--- title: "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" year: 2007 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/pirates-of-the-caribbean-at-worlds-end" fi1m_score: 55 critics_score: 47 critics_reviews: 16 published: "2026-09-19T16:40:33.948641+00:00" updated: "2026-09-19T16:40:34.149189+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) Directed by Gore Verbinski · 2h 49m · MPA PG-13 · Adventure, Fantasy, Action **Fi1m score: 55** · Critics 47 from 16 reviews *In a sentence:* Everyone betrays everyone twice, a ship is carried across a desert by crabs, and the crabs are the ones we remember > Gore Verbinski’s third voyage has one sequence of real wonder and a battle in a whirlpool worth seeing, wrapped in an hour of pirates renegotiating their alliances in dim rooms. Some things here to admire; not enough to send you back to sea. ## Synopsis The East India Trading Company has hanged pirates by the dozen and holds Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) and his ship the Flying Dutchman on a leash. Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) is marooned in Davy Jones’s Locker with the Black Pearl. Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), back from the grave, leads Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) and Gibbs (Kevin McNally) to Singapore to steal charts from a pirate lord and sail off the edge of the map to fetch Jack back, because the nine pirate lords are being summoned and Jack is one of them. Will wants his father Bootstrap Bill (Stellan Skarsgård) freed from Jones’s crew; Elizabeth wants to know what has become of her father, Governor Weatherby Swann (Jonathan Pryce). Everyone has a bargain with somebody else. ## Review Gore Verbinski’s third *Pirates of the Caribbean* film runs 169 minutes and opens with a mass hanging, which is a bold way to begin a family film about a comedy pirate. The East India Trading Company has the sea by the throat, Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) is doing its work under protest, and Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) is dead and in the Locker. Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio have to bring him back, gather nine pirate lords, settle two romances, free a father and lift a curse, and they have chosen to do all of it at once. The rescue is the best stretch. Verbinski puts the Black Pearl on a white salt flat under a hard sky, and Dariusz Wolski shoots it so flat and bright that the ship looks like a toy someone set down and forgot. Depp plays a whole crew of Jacks arguing over a peanut. Then the ship is lifted and carried to the water by a tide of crabs, and we felt something we do not expect from the third film of anything: surprise, and a small, unreasonable delight. Rick Heinrichs designed that shore, the Company’s boardrooms and a steaming Singapore bathhouse, and his work is the most consistent thing in the picture. Geoffrey Rush is having the best time of anyone, rolling his lines and using the monkey as a prop, and Bill Nighy, under a beard of tentacles, plays Jones as a man who has been unhappy so long he has made a home of it. Depp has more to do than in the second film and is funnier for it, though the many-Jacks business comes back later and lands softer each time. Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley are handed a romance built mostly from misunderstandings; Knightley, asked to command pirates and grieve in the same reel, does better than the script. Jack Davenport’s Norrington gets a strand worth playing. The plot is the problem. The middle hour is a series of rooms in which people swap sides: Jack with the Company, Will with whoever will hand him his father Bootstrap Bill (Stellan Skarsgård), and a Singapore pirate lord with whoever spoke to him last. Elliott and Rossio treat each double-cross as a plot point, and it is a plot point once. By the third we had stopped keeping score, and by the pirate council, in which grown men argue procedure over an old rule book, we were bored, and then cross about being bored in a film with a ghost ship in it. Stephen E. Rivkin and Craig Wood cut briskly, but no editor can rescue a script with eleven agendas and no lead. Penny Rose and Liz Dann dress the nine lords as a costume parade, and the film knows it, because it keeps cutting back to them when it has nothing else to show. Hans Zimmer’s score does more lifting than a score should, and the big set piece, two ships fighting inside a whirlpool in a rainstorm, would be a shambles without it. As spectacle it is enormous and you can follow it; Wolski keeps tilting the horizon so we always know which deck we are on. We were glad of it after the