When Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End (hereto after referred to as PotC3) came out, the reviews I heard were less than complimentary and several people told me to be sure and watch the previous installment first or it wouldn’t make any sense.

That saddened me because Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (or PotC1) was really awesome and served to reinforce my admiration for Johnny Depp’s acting prowess. I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (PotC2) on opening day and thought it was not bad for an “act 2” movie, hoping the final chapter would salvage the franchise.

See, “act 2” movies are often the worst installments. In classical theater, act 1 introduces the story and characters and sets up some conflict. In act 2, the conflict reaches it’s worst, leaving the protagonist at his worst. And in act 3, it all works out and the protagonist saves the day. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

Star Wars IV (actually the first one released) told us that Darth Vader was bad, Luke was good, and the Force will be with you. But in Star Wars V (The Empire Strikes Back) Han gets frozen, Luke loses his hand, and Darth comes out on top. Oh no! Then, in Star Wars VI (Return of the Jedi) Luke kicks butt, Darth turns into Dad, and the good guys get all “crunk” at a little fuzzy people party.

Think about it. Raiders of the Lost Ark: Awesome. Temple of Doom: Crap. Holy Grail: Even awesomer.

Then again, there are those trilogies that should never have been trilogies in the first place. The first movie was pretty good and made enough money that Hollywood got drunk on it and decided to go for more, but like most decisions made while drunk, it ends poorly. There are too many of those to count!

Usually in these cases, the trilogy goes places that the first movie never intended and you end up with something like Highlander. It starts of as a cool movie about immortals having sword fights in back allies and ends up as some retarded alien, tree-hugger, psuedo-sci-fi mess. The Matrix was this whole mind bending, nothing-is-was-it-seems riddle with some amazing fight scenes thrown in. The Matrix Reloaded was … well … confusing, contrived crap. And don’t get me started on Back to the Future.

Anyway, back to the pirates. I had high hopes that this would be the “classical” trilogy and not the “Hollywood gets greedy” variety. But my hopes were dashed.

In PotC1, Depp plays the best pirate to ever grace the silver screen. Legolas (a.k.a. Orlando Bloom) plays the good-hearted hero who becomes a bad guy in order to do good things. And the other Natalie Portman (a.k.a. Keira Knightley) plays the spoiled rich girl who thinks pirates are cool until she’s kidnapped by some. The bad guys, led by Captain Barbossa (the second best pirate portrayal ever), are cursed and zombiefied. This makes all the fight scenes with them kind of pointless, but it the fights are so good I can forgive them for that. In the end, the bad pirate (redundant?) gets killed, the good pirate (oxymoronic?) gets away, and the good guy gets the girl. Top notch special effects. Top notch acting. Top notch action. Top notch movie! Four grins!!

In PotC2, things start to get a little weird. The good/bad guy, Edward Scissor-Hands, has a curse of his own. Mr. “Ends Justify the Means” is forced to do even worse things for an even worse bad guy but for even better reasons. And Not-Queen-Amidala gets all women’s lib having apparently burned her corset and learned to sword fight better than 95% of the pirates in the movie. Good guy goes to hell to save his dear papa from Mr. Icky Squid Face. The cool zombie bad guy crew is replaced with the creepy sushi bad guy crew that is still arguably undead. We’re stuck with the good guy’s good-guy status in question, the girl possibly falling for the good/bad guy, the good/bad guy eaten by a very ugly monster, and in the last 30 seconds of the movie, the old bad guy who died in the first movie is now somehow alive again and going to save the day. What the…?? Two grins for you!

Now it’s up to PotC3 to bail us out of this mess. The good elf is good again, even though he’s teamed up with the old dead bad guy who’s now alive and good… I think. With the help of Creepy Voodoo Lady, they all go sailing over the edge of the world (a la Erik the Viking, 1989) to rescue the good/bad guy from real hell (not the squid-face hell from the episode 2). Then there’s all these pirates from all over the world who make the Ms. Women’s Lib their Pirate President of the World. (I only wish I was making this up.) Mr. Icky Squid Face is back with his sushi crew but now he has a tender side (aww) and there’s some kind of love story going on with him and Creepy Voodoo Lady. A gazillion ships show up to sink the pirate fleet. (So that makes them the good guys, right? Wrong!) Then just before all hope is lost, someone flushes the ocean and there’s an epic tidy-bowl battle. *pant pant*

After the first two hours, you think (or hope) the movie is about to be over. The problem is it “ends” for another hour!! I would love to spoil the ending for you, but it was too confusing and unbelievable for me to retell. I think I’m just going to pretend that Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl is just one movie and the ugly rumors of a trilogy are just a bad dream.