YMMV / Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • HMS Endeavour, the flagship of Big Bad Beckett and possibly the ship with the biggest firepower in the franchise, being methodically destroyed without firing back a single shot, all because her commander has gone Villainous BSoD and his lieutenant doesn't want to skip the chain of command even in front of imminent death. After so many admittedly impressive battles through the film, this one feels like an Obstructive Bureaucrat gag from a Terry Gilliam film and makes Beckett's demise incredible stupid.
  • The entire East India Company fleet should count as this, given that, despite the intimidating presentation of their utterly gigantic armada, only one of their ships actually engages the pirates, and it's the Endeavour mentioned above. The rest withdraw in true Keystone Army and is never seen again, leaving the pirate fleet to celebrate.
• Ass Pull: See the franchise's page.
• Awesome Music: Hans Zimmer delivers, as always.
  • Special mention must be given to one specific moment. Gentlemen... hoist the colors.
  • "One Day" is beautiful and epic and sad, perfectly fitting the titular End of an Age as well as Will and Elizabeth's Bittersweet Ending.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The trippy peanut scene. Again though it was to showcase the madness of the Davy Jones Locker.
• Broken Base:
  • The R-Rated Opening involving multiple people being executed, including a little kid, is either a perfect way to introduce the darker tone of the movie, or a needlessly edgy scene that makes the movie start in a sour note. Most Fan Edits of the movie tend to remove the scene, but it does have many defenders.
  • The first act involving the rescue of Jack Sparrow. Some think is the best and most part fun of the movie for his surrealistic tone and being more of an adventure movie with fantasy elements like the previous two movies in comparison to the other two acts that possess a more obvious Genre Shift. Others think is the worst part of the movie seeing it as a Plot Tumor that takes too much time away from the main plot to the point it could be his own movie and think Jack takes too much time to appear.
  • The Kraken dying off screen. Many fans were pissed off by the choice, feeling the Kraken not giving a final fight was a huge wasted opportunity. Other fans defend the choice, arguing that it fits the theme of the East India Trading Company corrupting and ending the Age of Piracy, and think the scene where Jack and Barbossa reflect on this after finding its corpse makes it worthwhile. A third group agree with the second group but still think they wasted the opportunity to have it give one final fight.
  • The multiple Jack Sparrow's sequences, a creative way of exploring Jack Sparrow's psyche or an annoying atempt of making comedy only focusing in Jack Sparrow and a case of less is more?
  • Elizabeth's Rousing Speech is either an epic culmination of her arc, or forced and Out of Character.
  • The wedding in the middle of the battle. Crazy Is Cool incarnated in a scene and one of the best sequences of the whole franchise, or a ridiculous scene that comes up as distracting in the middle of the battle?
  • The movie mostly ignoring the Will/Elizabeth/Jack Love Triangle from the previous movie has leaded to multiple opinions, Jack/Elizabeth shippers were pissed off that the tension from the previous movie was nothing but a Hope Spot from the writers and sees as a waste of a perfectly good romantic subplot. Those who thought the Jack/Elizabeth teasing was forced in the first place were glad it was barely adressed given Will/Elizabeth is a Foregone Conclusion.
• Catharsis Factor: There's a huge vibe seeing Lord Beckett and HMS Endeavour getting absolutely massacred by the Black Pearl and Flying Dutchman after all the horrific atrocities he had committed in both the previous movie and this one.
• Complete Monster: Lord Cutler Beckett again. See that page for details.
• Contested Sequel: Opinions are all over the place around the movie with as many fans calling it either the best movie of the series, the worst movie of the series or somewhere in the middle with each side being very vocal about it. Those who love it consider it a wortwhile follow of the first two (with some very vocal fans even considering it an Even Better Sequel) and an excellent conclusion to the trilogy with higher stakes and drama, bigger action sequences and complex character arcs, those who hate it see it as a a nonsensical, needlesly depressing and excessively long disaster full of unwelcome character changes, forced drama and lots of wasted characters (like the Kraken or Norrington). A third faction do feel like the movie is messy but that the final hour is a great conclusion to the movie and makes the rest of the movie worth it.
• Ending Fatigue: Even those who like the film tend to agree that the ending is overly dragged-out, meaning either the final battle or the tying up of all the loose story threads.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Fans tend to disown the 15 seconds conversation between Beckett and Mercer about Weatherby being killed for asking too much questions as most fans prefer the deleted scenes where Beckett orders his execution for trying to stab the heart after thinking Davy Jones killed Elizabeth.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content:
  • A sequence where Governor Swann tries to stab Davy Jones' heart after believing Elizabeth is dead. This scene appeared in the novelization, and most of it was completed bar most of the effects on Jones, suggesting it was cut rather late in development. This would have given Governor Swann more of a sendoff compared to how Demoted to Extra he was in the final film.
  • A deleted scene reveals what Jack actually did to get branded a pirate: he freed a shipful of slaves. This scene is almost unanimously taken as canon by the fanbase, thanks to how it throws the depths of Jack's moral character and the real-world depravity of the EITC into sudden and sharp relief.
  Jack: (uncharacteristically solemn) People aren't cargo, mate.
  • There were plans for a subplot involving Davy Jones and Norrington forming an Odd Friendship out of their mutual dislike of working for Beckett but the subplot was discarded before filming given the movie was already too bloated, but more that a few fans wanted to see what the relationship between the two would have being.
• Genius Bonus: The film takes this for granted during the scene of Barbossa acting as a marrying priest for Will and Elizabeth, but most viewers are likely to miss the fact that, at certain points of real life, sea captains could actually wed people.
