Finally got out to see “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” back on the first weekend of this month, and I quite liked it. I really liked it, I thought it was fun and supremely escapist with excellent action sequences and truly excellent special effects. A perfect summer blockbuster, in other words. And I think it capped the trilogy nicely, while being open-ended enough to credibly be able to do a fourth movie (if, as Johnny Depp has famously said, the script is right).
In fact, I already know what the subtitle of the fourth movie should be: “Drink and the Devil.” At least, that’s from my working notes thus far. :)
And as I was thinking about it, it occurred to me that something I’d read elsewhere was true: the “Pirates” movies really are the “Star Wars” movies of this generation. (I’m talking about the Original Trilogy, of course; the Prequel Trilogy doesn’t come close.) That’s a tricky thing to pull off; I don’t think it can be done intentionally. The “Matrix” movies might have come close, but ultimately they collapsed under their own weight.
I won’t go into some sort of pedantic nerdly comparison essay between the two; suffice to say that the “Pirates” movies I can go back and watch again and again and still enjoy, like the Original Trilogy. That’s good stuff.