Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007)

2007 #59
Gore Verbinski | 168 mins | cinema | 12A / PG-13

Curse of the Black Pearl was a surprisingly great film. Dead Man’s Chest was a lacking attempt to recapture that glory. At World’s End is the worst subtitle of all three, but mixed in quality.

The first half hour is great fun, but then it gets weird, adds in hefty doses of over-complex plotting, and drags along fairly slowly until it finds an exciting climax a little late on. It’s not all bad — beautiful to look at, with some of the most impressive CGI ever, and there’re some good action scenes.

In the end it’s the attempts to drag what was an entertaining fantasy action film to the mythological levels of Lord of the Rings that has made both sequels inferior to the first offering.