Pirates of the Caribbean 3's tagline should be At Wit's End. Everything about this movie suggests that pretty much everyone involved is just plain tired with the whole thing.

I'm not going to restate Kyra's points about the film, but I do want to sound off about it, and my rage is too expansive to be contained in a mere comment. That said, there are a few of aspects of Kyra's review I want to highlight. She is correct that there is not enough swordfighting. In fact, I can only remember two swordfights, one at the very beginning and one at the very end, and they aren't very good.

Remember the sword fights in the last two Pirates movies? Weren't they great? Finely choreographed, full of stunts and witty dialogue? Nicely edited and shot so you could see and follow what was going on? You don't get that in this one. The first big fight, in Singapore, is confusingly edited and shot so it looks like a bunch of people running around and occasionally shooting and stabbing each other, and while there are a few good bits (like the monkey-with-a-rocket sequence) it looks too much like every other big fight scene in every other epic movie I've seen lately. (I'll get back to the epic nature of At World's End later.)

The second fight, in the middle of the climactic battle, uses a bit too much CGI for my liking and seems clunky and lazily-written. The original Pirates was very tightly scripted, and the fabulous millwheel sequence in Dead Man's Chest was an excellent set piece. What we have in At World's End is a lot of people fighting on the decks of ships, CGI Jack Sparrow and Davy Jones fighting on a mast for a bit, and Jack using the "shooting a rope to propel himself into the air" trick a little too often. There are some good moments, such as Barbossa presiding over the marriage of Will and Elizabeth in the middle of a battle, but they seem to lack the frantic pace and light-hearted wit of the earlier films, achieving only a close approximation to them.

About that climactic battle. For the entire film it's driven into our heads that the Nine Pirate Lords are gathering together to fight the East India Company. It is established that the East India Company wants to smash this pirate armada with an even bigger armada. There is a long and unfunny war council where the pirates talk about this and Elizabeth convinces them to fight (think the Council of Elrond, only with more members of the Rolling Stones present). It is battered into our heads time and again that a massive sea battle is in the offing, and lo and behold, when finally the pirates venture forth, we see them in their ships and we see the massed armada of the East India Company, and we say "Finally, that fucking naval battle we've been waiting for for almost two hours".

Only three ships actually take part.

Not 300. Not 30. Three.

Which, frankly, is fucking miserable. Granted, the entire plot does hinge on those three ships, but are we to expect the pirate forces and EIC armada to sit around twiddling their thumbs throughout the fight? It would have taken a single shot of those forces clashing to satisfy me, but they couldn't do even that. As Kyra points out, the whole thing renders the agonising process of getting all the Pirate Lords together wonderfully pointless, except that it allows them to make Naomie Harris's character turn giant, then explode into crabs, and then make a whirlpool appear so that the Black Pearl and Flying Dutchman can fight in it. Even if the voodoo lady is the goddess Calypso, the way she's effectively written out of the series is galling; if she's so very powerful and important, she should at least have been allowed to do more in the last battle than provide exciting scenery.

She's not alone of course. There is an epic massacre of characters in this. Jim Davenport, Tom Hollander, and Bill Nighy also get to leave the rapidly-sinking franchise, while Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley's characters survive but in a manner which pretty much precludes them getting involved in later sequels. Chow Yun-Fat is criminally underused, his character being eliminated early on in proceedings. And, in a nice touch, by the end Barbossa and Jack Sparrow have been brought more-or-less full circle, and it would be as good a point as any to declare the franchise over.

Which is why I despair when I hear that a fourth Pirates movie, or some kind of spin-off, is in the works. With Will and Elizabeth Turner out of the picture for good, any future Pirates endeavour is inevitably going to focus on Jack Sparrow, completing the appalling development of Sparrow from supporting character to main protagonist which has been slowing happening during the sequels.

Listen up, people. Jack was fun in the first Pirates movie precisely because he was a supporting character who stole the show. The filmmakers have made a serious mistake by changing this dynamic in the sequels. Yes, the wailing hordes of internet fangirls will give you a great many blowjobs on LiveJournal if you give them more Jack Sparrow, but isn't there an old bit of showbusiness wisdom along the lines of "leave 'em wanting more"? Sparrow oversaturation has forced Depp's creation to take on the protagonist's role, and the character can't support that, even with the addition of tiny clones in his hair.

This film is a lazy exercise in going through the motions, but they can't even stick to the winning formula of the previous Pirates movies. Oh, sure, they sneak in a reference to the "why is the rum gone?" line which insufferable jerks have quoted into the dirt, but they seem to be going for a fantasy epic along the lines of Return of the King or Return of the Jedi instead of a swashbuckling fantasy romp. Hence the Council of Elrond, hence the fanfiction-like attempt to turn Davy Jones and Jack Sparrow into deep and meaningful characters, hence the spurious dehumanising of the voodoo lady into a goddess.

Then again, Pirates has always had a strong fantasy element - it's just been in the vein of swashbuckling fantasy and strong visuals as opposed to Tolkeinesque epics. This is a visually boring film. Most of the scenes fall a little flat, with a few exceptions (such as the boat sailing over a night-black sea, or Tom Hollander's character calmly walking down the stairs as his ship explodes about him). It's not that the director lacks a visual imagination - some of the ideas are fine - it's just that he lacks the talent to translate it onto screen. Terry Gilliam directing a Pirates movie, now there would have been something to see...

At one point in the film there's a Mexican standoff with pretty much every character pointing guns at each other. There's a bit of banter and then someone pulls the trigger on their gun, and the guns don't fire because the gunpowder's wet. That scene perfectly sums up this movie, to the extent where I wonder if it wasn't intentional: everything's given a big dramatic buildup only to fall flat at the end.