hour before, which is not quite the same as enjoying it. Against *The Curse of the Black Pearl* (2003), a light, clean adventure, this is a wardrobe that has fallen open. It is a better film than *Dead Man’s Chest* (2006), because it has an ending and a stranger best sequence, but Verbinski’s gift for the odd image is spent servicing a plot he does not seem to believe in either. Pintel (Lee Arenberg) and Ragetti (Mackenzie Crook) get most of the honest laughs, standing at the edge of scenes and saying what we were thinking. See it for the Locker, the crabs and Rush, and fetch a drink during the council. It is a 12A that opens with a mass hanging and asks you to laugh at a monkey shortly after, and it never squares those two films. At home the plot gets no clearer, but at least you can ask each other who is on whose side without being shushed. *Fi1m score 55, published 19 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (16) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Michael Rechtshaffen (70/100, inferred): This trilogy-capper is a step up from the previous film, with Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow back in fine form and some entertaining sequences. It still lacks the zip of the first entry and has a convoluted plot. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/pirates-caribbean-at-worlds-end-johnny-depp-159241/) - **The New York Times**, Jeannette Catsoulis (70/100, inferred): The film largely succeeds in returning to the high-seas adventure and fun of the first installment after the excesses of the second. The resolution of plotlines brings a sense of relief and energy to the characters. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/movies/24pira.html) - **The Guardian**, Steve Rose (60/100, inferred): The critic describes it as a hulking, cumbersome beast of a movie overloaded with plot, characters and bureaucracy. He singles out the spectacular rescue sequence from Davy Jones's locker as the most visually impressive part. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2007/may/25/actionandadventure.sciencefictionandfantasy) - **Empire**, Helen O'Hara (50/100, inferred): The plot is a trippy, twisty mess and far too long, but it looks fantastic and makes some bold choices. Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow saves the day once again amid the chaos. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/pirates-caribbean-world-end-review/) - **Screen Daily** (50/100, inferred): The film adds nothing very exciting to the franchise formula but spins out familiar elements with enough energy and inventiveness to justify its running time. Lavish set pieces provide entertainment value though they lack the impact of the previous instalment's new creations. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/pirates-of-the-caribbean-at-worlds-end/4032822.article) - **The AV Club**, Scott Tobias (C-): The film is tedious and weighed down by convoluted mythology and excessive exposition that fails to clarify the story or allow room for fun slapstick. It highlights the perils of bloated blockbuster filmmaking. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/pirates-of-the-caribbean-at-worlds-end-1798202663) - **Variety**, Brian Lowry (50/100, inferred): This third entry is the biggest and loudest but only second-best in the series, offering some coherence and whimsy after the prior film's bloat while still suffering from numbing action and diminishing returns. Johnny Depp remains the main asset. [Read](https://variety.com/2007/film/reviews/pirates-of-the-caribbean-at-world-s-end-3-1200559054/) - **Evening Standard** (30/100, inferred): The third instalment is sporadically exciting with great visuals and effects but the plot is nonsensical and a rehash. Acting, including Depp's, is less special than the effects. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/captain-jack-capsized-7395439.html) - **The New Yorker**, Anthony Lane (30/100, inferred): The movie is an overlong, incoherent mess that pummels viewers into submission with its length and lack of focus. The standout element is a monkey's performance amid the chaos. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/06/04/men-at-sea-2) - **Time Out**, Ben Walters (30/100, inferred): The critic finds the plot incomprehensible without prior knowledge of the previous film and describes the action as messy, repetitive and lacking stakes. The story is seen as a collection of unfathomable compacts and betrayals that fails to engage. