At World’s End

As I mentioned in my previous post, we watched Pirates of the Caribbean: at World’s End this weekend during our trip to Scranton. The following is my amateur “review” of the film.

Let me start about by saying that I had high hopes for this incarnation of the Pirates series. I was hoping that we would get past the unnecessarily-long-sword-fight-on-a-moving-wheel type scenes that we saw in Dead Man’s Chest. Thankfully, for the most part, these types of scenes were avoided.

I also knew that a lot had to happen during this film, due to all the plots that had to be wrapped up. Will wanted to save his father. The crew wanted to retrieve Jack from the Pirate “underworld.” Will wants to win back Elizabeth. Jack wants to capture Davey Jones’ heart. And the list goes on.

I thought the movie started a little slowly. There was the scene of the pirate associates being executed at the command of Lord Beckett, followed by a lengthy scene that takes the crew of the Black Pearl to Singapore, which leads to the introduction of the first of many new characters in the film.

I won’t spill too many details for those of you who might be reading who haven’t seen the film yet, but suffice it to say there is a lot of backstabbing and apparent side switching that goes on throughout the film. So much so that it can get a little confusing at times.  Unfortunately it gave me the feeling that they were trying to tie up too many plots at one time. Maybe not, but it felt a little frantic at points.

One of the biggest oddities was that of the multiple Jack Sparrow characters that came as a result of apparent hallucinations Jack had while spending time in Davey Jones’ Locker. Our first introduction to Jack comes during one of these hallucinations. The characters seemed a little weird and out of place, but they would have been fine with me, except for one gigantic issue.

Later in the movie, when Jack is being held in a cell, we see two other Jacks occupying the cell with him. These Jacks looked absolutely terrible. The lighting didn’t match the rest of  the scene, and the characters looked awfully grainy. I’m sure that millions upon millions of dollars were spent on this movie, and it seems that a little more could have been spent on making these characters seem a little more realistic.

I guess that’s it for my rants. I want to see the film again, because I think it will make more sense and be more enjoyable. Also, I have heard that there is a scene after the ending credits that we missed the other day.

On another note, if you ever get the chance to see a digital movie, by all means, take it! This was a digital screening that we went to, and it was amazing. Even Danielle, who can never see the difference in high definition TVs noticed the difference right away. It was evident from the very first trailer we saw up until the end of the film. The picture quality was so crisp and vibrant – not a bit washed out at all. Those little annoying specks and black flecks that you notice on normal movie screens were completely nonexistent. It was wonderful.

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