Pirates of the Caribbean - At World’s End (2-Disc CE)
Back in my day when we had to make fire from sticks, I watched a movie called The Matrix Reloaded. If you were part of that dark era, do you remember the final bit where the Architect would ramble on ceaselessly for 20 minutes while we had to sit there and absorb things like ‘vis-a-vis’, ‘contradictory systemic anomaly’ and ‘Keanu acting’, in which everything was basically a variation of ‘Zion’s going to hell’? Well, imagine that scene multiplied into three hours, and you get a basic idea of the dialogue in AWE.
Remember how Ted and Terry boasted that they wanted the audience to figure out the plot for themselves in Curse of the Black Pearl? Apparently they used up their subtext quota for the decade and AWE hits you on the head detailing every plotline in exposition. The amount of exposition in the movie is staggering. Even at the very end when Will becomes captain of the Flying Dutchman, we’re still being fed new information, where Daddy says Liz can’t step on the ship. There’s no reason why, and it feels like the writers just shoveled the thing in to quickly patch up loopholes.
I could tell there wasn’t a proper script when they filmed the thing – there wouldn’t be so much exposition, for one. For two, canon is never straight. Davy Jones cut out his heart because of the pain of love (according to exposition in Dead Man’s Chest), and in the third movie, the heart binds him to the Flying Dutchman and has nothing to do with love at all. Oh look, his heart is also replaceable! In AWE he feels emotion when his heart is near, and yet in the second movie, he can’t tell if his heart was in the chest?
Don’t tell me I need to ‘infer’ and make my own conclusions. The only time I ever need to infer a Disney movie is when I’m writing yaoi. Curse of the Black Pearl let us all reach the same conclusion, subtle though it might have been, but in AWE, interpretations about plot are flying all over the place. That’s when the writers should start feeling ashamed of themselves.
The DVD booklet apparently had a Pirates FAQ of sorts, and it caused a righteous stir in the POTC community. This is what it says:
Since Will honored his destiny on the Flying Dutchman, in 10 years does he get to return to land for good, thereby freeing his father and crew?
Every 10 years, Will may step on land for one day. He is bound to the Flying Dutchman forever.
I pretty much foamed at the mouth at this. HE CAN’T BE. I WANT A HAPPY ENDING, DAMMIT. Not to mention that the guys actually deleted that goddamn scene where Calypso and Davy Jones talk about the curse being broken after 10 years, and everyone who’s even remotely connected to the Pirates fandom KNOW IT. I thought it was such a nice contrast between the relationship of Calypso/Davy Jones and Will/Elizabeth, and there you go Disney, crushing my hopes and dreams!
Despite beating my head fashioned from the remnants of the 3 page script and a ridiculous ad for promoting a possible fourth movie, the film itself is still awesome. The final battle was so full of pumped up adrenaline, even on my 14 inch TV. I still think Davy Jones has the attention span of a hamster, despite all my love for the poor guy. He threatens to kill Jack, Will, Liz and Bootstrap, but he doesn’t succeed in any of them (except Will), which makes me rather annoyed at the whole ‘you can’t kill off main characters, but you can give the illusion that you are!’ technique Hollywood uses by law. He takes no notice of his severed tentacle, the chest with his heart disappears whenever his attention moves to someone else, and apparently his tingly senses whenever his heart is nearby can be flickered like an on/off switch. I am still sorely disappointed that we don’t see human!Davy in all his costume-y glory, with half of the brig in darkness and the other half has him in dull candlelight.
I also really wished there was some conclusion to the whole Calypso/Davy Jones ending, without having to run to Ted and Terry asking ‘WTF HAPPENED’. But then again, I might be asking too much, seeing as the curse of the Flying Dutchman was never fully explained and we don’t even know how Elizabeth and Will’s lives will end. Does she stab the heart when she’s 80 and frail, and a youthful Will dying next to her in bed? And seriously, her kid is not going to run to Daddy with open arms, not with him disappearing for 10 years and returning for one day. Most of that day would be spent with having hawt sex with Elizabeth anyway.
