Note: wherever possible, I will limit spoilers.
I went to see Pirates with pretty low expectations. Given other cliffhanger-based third-time fizzlers (the Matrix trilogy comes painfully to mind), I didn’t have a lot of hope for this new franchise. However, I was very pleasantly surprised. This movie outstrips the second one in many ways; it delivers action, some fairly interesting character dilemmas, an intriguingly bittersweet ending, and a good dose of the piratical humor that was somehow muted in the second movie.