Looking back, I think we were all spoiled with the PoTC trilogy (emphasis on the word "trilogy", OST and DMTNT not included) because it really felt like they went through a bit of a SW prequel effect where what was once considered boring is now the more intriguing part.
I remember people hating the Pirate council section of the movie back then (I wasnt among them), find it boring and counter intuitive to pirates as a whole but nowadays I see people loving those scenes and wishing we got to see more of the various pirate lords and the different cultural worlds they are from.
Now, of course, that doesnt mean that Dead Men's Chest and At World's End are perfect but it really feels like if they had to make a sequel to Curse of the Black pearl, going this direction was surprisingly not bad. I remember criticisms of back then had people saying "Why couldnt we just have Jack Sparrow go after a treasure?" because then you'd have On Stranger Tides because thats the direction they went with and thats why the whole movie feels like a side quest disguised as a main one. and Dead men Tell No Tales feels like a retread of the cursed crew thing we had with Barbossa and David Jones (give OST some credit, at least they didnt go that route), without saying how it felt like it was trying to act as an epilogue of sorts to give happier conclusions to Eliza and William's story even tho they had already had a pretty bittersweet and yet tragically poetic conclusion.
I guess what Im saying is that At World's End felt like a natural conclusion to not only everyone's stories but to the era of piracy since a theme many overlooked on DMC and AWE is that the era of pirates is coming to an end and how altho the world is still the same, there is "just less in it". At the end, they did defeat Beckett and bought themselves some time but it still doesnt change that this is still postponing the inevitable. At the same time it left enough ambiguity so that maybe Jack might have found the fountain of youth and truly became "The Last Pirate", an icon of the ultimate freedom brought by the oceanic horizon.
In the end, altho the concept of stand alone adventures with Jack felt good, I do think that giving the series a major hurah before the closing of the curtain felt much more preferable.
I can't believe how averse these people are to the concept of self sacrifice, one of the most - if not THE most heroic action one can do
They hear that saying about good men growing trees whose shade they won't be able to enjoy, and come out thinking "well why plant the tree in the first place?"
I really wonder if these people are born this way or if their souls and minds are broken down over years of exposure to globohomo propaganda that especializes in glorifying the seflish and demonizing the noble.
Because we see less and less people seeing a point of self sacrifice and being noble and its both scary and sad to witness.
You'd think the writers having a poor familial relationship would drive them to adhere to the main story or any stories message of love and family overcoming hardship and division. You got JRR Tolkien who personally participated in World War 1 and wrote a story about peoples from all over the world getting together to fight evil and mend the world for the people they love. Then you get modern media, where some guy in California got told by his father that theres only 2 genders so he makes it his life goal to never show a successful marriage in any piece of media until the sun burns out.
You can know someone by what they create since a creator sticks mostly with what they know.
And boy their hearts dont got a lot of good to tell.
