Finally, a post to which this icon is relevant.

I've just come back from my second viewing and have discovered that if you were just there for the buckling of swash and the hotness of Depp and so forth, like I was, you really have to re-watch it so you can keep tabs on who is betraying who and for what reason at any given time. It feels overly convoluted the first time, but the second time it feels justifiably complex.

Having said that, for the second time, I came out of the cinema thinking 'that was awesome, but I'm not exactly sure why'. It could have had a good 30-40 minutes cut and lost nothing, but I like long movies so it didn't bother me too much.

So, a ramble in no particular order.

I have no complaint about Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow and I never will. It's a thing of beauty. While a friend and I were watching the multi-Jack scene in Davy Jones' Locker, my friend nudged me and said 'It's heaven!' And yes, it is.

The fact that I find Bill Nighy attractive even when buried under a seething mass of CGI tentacles is probably indicative of...nothing good. Moving swiftly on.

Orlando Bloom was unexpectedly convincing as a bit of a badass. When DJ swaggers in to where Will and Beckett are drinking tea and Will just sort of looks over his shoulder and nods casually, I have to admit there was some minor squeeing on my part. It's not as if Will Turner is a complex character but he finally made the role his own. For the first two movies it was as if he was understudying someone more talented.

Keira Knightley was flat and unbelievable as ever, but I wasn't expecting much of her. Her acting is pretty unremarkable but even if it wasn't, she just doesn't look the part. She's so...so blonde and skinny and delicate - fine as a Governor's sheltered daughter, but not as a pirate. I could suspend my disbelief through imprisoned sea goddesses, men with tentacles and a Keith Richards cameo, but show me Keira Knightley winning a fight or galvanising a mass of near-exclusively burly male pirates into action and I will laugh at you.

Character-wise, if I was Elizabeth Swann, I would have given up on Will. And Jack. I would have run off with Barbossa, or Ragetti, or Tia Dalma....anyone, really. I sure as hell wouldn't have hung around for ten years and raised some weirdly androgynous child while keeping myself chaste for the mostly-dead captain of a supernatural pirate vessel. Sod you, true love.

Which reminds me. Apparently (is there an actual source for this?), the 'ten years at sea, one day on land' deal is this: if the captain of The Flying Dutchman reappears after ten years and his lover has been faithful to him, then he has been freed. Great, except I call bullshit for two reasons:

1) 'The Flying Dutchman must have a captain'. So if Will is freed as the post-credits scene might suggest, what happens then? Do the rest of the crew draw straws to choose who has to cut their heart out? For that matter, how does Will get his own heart back? I imagine reconstructive surgery wasn't up to...well...anything back then.

2) What if the captain of TFD was single? Take Captain Jack, who is to put it politely a serial monogamist - 'salty wenches' et cetera. If he had become captain, he would be pretty much fucked.

Finally, the monkey and the parrot need their own spin-off series. So do Pintel and Ragetti. I wanted to hug Ragetti repeatedly throughout the movie: when it's revealed that his eye is a Piece Of Eight, when he frees Calypso, when he tells Pintel he'd have voted for him as captain....pretty much every time he talks. He's adorable.

Moving briefly away from the plot/characters to the 'ooh pretty', visually this movie was SO much better than the previous two. The scene where they're sailing to World's End in the dark and it looks like they're flying through a field of stars....it's beautiful. The music, although applied with a rather heavy hand (dramatic silence would have better served some of the scenes), was so much better. I have an untrained eye for these things but the CGI looked pretty damn seamless to me.

Beckett's death scene took my breath away both times I saw it. When he walks down the steps, untouched, with the ship exploding around him, and he eventually just ends up standing in a cloud of flying shrapnel...beautiful. Beautifully done. That he had so obviously lost all hope and was so resigned to his death was put across so well and was...almost redemptive. I'm kind of annoyed that they decided to undermine the drama of the moment with OMG HUGE EXPLOSION rather than just have the ship sink, but I guess exploding is what gunpowder does. Still annoyed.

Norrington, on the other hand...why was he even there? His presence in the movie was pointless except to provide a handy deus ex machina for Swann and her crew. Natch.

Might add more tomorrow, but I'm tired now.

Note: If you want to tell me I'm an idiot and the movie sucked, don't bother - my opinion is my own and I'm not fighting over it. It's interesting that opinions on POTC3 are so polarised - either it's awesome or it sucks. I have yet to see anyone whose reaction was 'meh, okay I guess' - although I'm sure they'll all come out of the woodwork now I've posted those words.