REVIEW: Pirates of the Caribbean At World’s End

~~ WARNING! PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END SPOILERS AHEAD ~~

Yes, once again I have seen a movie that annoyed me
so much I am now compelled to write about it. It’s sad really. I really
enjoyed the first Pirates movie; and the second one, while not quite as
good as the first, was still a pretty enjoyable way to kill a couple of
hours. This new one, however, retained none of the charm or humor of
the first two films and instead slogs on for nearly three hours in a
fairly successful effort to eradicate the viewers of brain activity for
that discrete period of time.

Maybe while we were all zoning out through what the
filmmakers clearly thought were the more exciting points of the movie,
such as when they were sailing through the doldrums, the director was
really engaging in some form of subliminal messaging experiment. I was
mostly asleep during that part, so if the message was “You need a nap,”
then I guess the effort was successful.

Length and boredom aside, what bothered me the most
about this movie was its ridiculous anti-business stance. You must
understand, I am the wife of a small businessman, daughter of a small
businessman, daughter-in-law of a small businessman, and tend to come
up with entrepreneurial ideas myself about every three weeks (most of
these go nowhere but once in awhile something sticks such as what you
are reading right now). Anti-business sentiments tend to tick me off in
an almighty way!

Lord Beckett, the commander of the
Royal Navy spends the entire movie betraying people, welching on deals,
and backstabbing (I guess that’s three ways of saying the same thing,
isn’t it?) and then pronouncing that this behavior is “just good
business.” Then when justice finally catches up with him at the end and
the ship he thought was under his control turns around to blast his own
boat to slivers, for his epitaph he twice whines in bewilderment that
his behavior was “just good business,” bringing the total number of
times he utters of this vile phrase to four (I think four. I lost track
due to being bored and annoyed).

At that point, he glides down the
stairs as the ship explodes around him and he is engulfed in flames
(and shrapnel which inexplicably seems to miss him at every angle
instead of shredding him which it obviously should). Hello! Nice
imagery there. Why didn’t they just stamp “I am the embodiment of
satanic business” on his forehead to make sure no one missed it.
Considering that the the movie made a record-breaking $404 million
dollars in it’s opening six days, this stance seems absolutely absurd
to me. If business is the devil, what does that make the studios and
executives? High-ranking minions? Okay, that part seems plausible but
odd that they would admit it…. Hehe.

Anyway,
I was so annoyed after the show ended that I had to un-indoctrinate my
children in the car on the way home (and indoctrinate them properly
with what I think, of course). We started off with a discussion of
business and all the good things it does (no business = no grocery
stores, no food, no clothes, no toys, none of the things that we use
every day). Then we moved on to the larger problem with the Pirates
series of films, which is that it paints all the pirates as good guys
and the Royal Navy as the villains.

Yeah
sorry, but pillaging thugs aren’t really my idea of heroes, and the
English Navy did a large amount of good while they were out protecting
people from the thuggish pillagers. The problem with people operating
outside the rule of law is that they become lawless and begin to take
everything they can get with utter disregard to the ownership rights of
the people around them. They do not tend to become noble benefactors to
society.

These movies oddly present both
sides as being nearly equally matched in betrayal (the pirates nobly
call this a “code” though, to leave any man behind and steal one
another’s ships whenever it pleases them), while the same behavior in
the Navy is bad. Operating within the morality of the movie (skewed as
it is), this then seems to imply that the pirates have a higher
morality because they are honest about their buggery while the Navy
does the same thing but wields the power of the state to do so. So now
the pirates are freedom fighters? I don’t think so. They don’t seem to
be fighting for any larger purpose other than to be allowed to go
around thieving whenever they desire. Lofty aims indeed!

Anyway,
as entertaining as the series as a whole is, the entire philosophical
underpinnings of the movie are directly opposed to my own, and it was
an excellent opportunity to point this disparity out to our kiddos lest
they inadvertently pick up someone else’s mutant principles by osmosis.
You know, this whole molding of young minds thing is kind of fun!

Rachel