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/pirates-of-the-caribbean-at-worlds-end-1) - **Slant Magazine**, Nick Schager (20/100, inferred): The film is more of the same cacophonous action and paper-thin drama as its predecessor, with a muddled, overlong plot driven by corporate demands rather than narrative need. It features bland performances and recycled imagery in a dreary spectacle. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/pirates-of-the-caribbean-at-worlds-end/) - **The Times**, Kevin Maher (20/100, inferred): The critic calls it a bloated, incoherent mess with arbitrary plot twists and broken oaths that tests patience at nearly three hours. He notes some nice CGI set-pieces like a giant made of crabs as a highlight amid the flaws. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/travel/destinations/caribbean-travel/a-sinking-feeling-3p2rjrdxzt8) - **Eye for Film**, Angus Wolfe Murray (80/100, inferred): The critic finds the third film a confident, entertaining conclusion that avoids the usual trilogy slump. Spectacular action sequences and strong performances, especially from Geoffrey Rush and Bill Nighy, are singled out for praise, though the runtime is noted as excessive. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/pirates-of-the-caribbean-at-worlds-end-film-review-by-angus-wolfe-murray) - **/Film**, Peter Sciretta (7/10): The film is seen as an improvement over the previous sequel, with a stronger story hook and an epic climax worth the price of admission. The convoluted plot and lack of emotional investment in certain characters are noted drawbacks. [Read](https://www.slashfilm.com/496315/movie-review-pirates-of-the-caribbean-at-worlds-end/) - **Den of Geek**, Simon Brew (50/100, inferred): The reviewer finds the film messy and confusing with a bloated plot and wasted supporting cast, but prefers it slightly to the second film and admires the epic scale of the final battle sequences, finding it moderately entertaining overall. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/pirates-of-the-caribbean-trilogy-blu-ray-review/) - **The Skinny**, Sarah Hunter (★★): The film is a chaotic mess that is pretty dire, with a confusing plot full of fighting and one-liners; it also criticizes the lack of moral compass as the pirates become too likeable and the ending is unsatisfying. [Read](https://www.theskinny.co.uk/film/dvd-reviews/pirates-of-the-caribbean-at-worlds-end) ## Details - **Director:** Gore Verbinski - **Director:** Gore Verbinski - **Screenplay:** Terry Rossio, Ted Elliott - **Cinematography:** Dariusz Wolski - **Editor:** Stephen E. Rivkin, Craig Wood - **Music:** Hans Zimmer - **Production design:** Rick Heinrichs - **Costume design:** Liz Dann, Penny Rose - **Producer:** Eric McLeod, Jerry Bruckheimer, Pat Sandston - **Cast:** Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow; Geoffrey Rush as Barbossa; Orlando Bloom as Will Turner; Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Swann; Jack Davenport as Norrington; Bill Nighy as Davy Jones; Jonathan Pryce as Governor Weatherby Swann; Lee Arenberg as Pintel - **Runtime:** 2h 49m - **Certificate (MPA):** PG-13 - **Release (the US):** 25 May 2007 - **Genres:** Adventure, Fantasy, Action - **Budget:** $300 million - **Box office:** $962 million ## Where to watch in the US - Disney+: streaming, uhd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, uhd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $17.99, uhd *Checked 2026-09-19.* Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HR, HU, IE, IL, IS, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, TR, US, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 2008: Best Makeup and Hairstyling (nominated); Best Visual Effects (nominated) - Kids' Choice Award for Favorite Movie 2008: Kids' Choice Award for Favorite Movie (nominated) ## If you liked this - *Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl* (2003), Fi1m 81: Where it started: one curse, one ship, and jokes with room to breathe — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/pirates-of-the-caribbean-the-curse-of-the-black-pearl.md) - *Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World* (2003), Fi1m 86: The sea taken seriously, with a captain who never once winks at us — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/master-and-commander-the-far-side-of-the-world.md) - *The Crimson Pirate* (1952): Burt Lancaster somersaulting through rigging; ninety minutes and not one negotiation - *The Princess Bride* (1987), Fi1m 86: Swordfights, pirates and a plot you can explain to a child — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-princess-bride.md) - *Time Bandits* (1981): Terry Gilliam’s cluttered fantasy, which knows exactly how long it should be --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/pirates-of-the-caribbean-at-worlds-end