promised. Add the live action, a mega nasty 'goddess' of a storm and some incredible explosions and you have what you have been hungry for with this ending. You say you have seen the Matrix effect before? Trust me you have never seen it like you will in one scene in the end battle.

 

 

Those who know me, know I love water and particle effects, so much so that I'm back in school to improve my math and programming so I can hopefully some day compete with the water guru god Ron Fedkiw of Stanford and consultant to ILM. After watching this movie I see I need to triple and probably quadruple my learning efforts and man am I excited to do just that. Its dang difficult to believe that most of the water effects in this movie are cg/cg-enhanced its really that good! Oh and the clouds the clouds are just as spectacular.

 

 

Sadly not all is perfect in the CG realm. There are a couple of scenes that could have been much better done, or so we would desire anyways. Namely Jacks, as in Capt and not monkey Jack and yes the monkey has lots of fun scenes, little good Jack/bad Jack's seem strangle out of synch with sitting perfectly in their places. Then there's the incredible growing woman. That scene sadly was really bizarre and looked almost like something from a 50's B-movie, you'll know the one I'm thinking of. Happily that pretty much raps up the down sides of this movie.

 

 

At the end we get what we were promised a wrap up of this trilogy and one to make you happy and proud to sit through it all. We get that, a great ending, granted its not really all that difficult to figure it out long before it happens but it happens well. Happily one promise that was made for the ending has the potential to be broken. That being that this is the end. In fact with the way things end, while wrapped up, it also opens not only the potential for a fourth movie but even presents a plot line for it. For me I say bring it on, I'm ready and waiting! Oh and if you have learned the secret to the Pirate movies is that you HAVE to sit through the closing credits to see a special movie related scene. The one at the end of 'At Worlds End' is well worth the extra few minutes of sitting in that in turns sailing off into the sunset something sweeter.

 

 

Conclusion:
Very few movies ever succeed as a sequel, as for a third installment, forget it, it has only succeeded twice and both of them, namely the original Star Wars trilogy and 'The' trilogy itself 'The Lord of The Rings' were just above marginal at best in there wrap ups. We have already seen two part 3 supposed blockbuster entries for this summer and its not even June yet and both failed to live up to the hype. Yet Pirates 3 does as I stated at the beginning and knocks it out of the ball park. This is a great movie to enjoy, to laugh at, to sit numbed by the immense VFX blowout which feels every bit as grand as the climax of a fireworks show. For me I now wait anxiously for it to come out on DVD so I can watch all three back to back.

Ratings:

IMDB Film Rating: User Rating: 8.6/10 (1,577 votes)

- For a movie going experience I give it: 4.5 out of 5 stars.
If not for alittle to much break from the action I'd give it a perfect 5. If you only see one movie on the big screen this year, I'd highly recommend this one!

- For a technical piece of CG and VFX work I give it: 5 out of 5 stars.
I go to movies for the effects and as with the previous two this one breaks the bleeding edge with a simple click of the claw and throws eveybody else away. I know Transformers is going to be mind blowing but this is going to be an extremely hard one to top!

Credits:

Cast:
Jack Sparrow - Johnny Depp
Barbossa - Geoffrey Rush
Will Turner - Orlando Bloom
Elizabeth Swann - Keira Knightley
Norrington - Jack Davenport
Davy Jones - Bill Nighy
Governor Weatherby Swann - Jonathan Pryce
Pintel - Lee Arenberg
Ragetti - Mackenzie Crook
Gibbs - Kevin McNally
Cotton - David Bailie
'Bootstrap' Bill Turner - Stellan Skarsgård
Lord Cutler Beckett - Tom Hollander
Tia Dalma - Naomie Harris
Marty - Martin Klebba
Mercer - David Schofield
Scarlett - Lauren Maher
Captain Sao Feng - Yun-Fat Chow
Captain Teague - Keith Richards
Captain Ammand - Ghassan Massoud
Captain Jocard - Hakeem Kae-Kazim
Maccus/Dutchman Crewman - Dermot Keaney
Koleniko/Dutchman Crewman - Clive Ashborn
Palifico/Dutchman Crewman - Winston Ellis
Jimmy Legs/Dutchman Crewman - Christopher Adamson
Clacker/Dutchman Crewman - Andy Beckwith
Ogilvey/Dutchman Crewman - Jonathan Linsley

Directed by Gore Verbinski

Writing credits:
Written by - Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio
Characters - Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, Stuart Beattie, Jay Wolpert

Produced by
Executive Producer - Bruce Hendricks, Eric McLeod, Chad Oman, Mike Stenson
Producer - Jerry Bruckheimer
Associate Producer - Peter Kohn, Pat Sandston

Original Music - Hans Zimmer

Cinematography - Dariusz Wolski

Film Editing - Stephen E. Rivkin, Craig Wood

VFX:
ILM
Digital Domain
Asylum VFX
CIS Hollywood
Evil Eye Pictures
Kerner Optical
Method Studios
The Orphanage
Pacific Title
Zoic

MPAA:Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action/adventure violence and some frightening images.
Runtime: 168 min