About the ending of Pirates: At World's End...
...I love it more than the average viewer, I think.
2007 was a hell of a summer for movies. We got Transformers, Surf’s Up, Disturbia…wait a minute, these are all Shia LaBeouf films…
We got Next, The Bourne Ultimatum, Ocean’s Thirteen, I Am Legend, and many more. One of the most consequential was of course Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, bringing the blockbuster trilogy to a close on what should have been its absolute final note.
BUT, Disney won’t be satisfied until everyone hates everything they’ve ever created, so they milked that cow dryer than corporate media milking Jan6 Fanfic, and now the franchise is deader than men who tell no tales.
Alas.
I could do an entire series of posts and videos about this one film alone, but for now let’s examine the conclusion: Will and Elizabeth Turner finally get married in the chaotic climax, after struggling with their individual motivations and trust for the last two movies. Jack is bout to kill Davy Jones so as to become immortal, thus fleeing death, the one thing he fears. When Davy Jones kills Will in combat, Jack does a selfless thing and uses Will’s hand to stab Jones’ heart, saving Will’s life, but at a cost.
He has to captain the Flying Dutchman, forever.
It’s well established that the captain of the Dutchman, whose power comes from a pronouncement by the sea goddess Calypso, can only spend one day on land for every ten years at sea, ferrying souls who died on the water. This would have been no problem for Jones who was in love with Calypso, but she’s a fickle wench, and she left him after he gave her his heart. Thus the two lovers have been at odds for a long time.
When Will and Elizabeth confront the question of whether one day together would be worth ten years apart, Will replies, “Depends on the one day.”
It’s a heartbreaking (heh) yet beautiful examination of their love, of a love that should be strong enough to endure the distance and the absence—the kind of love you read about in mythology, the kind that mortals would most likely not be able to abide.
But I think that’s the key.
This isn’t a story about regular people any longer.
Throughout the trilogy, Will and Elizabeth were truly the main characters. The film couldn’t exist without Jack Sparrow, but he’s like a superhero who’s there to save the normies on the ground. He doesn’t do it with strength and flight and laser eyes into bad guys though—he does it by doing what nobody else can, with pluck and humor and charm in spades. As we see in the fourth and fifth movies (which I scarcely acknowledge…) he can’t be the main character. The formula doesn’t work.
And really, the formula sank by the end of the third movie. The arc for Will and Elizabeth was the realization that their love for each other was epic in scope. Mythological. The stuff of legends. Two people who loved each other so much that the one day on land was worth the ten years on the water.
There could only be one Jack Sparrow, there could only be one Davy Jones, there could even only be one Barbossa (despite there being several other pirate lords, he was just that unique.)
The entire trilogy showed us Will and Elizabeth, the normal boy and normal girl, who got swept up into this world of powerful figures and characters. The most special thing about them was who they were together, and the progression of that love was the heart (HEH) of the trilogy.
Which is why it infuriates me that they took it apart in the fifth one, boy howdy.
Like, seriously, I get the appeal of telling the story of Will’s son, who doesn’t really know his father and has to grow up without him. But it takes that epic love and turns it into a curse and a tragedy. There’s a story in there, sure. The writers couldn’t handle it correctly though—they couldn’t keep the love intact and also reach the audience on the same emotional level as they did with the third movie.
Will has the barnacles now. He doesn’t have control of the crew. His son comes to visit him and everything just kind of sucks. It undoes all of the beauty, even the tragic beauty, of At World’s End so that Disney can pump a few more bucks out of this corpse of a franchise. What are they after in this movie? A McGuffin that breaks all curses on the ocean. Nobody heard of it before? Does it kill the heathen gods and eldritch creatures that saturated the seas all this time?
Do the writers think about any of this stuff, or do they just pump out a script and when it gets to a certain page count, they’re finished?
If you really wanted to have an epilogue movie about Will’s son trying to break the curse, you’d have to do better than to show him in his twenties when he would, mathematically, only have ever met his dad twice. They already established that Davy Jones could technically walk on land if he was standing in buckets of water, so why not go that route? Have him visit more often, but get called away for long periods of time because of his obligation?
Wouldn’t that be more relatable to the audience? A kid whose dad has to work too much? Parents who love each other enough to overcome the distance, but children who don’t really have a choice in the matter?
What if they worked Will’s son into On Stranger Tides instead of doing whatever that bull$#!t mermaid story was, and have him pull off some magical life hack where another sailor could replace Will on the Dutchman, but then he drinks from the Fountain of Youth and it brings him back to life, allowing him to come home and know his family?
You’re still undoing the arc that kept Will away from Elizabeth for twenty-plus years, it just has a little bit more meaning now, and it’s not some magical BS table-flipping thing like “hurr durr we ended all magic in the Caribbean, but we’re gonna tease Davy Jones’ return”.
I don’t know the perfect answer, I just know a better one than what we got. Within my lifetime we’ve seen talented writers get yeeted out of Hollywood, replaced by too many producers who lost the memory of graduating from the slush pile—if they ever had to do it to begin with.
Just my two cents on the matter. Oh, and cherry on top, maybe if you’re going to advertise that Keira Knightley is coming back for your movie, you could have her…oh, I don’t know, literally say or do anything at all.
No I’m serious, she didn’t utter a single word in the fifth movie. I’m not one of those guys who counts dialogue for women and does a pie chart to show sexism or whatever, because that’s gay and retarded. But it stands out when she doesn’t have one single word escape her lips, and she’s one of the three most important characters in the franchise.
Up yours Disney, damn I hate you.
But I love Will and Elizabeth. Their love is legendary.