I finally watched Pirates of the Caribbean — At World’s End today, finishing out the Pirates saga (hopefully). In a sense, I wasn’t disappointed. I primarily watched it to see how the story finished out, having thought the second film took the franchise in a poor direction.

As you most likely are aware, the 2nd and 3rd films are really one movie broken in two. One really long movie. And not something Pirates is overly great at.

The first Pirates film, Curse of the Black Pearl, was a fun, swashbuckling, mindless adventure. But when the authors made the second and third movies, they tried to turn it into a semi-serious epic. The result was a film long on action but short on humor. Sure, they had their moments, but it wasn’t as fresh or as dense.

So yeah, Pirates, like The Matrix, is a series that is great if you stop after the first installment.