Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End (2007, USA)

So, is that it for Elizabeth Swann? Her father dies, her lover dies, and at the end of things, she's left alone on an island, forced to wait another ten years for one day with Will? Sorry, but if Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End impressed anything upon me, it was that the filmmakers are terrified of women. Actually, I think it all started with the Kraken in Dead Man's Chest, which provoked giggles when I first saw it because of the horribly obvious vagina dentata imagery. In the third installment of the franchise, Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) is dressed up in pirate drag, sexually assaulted, elected king of the pirates, and finally given her comeuppance in the form of a self-imposed island marooning. It's like once they worked through the original "sprightly lass goes pirate" script in Curse of the Black Pearl, they couldn't figure out what the hell to do with her. I've already stated how disagreeably shrill her character becomes in the second movie, but things get so much worse in World's End - would it really have hurt so bad had they decided to give Elizabeth her own ship and let her sail the seas alongside the menfolk while waiting for Will's return?

Then there's the case of Calypso/Tia Dalma. In the second film, Tia Dalma is a repository of weird female power. Fairly early on in the third, we learn that she's the goddess Calypso bound in human form. Apparently, the pirates bound Calypso because she made seafaring so difficult and risky. Okay, a woman with too much power. But it gets better! She was also bound because her lover, Davy Jones, betrayed her after she happened to be a bit more interested in being a goddess than in waiting around on an island for him for the rest of eternity (Elizabeth, take note!). There's a lot of blather about releasing Calypso, which she seems rather in favor of, and the sequence where this is finally accomplished shows Tia Dalma growing enormous, an entire ship of men trying to keep her bound with ropes as she swells to Attack of the 50 Foot Woman size. There's a general sense of "what the hell have we done?" before Calypso turns elemental and ends up using her enormous powers just to get back at the man who betrayed her love. Then she apparently disappears.

So, at the end of the trilogy we've been presented with at least three symbols of female power - Elizabeth, Calypso/Tia Dalma, and the Kraken (there's also Annamaria, but they lose her entirely somewhere between the first and the second movies) - all three of which have been disposed of somehow (Davy Jones kills the Kraken on Beckett's orders). It's pretty depressing, to be frank. I love the Pirate franchise, no matter how crazy and overblown the last two films became. They don't make a lick of sense, but who cares? Pirates! Very pretty pirates, too, as the cinematography of World's End is just as lovely as in the other two. But I think I'll not be buying my own copy of the finale. The others are fun to trot out on a sick day or any other time I'm feeling somewhat in need of a shiny entertainment. But the third leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.