The odds is gone, and there is nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon.

In sum, I believe the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie far surpassed the second movie (not hard, as the second movie had about two good moments throughout*, and I decided the third one was infinitely better right after Jack said, "I'm having a magnificent garden party and you're not invited" which um, for those of you who haven't seen it, isn't very far into the film at all), although the ending of this one was WHOLLY UNACCEPTABLE. I say that because I completely saw it coming but I really hoped that I was wrong, and I hoped very much that it wouldn't happen, but then I kept on seeing it coming, and then when Jack asked the thing and Bill Nighy did the thing, I was like, well shit, I was really hoping that wasn't going to happen. And yet it did. It was like watching a train wreck that went on for three hours, assuming the train was--

I'm not even going to bother continuing this. I will accept that it was a bad analogy and move on.

What I'm trying to say is that apparently nobody listens to what I think before they create WHOLLY UNACCEPTABLE endings to the movies that, let's face it, they were only making for me in the first place.

But now I feel all gloomy and let down, because I know that if they make more Pirates of the Caribbean movies they will just be milking the franchise for all it's worth and although I will go and see them, I will hate myself for doing so, and they won't be as good, so I feel like now it's the end of a (brief but two-thirds good) era. Hence the nothing left remarkable comment.**

****

N.B. Those asterisks have nothing to do with my footnote asterisks. They are there to indicate a break.

I have gone away and thought about it; and upon further reflection, I have decided that it need not be all bad, these further pirate movies. Because all the focus is on Johnny Depp (who is brilliant, as I have often noted), and that allows Geoffrey Rush to practice his subversive genius without one feeling that he's being turned into a gimmick. My point is, Geoffrey Rush owned this third movie, in a way I would never have believed possible given how much Johnny Depp was excellent. I suspect that it is impossible now to make a good pirate movie without Geoffrey Rush (which is probably why there was such a jinx on pirate movies in the past, and is definitely why Dead Man's Chest was so rubbishy). So as long as they hang on to Geoffrey Rush I shall continue to love them.

* And they were both at the end, I'm sorry to say. One was when Keira Knightley did the thing, and Johnny Depp realized she had done the thing, and he gave her a look and said, "Pirate" in a way that indicated that given the opportunity he'd have taken her in manly fashion right there on the ship deck with the kraken looming.*** And the other was when, oh my God, Geoffrey Rush came clomping down the stairs. Died of joy right then.
** The quotation in my title is from Antony and Cleopatra, a play I have never read, and I only know this quotation because it was (mis)quoted in a wonderful book called Cat in the Mirror by Mary Stolz. Everything I know in the world I learned from kids' books, I swear to God.
*** Vis-a-vis the kraken: How good was it in this movie when Johnny Depp was looking into the kraken's eye? So good. Nobody in the world could have pulled that off the way Johnny Depp did right then.

Well, this has been very all over the place. The only excuse I can give is that I have a mere two days left in this country, and I have just come back from watching a pirate movie and before that a play at the Globe. I am In A State. (Plainly.)