Y’know, it would have been a better explanation that after 10 years, the curse is broken, and Will and Liz live happily ever after. It doesn’t fit into the film (CURSE YOU GUYS FOR DELETING THAT SCENE) but it explains it a hell of a lot better. Plus, you get the typical Hollywood ending, which every Hollywood film is supposed to have by law. Pirates, I love you, so give me a happy ending, dammit!
I was horrendously disappointed with the amount of special features in the 2 disc set. I’m not sure why the DVD release took so incredibly long (seeing as Ratatouille and Ocean’s 13 were released in theaters later and yet the DVDs were released earlier), so I thought it must be chock full of special features; they needed to get the stars to do commentary ala Curse of the Black Pearl, etc. I even preordered a copy, because I thought there would be a ton of extra stuff.
I’m glad that I canceled my order, because the amount of extra features are pitiful. There’s even no Jerry Bruckheimer ‘I’m a photographer, let me show you my pretty pictures with commentary’ feature. There are about… 6-7 features on the second disc, each less than 15 minutes long. The features themselves are pretty boring, and you hardly see any of the stars talk at all. Keira probably had 30 seconds of interview time, Bill Nighy 10 seconds, and you don’t see Jack Davenport at all (I was very disappointed. He was such a huge laugh during interviews in Dead Man’s Chest).
I thought the deleted scenes would make up for it, and I thought they’ll throw in the bit where Davy Jones and Calypso had the prolonged conversation in the brig, since it was a very big thing on the Intarwebz. I remember some people also saying that there were many scenes involving Norrington that were cut out, so I was looking forward to that too.
There is a grand total of two deleted scenes. One has Jack and Barbossa fighting over the helm, and the other has Pintel and Ragetti talking about riddles, both worth about 5 minutes on average. Oh wait, there’s also commentary by Gore Verbinski (for 5 minutes on average), if that’s any consolation.
There were more short clips, like how the concept of Davy Jones materialized, or taking you behind the scenes in creating the maelstrom, or Marty’s custom-made Harley Davidson. It was interesting to see actors yelling in front of a blue screen without having the ‘this is so stupid’ look on their faces. I suppose you get used to it after a fashion. There weren’t any commentaries, which was really surprising, because you can’t get a DVD today without having a director or someone yelling at you how disappointed they were when scene 57 came out. It’s all for the better, I suppose, since the plotholes are so large everyone’s going to dig themselves a deeper grave if they even attempt to poke it with a stick.
Oh yes, there is always the obligatory DVD game where you point your remote control and press the buttons about 15 times before you get where you want to go, but we all know which age range that caters to.
I still love the music, and it makes me even sadder that only a few of the tracks I like are on the OST. There was a musical bit where Will dies and Jack and Liz escape by parachute, and that melody was beautiful. IT’S NOWHERE TO BE FOUND. Do I really have to replay that scene with a bunch of sound effects in the background to listen to the awesomeness that is Hans Zimmer? No, I will not buy your 4-in-1 Collector’s Edition POTC OST thing just to listen to 8 extra tracks of music that weren’t in the original OSTs (it’s on my wishlist though). Listening to the orchestrations in the film and the OST, I’ve come to the conclusion that the film music sounds better than it does on the soundtrack, which is another sad thing to note. There are more brass and violins, and less of the synthetic stuff, and the film score sounds more ‘well-rounded’ than the OST.
I love Pirates of the Caribbean. Even when the scriptwriters didn’t seem to be doing their job, the world that Gore Verbinski gave us made up for it (it’s like Harry Potter, in a way). It’s just annoying to see that the special features are minuscule, and they just don’t seem to know how to market the product. They did a stellar job in Curse of the Black Pearl, and I’m not sure how that got lost down the line.
Anyway, if you want to buy AWE, get the single disc edition and save yourself 10 bucks. Unless Disney comes out with a ‘Director’s Cut’ or something, I don’t think the DVD is worth it.
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