Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) |
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Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) |
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| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Adventure |
Menu Animation & Audio Outtakes Featurette-Numerous Featurette-Making Of-Anatomy of a Scene : The MAelstrom |
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| Year Of Production | 2007 | ||
| Running Time | 161:44 (Case: 168) | ||
| RSDL / Flipper | RSDL (70:04) | Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Language Select Then Ads Then Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 2,4 | Directed By | Gore Verbinski |
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Studio
Distributor |
 Walt Disney Studios Home Ent. |
Starring |
Johnny Depp Geoffrey Rush Orlando Bloom Keira Knightley Jack Davenport Bill Nighy Jonathan Pryce Mackenzie Crook Lee Arenberg Kevin McNally David Bailie Stellan Skarsgård Tom Hollander |
| Case | ? | ||
| RPI | ? | Music | Hans Zimmer |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None |
English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Descriptive Audio Dolby Digital 2.0  (192Kb/s)Hindi Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
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| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 2.40:1 | ||
| 16x9 Enhancement |
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| Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
| Original Aspect Ratio | 2.35:1 | Miscellaneous | |
| Jacket Pictures | No | ||
| Subtitles |
English English for the Hearing Impaired Hindi Swedish Norwegian Danish Finnish Icelandic Dutch |
Smoking | Yes |
| Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
| Action In or After Credits | No | ||
I missed this one at the cinemas but could not miss the outpouring of vitriol towards it from the film critics. Obviously, this is the highly successful third movie of a highly successful trilogy. It is the number 1 film at the worldwide box office for 2007 and No 5 on the all time worldwide box office list. You can read our site review of the first one here and an excellent reader review of the second one here.
The story picks up with Captain Jack Sparrow (wonderfully played again by Johnny Depp) stuck in Davy Jones' Locker. All his friends (and a lot of his enemies) decide to band together to release him as they need all the pirates they can get to fight against Lord Cutler Beckett who is hanging anyone who has ever associated with a pirate, let alone been one. Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush having a lot of fun), Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) plus the new character Captain Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat) team up to try and find their way to The Farthest Gate, which leads to the world beyond this one. The plan is to get Jack back so that they convene the Brethren Court, a summit meeting of pirates. Of course, all of them also have their own selfish plans which may or may not get in the way. Meanwhile, Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) has joined forces with Lord Cutler Beckett, as Beckett has control of his heart, locked in a chest. Accordingly, Davy Jones is using his ship, The Flying Dutchman, to rid the seas of pirates. As the story becomes more confusing, everyone tries to double cross everyone else.
Overall, I thought this film was a significant improvement over Dead Man's Chest, however it was still definitely an overblown 160 minute action/adventure with a quality 110 minute one hiding somewhere inside it. The first hour of this film was excellent with linear storytelling, some great action, intrigue, nuttiness and a whole lot of fun to be had. After that it all got a bit too confusing and the pace slackened off. The final sea battle was certainly impressive technically but just a bit too over the top. Depp, Rush & Nighy all do a great job, however Bloom & Knightley are very bland and Yun-Fat is impossible to understand. Keith Richards is a nice addition as Captain Teague. There are too many subplots and intrigues between characters for the audience to keep up with. Having said that it is still a fun ride which which will please fans of the series, although some may desire more of the swashbuckling and less of the supernatural stuff. You can certainly see where the $300 million budget was spent and a great job has been done of combining live action and CGI, especially during the sea battles. If there is one thing the team of Gore Verbinski and Jerry Bruckheimer know how to do its make a big, brash and loud action film. It would have been a really good film with a tighter script and tougher editing.
Anyway, this is fun entertainment which should not be taken seriously and should not be thought about too hard. Trying to work out the plot is a fairly pointless activity and will add no enjoyment to the viewing of the film. Turn your brain off and have a fun night at home!
The video quality is excellent especially taking into account the film's running time. It's about as good as SD transfers get.
The feature is presented in a 2.39:1 aspect ratio 16x9 enhanced which is close to the original aspect ratio of 2.35:1.
The picture was wonderfully clear and sharp throughout, with no evidence of low level noise or grain of any description. Details was excellent during the CGI scenes such as the maelstrom sea battle.The shadow detail was excellent.
The colour was fantastic with richness and depth of colour. There were no colour blemishes of any kind.
I did not notice any significant artefacts.
There are subtitles in English, English for the Hearing Impaired, Hindi and a host of European languages. The English ones are clear, easy to read and close to the spoken word.
The layer change occurs at 70:04 and causes a slight pause.
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The audio quality is also excellent and a very immersive home theatre experience.
This DVD contains an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack encoded at 448 Kb/s, an English Audio Descriptive Dolby Digital 2.0 surround soundtrack encoded at 192 Kb/s and a Hindi Dolby Digital 2.0 surround soundtrack encoded at 192 Kb/s.
Dialogue was very clear and easy to understand and there was no problem with audio sync.
The score of this film by Hans Zimmer is excellent and a big part of the success of this trilogy.
The surround speakers were in constant use, either adding immersion to the soundtrack or with an incredible array of surround effects such explosions, fireworks, shouting, off-screen voices and the major storm sequence.Great stuff!
The subwoofer is also put to spectacular use during this film. It is used for drums, explosions, storms, crashes, cannons and lots of other stuff.
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The extras are all of the featurette style with a variety of contents. There is no commentary. All extras are 16x9 enhanced and feature 5.1 sound! Subtitles are only available in other languages NOT English.
The menu design is excellent featuring the excellent map from the film on Disc 1 and a more comical approach on Disc 2.
A short and amusing collection of stuff-ups. More entertaining than most outtakes.
Short featurette about Keith Richards & Johnny Depp working together. Features discussion of the guitar made for him for the movie. OK.
This featurette is the pick of the extras. It shows the gigantic set built on a soundstage with the two ships (full size) and the mechanics of making them move. Also discusses how they added the wind, rain, waves and other CGI. Interesting stuff.
A featurette about how the scenes with many Captain Jacks were done including the little Captain Jacks on his shoulders. Not bad.
These two scenes are a short scene between the pirates and a longer one of Barbossa & Jack being silly. The first is pointless but the second one is fun and both are available with optional commentary by the director.
Featurette about Chow's role, choreography and his stunt double. Average.
Decent featurette about the music and its composition including thinking behind the various themes.
This section includes a variety of featurettes about various specific design challenges. These are all quite interesting. Includes the following:
Featurette about the opening sequence including the role of Hans Zimmer.
This section includes a short intro and then backstory featurettes about each of the main pirates. Each runs for about 1 minute. Nothing too exciting.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
Globally, the various 2-disc releases of this film are virtually identical with the exception of language and subtitle differences. Our version is the same as the various Region 2 versions and is dual coded both 2 & 4. The Region 1 release has a Spanish 5.1 track and ours sports the audio descriptive track and a Hindi surround track along with lots of extra subtitles. On this basis lets just call it a draw. The film is also available on Blu-ray.
The video quality is excellent.
The audio quality is excellent.
The set has a good quantity of reasonable quality extras.
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| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | Pioneer DV667A DVD-V DVD-A SACD, using Component output |
| Display | Sony FD Trinitron Wega KV-AR34M36 80cm. Calibrated with Digital Video Essentials (PAL). This display device is 16x9 capable. This display device has a maximum native resolution of 576i (PAL)/480i (NTSC). |
| Audio Decoder | Built in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials. |
| Amplification | Pioneer VSX-511 |
| Speakers | Monitor Audio Bronze 2 (Front), Bronze Centre & Bronze FX (Rears) + Yamaha YST SW90 subwoofer |