lierdumoa | Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Oh my god, I love this movie. And yeah, I love the Johnny Depp, and the Orlando Bloom, and Kiera Knightley is hot like burning. The special effects aren't bad either. But mostly, and this actually surprised me—I love this movie for the meta.

The premise of the movie is that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. And why? Because a bunch of sad little men with tiny penises decided to get together in a sekrit cabal and enslave a black woman to make their lives easier.

Tia Dalma as portrayed in the second movie is the most magnificiently huge and effective red herring of ever. They seriously piled every black voodoo priestess cliche on her they could possibly think of, until the more meta inclined fans were so busy screaming racism almost no one suspected her actual role in the plot arc.

And then we find out that, no, she's not a witch who raised Barbossa from the dead with black magic. She's a goddess who raised Barbossa from the dead with her godlike powers. They chose her name so appropriately. The goddess Calypso, from Greek mythology, canonically portrayed as a black woman. The ocean, from Greek mythology, representative of chaos, wild, uncontrollable, powerful, beautiful.

Davy Jones betrayed, more importantly tried to control the woman he claimed to love and it made him a monster. Literally. With tentacles in the face. And his attempt to control her was so monstrous that it corrupted everyone who came under his charge, everything about him, everything he touched.

And Barbossa, in his arrogance, thinks that he can free her and she will bestow favor on him, and even in the process of freeing her ties her in rope, still trying to control her. He doesn't get it. None of the squabbling ambitious pirate captains get it. "You have to say it like a lover." Wanting to free her for any reason other than love wouldn't be wanting to free her at all, it would just be wanting to put her in a different set of chains.

And Ragetti. Oh, God, Ragetti. Of course he is the one to free her. Because Ragetti isn't there for the glory of being a pirate. He's not there to wear the hat and give the orders. He's there because he loves the sea. He just loves the sea, exactly the way she is.

And when she is freed, she sticks around long enough to drown her abusive ex, then leaves to let the mortals handle their own problems. She doesn't owe them anything. She makes that clear.

ETA:

permetaform points out, there are certain visual parallels between Jack's situation with the cannibals in the second movie and Calypso's in the third. Binding and harnessing the God, then freeing the God with fire, consuming the God's power. The visual parallel of both Jack and Calypso bound to a wooden pole with rope covering them head to toe.

On one level this movie is a commentary on man's arrogance in trying to control nature. On another, it's a commentary on the actual culture and politics of the era.

That Asian female pirate on the council is based off actual history. Ching Shih was legendary in that time, and no woman in the law abiding naval world had that kind of power, or anything even close to it. Where all positions of power in the various governments were inherited or given by appointment, pirates voted on their leaders democratically.

Consider then that the creators of this movie specifically chose the East India Company to be the villains, and specifically chose a black woman to represent the sea. While the East India Company isn't at fault for putting Calypso in chains, but they do a lot of "good business" at her expense. This draws a direct parallel to the transatlantic slave trade. Barbossa even makes specific reference to "the good old days" when people accomplished things through hard work and the sweat of their backs instead of harnessing someone else's power to do the work for them.

Other shiny things:

I love that Elizabeth is elected and not once. Not once does anyone refer to her as queen. She's THE GODDAMN PIRATE KING. And she slides into her role as pirate, as leader, so comfortably. We knew at the end of the second movie that she was unquestionably a pirate, after what she did to Jack. We knew her balls were bigger than Jack's, Will's, Barbossa's and Davy Jones' combined. It was so nice to see her living up to that potential.

And of course Will ends up the captain of the Flying Duchman. Will is not a pirate in his soul. Not like Elizabeth. Of course he ends up working the nine to five (^(c)

permetaform), following orders, ferrying the dead to the underworld. It's honorable. It's honest work. Like blacksmithing. That's Will all over.

That knee kissing on the beach? Hotness.

The crew of Jacks? Also hotness. Mmmmm, doppleganger porn.

Things that bothered me:

They should have gotten a prettier kid to play her and Will's son. I mean, come on. Look at the kid's parents. He was all ordinary looking. He ought to have been ridiculously beautiful.

Uh. No. That's it. The rest was gold.

ETA: About half the cool meta here is

permetaform's brilliance. But we brainshare too much for me to actually separate it out, so let's just call this co-authored.