• He's Just Hiding: A variation. Norrington is unambiguously dead but given pretty much any other main character BUT him have pulled Death Is Cheap, is not hard to believe he could be revived at some point
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Chow Yun-fat plays a revered Asian veteran with a long goatee who sexually harasses the female protagonist. Two years later he was cast as Muten Roshi.
  • Beckett's right-hand man Ian Mercer meets his grisly end at the hand of Davy Jones in this film. The next film Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides features an actor named Ian Mercer—who not only plays a zombie, but is also a henchman of the film's Big Bad Blackbeard.
• Like You Would Really Do It: The film teases the possibility of Will and Elizabeth's relationship breaking for good while the two start going for different objectives and Jack getting in the way. Of course, it doesn't happen.
• Memetic Molester: Davy Jones's way of killing Mercer spawned a lot of hentai jokes.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "I'm a little busy at the moment!"^Explanation Barbossa's appropriately incredulous reaction to Will and Elizabeth asking him to wed the two in the middle of a naval battle in a maelstrom has become a fairly popular reaction image used when someone is asked to do something while they're busy.
  • Beckett's Face Death with Dignity scene is a popular reaction meme for situations in which one is calmly accepting the consequences of a bad decision.
• Narm:
  • Since he cannot go on dry land, Davy Jones has to attend the meeting between captains on the sandbar by standing in a large bucket of seawater they've placed in line next to Will and Beckett. Jones is a fantastic villain, but not even he can look intimidating when he's forced to resort to this kind of stunt. Making it even sillier is that multiple smaller buckets are behind him forming a trail to the water, implying someone (probably Will, since there's no one else around) had to lay this trail out for him to hop from bucket to bucket, just so he could stand alongside them on the sandbar. This not only makes the whole bucket thing silly, but over-complicated and time-consuming to set up, when they could have just had Jones stand in the small dinghy they used to get to the sandbar in the first place.
  • Calypso's release ends up being more comical than dramatic, both because the deep, borderline-unintelligible voice she uses wound up sounding a lot sillier than was likely intended and because she proceeds to dissolve into a shower of crabs on her way back to the ocean.
• One-Scene Wonder: Captain Teague, practically a no-brainer for this.
• Signature Scene:
  • Will and Elizabeth getting married during the Final Battle.
  • Jack and Barbossa's talk after finding the Kraken's corpse. For some, it's an anticlimactic end for the monster, but for others, it fits the End of an Age theme in this film.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Many felt that James Norrington was pushed to the background despite his character taking an interesting turn by becoming a crewmember of the Black Pearl in the last film.
  • Captain Sao Feng. Despite prominent billing and space on the poster, he's barely in the film, doesn't do very much and ends up dying before the third act. Plus, he's played by Chow Yun-fat and yet he doesn't even get any cool action scenes.
  • The Kraken. The previous film established that the Flying Dutchman, while formidable, was not unbeatable, and a lot of the strength Jones boasted was due to having such a terrifying beast at his beck and call, rather than his ship and his crew; thus, whoever controlled the heart controlled the Kraken, and thereby the sea. Yet the Kraken is unceremoniously killed off between movies, without an explanation as to how, why, or what makes Jones still unstoppable without it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The synopsis of the film explicitly paints James Norrington as Co-Dragons with Davy Jones, which sounds awesome, since he's the closest thing Jack has to a lawful counterpart and one of the few villains to both outfight and outsmart him. Unfortunately, the sheer length of the third film cut him down to three main scenes, none of which showcase him as dangerous, since Jones is The Brute and in many ways still The Heavy of the film.
  • Jack's plan in this film evolves into wanting to become the captain of the Flying Dutchman, but circumstances force him to make Will become the captain, and Jack goes back to where he was in he first film; on a little boat with the Black Pearl stolen by Barbossa, only now Jack has a map to the Fountain of Youth. Given that the series became a Franchise Zombie after this point, it could have been a much better ending if Jack had gotten what he wants — captain of the Flying Dutchman, able to sail the seven seas immortal and free forever, while Will and Elizabeth could go home together.^note While there is still the matter of Will getting fatally stabbed, if Jack had been quick in making himself captain, he could have just gotten Will to swear servitude to him, then set him free from his duty a moment later or when he had healed his wound. Or it could be a more Bittersweet Ending that Will survives but has to crew the Dutchman for 10 years under Jack before he can see Elizabeth again, but they have the solace of knowing he will be free to see her someday.
  • The AWE trailers' focus on the Brethren Court teased fans of the possibility of an epic fleet battle for the climax. Instead, we got a singles duel (if an admittedly awesome one) between the Black Pearl and the Flying Dutchman, with the 300-strong East India Company fleet retreating after Beckett's flagship is obliterated.
    • The final script by Ted Eliott and Terry Rosso explains this a bit: the fleet does join the Pearl in the charge initially, but when the maelstrom appears, they all turn back save the Pearl, leading to the big duel.
    • That being said, there are plumes of smoke seen in the distance in the background following the Maelstrom sequence. It can be assumed that this could be a hint to the fact that the other ships on both sides were shooting at each other off-screen.
  • In a deleted scene, Beckett recalls an incident wherein Jack was tasked with delivering cargo for the former. Jack however chose to liberate it because: "people aren't cargo, mate." This single exchange leads one to wonder why the Atlantic slave trade was never once explored at any point in the films, and it's especially notable here given that the plot of At World's End revolves around diverse factions of pirates banding together to fight an English despot. Had such racial and colonialist undertones been incorporated into the story at all, it could have gone a long way into making the pirates more sympathetic as protagonists. Heck, one could even base an entire movie around this premise alone.
• Vindicated by History: While still a divisive film, the even more divisive fourth and fifth entries have made more people see this as a flawed but fine finale for a series that would have ended best as a trilogy.

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