And now, just because I can, allow me to present the trailer for the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie:

I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a spectacular trailer. Whether the movie will be any good is, of course, an open question. The art of the trailer editing has advanced to a point where it’s no longer possible to tell what you’ll be getting yourself into, based solely on the previews. In fact, I find that the trailer is better than the finished film in something like seven out of 10 cases.

In addition, I’m rather ambivalent about the Pirates movies. I love the concept of them — the POTC ride has always been my favorite Disney attraction, and my boyhood fantasies were filled with blackhearted scalawags, buccaneers, and corsairs — and Johnny Depp has created an indelible, iconic, very likable character largely through the force of his own charisma and artistic daring (who’d have thought that playing an entire movie as a sexually ambiguous drunk would work?). But the first film probably could’ve been trimmed by 15 or 20 minutes without anyone ever missing anything, and the second one suffered from the “Bigger is Always Better — Except When It’s Not” syndrome that afflicts so many sequels. And why did this whole thing need to be a trilogy anyway? The first film could’ve stood on its own very nicely.

All of which is just me being my usual curmudgeonly self, of course. Everybody reading this knows that I’ll be seeing At World’s End. After all, I’m a sucker for a good trailer. And pirates. A good trailer with pirates? Irresistable…