Pirates 3 Tomorrow!

Tomorrow, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is released. I've been really looking forward to it since last Christmas, when I got the Dead Man's Chest DVD and decided that I did actually like it a lot. But a couple of things have me slightly concerned.

I've mostly avoided reviews of the film, unlike with Spider-Man 3, because I had the ending of that film annoyingly spoiled for me. I have seen a few star ratings and read the odd sentence or two, though. They generally have given it an average grade (3 out of 5) and said that it's too long and muddled; basically what they all said about number 2.

Theoretically, that shouldn't really bother me. As I've said, DMC grew on me considerably with repeated viewings, after being disappointed with it initially. I still have some issues with it, but I think it's generally pretty entertaining, especially the awesome waterwheel swordfight. Fundamentally I now think that it's a solid continuation of the franchise.

What I've heard about AWE, though, is that it's dark, and the humour is not present as much as in the previous ones. If you ask me, humour is key to this franchise's success, and it was DMC's darker edge that put me off. As I said in my first review, I thought they made the same mistake as in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom by going darker when they didn't need to. Fortunately the Indy series was redeemed by The Last Crusade, a return to the feel and excitement of Raiders.

In the case of Pirates, however, it seems that the third one is going to be the darkest yet. Not only that, there looks like there'll be less in the way of tropical island landscapes - an obvious staple of the series - and a more gloomy aesthetic overall (judging by the trailer). Plus it is the longest instalment too at about 160 minutes. I'd love for my concerns to be wrong.

On a related note, where is all the advertising? I remember clearly the advertising blitz for Spider-Man 3 and even wrote about it in an earlier post, but Pirates 3 seems to be going to the other extreme. There's only one trailer (which I must have seen dozens of times by now) and a few posters knocking about, I haven't noticed much. It's all very odd.

Going by that fact, and the film's running time, I'm pretty sure it can't beat Spider-Man 3's opening weekend (although huge opening weekends are getting more and more common these days, with Shrek the Third's surprisingly big 120m+ last weekend). It should last longer than its superhero rival though, since it doesn't have any particularly huge imminent competition and previous instalments have shown decent legs.

Whatever, as always, I'll be there on opening day.