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When seeing how the story here is intended to follow through on themes and set-ups in Black Pearl, and lurch towards payoffs and climaxes in At World’s End, it becomes apparent that all involved are attempting to make PotC as emotionally satisfying and epic as Lord of the Rings. Yet for all its dysfunctional family interplay, talks of heroism and redemption, and epic running time, it never feels like a true saga. The locations may be far-flung, but the universe of these pirates feels ever so small.

I am surprising myself by typing these words, but I wish they had stayed focused more on the escapism aspect. The banter and swordplay flurry between Depp and Orlando Bloom in the blacksmith shop comes to feel positively quaint. Consider in its place one of the big set pieces of Dead Man’s Chest: the extended battle for possession of said chest as Jack Sparrow, Will Turner and James Norrington battle across a sandy beach, up towards and through a deserted castle and finally on to a giant wooden wheel that breaks loose from its moorings and follows the call of gravity back towards the ocean. In theory, this should be a captivating and giddily amusing skirmish. However, two things prevent this from becoming a reality.

The first is that it never seems to matter much who gets possession of the prize. The battle lacks real heat because it never seems as if anyone is truly in danger. (This is, of course, undone in the third film, in which it seems not enough people can be killed off fast enough.) Even if the chest is a MacGuffin, which it kind of is for most of the course of the saga, the audience needs to believe that the characters want it badly.

The second problem is that the editing and camerawork undoes any tension that might reasonably be accumulating. We are given close-ups when long shots would work better and, as in other action sequences in the series, I yearned for slightly longer takes, to allow the full absurdity of the situation to sink in. I guess I am allowing myself to wonder what someone like Brian DePalma might have done with it.

Now, on to that second question at the top. I still find it strange that Jerry Bruckheimer is in bed with Uncle Walt. It didn’t happen overnight but it did happen in the wake of Simpson’s death. Bruckheimer produced numerous films for the Touchstone imprint before teaming up with Walt Disney Pictures for the first time in 2000 with the inspirational football tale Remember the Titans. Since then, there have been the three PotC films, the two National Treasure films, another true-life sports tale (Glory Road) and whatever you might classify G-Force as. The influence of this partnership is such that a production like the recent Race To Witch Mountain, which Bruckheimer wasn’t involved with, feels as if it bears his mark in the non-stop action and frenetic pace.

I don’t begrudge Disney for wanting to keep up with the times and make action adventure that feels edgier or cooler, but something like Race to Witch Mountain - for all its charm - feels like a cinematic training bra to get kids ready for a Pirates of the Caribbean and then, who knows, a Bad Boys 3? (once they have “outgrown” Disney films.) I don’t mean to lend a Glenn Beck-like air of breathless conspiracy to this, but honestly, after seeing At World’s End for the first time, I couldn’t believe it didn’t get an R rating. Setting aside 10-15 minutes of genuinely odd and disturbing sequences, the film is joyless, overstuffed, anti-climatic, nightmarish, apocalyptic, and unpleasant. The most that can be said is that it makes it that much harder to remember much of anything about Dead Man’s Chest.

And as noted, not once but twice, someone is shot in the head. Because the violence is bloodless (as is most all of it, including when one loathsome British officer gets face-fucked to death by Davy Jones’ tentacles), it seems to get a pass from the MPAA. I balk at this double standard. It doesn’t help that the action in both of these instances is so overwhelming and impossible to follow that it feels like such a brutal death was thrown in merely as a cinematic semicolon, punctuation to distract from scattered thoughts.

I find myself once again drifting away from Dead Man’s Chest so to rein myself in at the end, I think about some isolated moments to keep me focused: the way Depp sells that great line about the moments in life that he loves the most; how winkingly Geoffrey Rush (whose Captain Barbossa has become as indispensable as Jack Sparrow to keeping the series afloat) bites into his apple in the last scene; how Captain Jack nobly adjusts his hat before diving into the belly of the Kraken. In 2011, it all begins anew, as another film series rails against the dying of the light and the growing indifference of its audience. Best of luck mates, but count me out.

Next time: There is no spoon. Which is fine and all. It does make it hard to properly enjoy your breakfast cereal.

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