If all this seems confusing, don't worry. Hans Zimmer's bombastic score is there to helpfully tell you what you're supposed to feel, and how you're supposed to react to the scene.

In Shanghai, lovely heroine Elizabeth (Knightley), resurrected scalawag Captain Barbossa (Rush) and their collection of secondary characters from the first two movies approach a Pirate Lord named Sao Feng (Chow) about obtaining a ship and a crew so they can rescue Jack Sparrow (Depp) from Davy Jones' locker. Just how they got to Shanghai to ask for a ship and crew without a ship or a crew never comes up. Will Turner shows up as well, and a battle ensues, because the screenwriters have created a scene that can have no resolution without a contrivance ex machina. During the battle, a bad guy overhears our heroes discussing their plans at exactly the right moment amid shouts and explosions at a distance of about 20 feet.

Fitted with a new ship and crew, our troupe goes in search of Jack Sparrow, the keystone of their franchise, "Beyond the Farthest Gate." Poor Jack, in Davy Jones' locker, exists in a state of both life and death ... rather how this turgid movie will make a number of people feel.

A franchise plundering itself

Quick! In one sentence, summarize Plan 9 From Outer Space: "Aliens resurrect the dead in an attempt to communicate with humanity." That wasn't so hard, was it? How about Robot Monster? "A group of survivors fight off an alien that has killed the rest of humanity." Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is such an inarticulate, incoherent, fractured mess, it is impossible to summarize in one sentence the way you can two of the most inarticulate, incoherent and fractured movies of all time. And before you argue that it's not fair to apply this standard to a three-hour movie that's the final part of a trilogy, let me apply it to Return of the King: "Frodo and Sam journey to Mordor while their friends defend Gondor."

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is not plotted. Each individual moment exists unto itself, with almost no regard for what comes before or after. When the movie has been written into one of its many corners, the sudden crash of a cannonball, a swelling of Zimmer's score, or a backstory mythology never heard of previously is tossed into the mix cover the gaffes. Example? Pirate Captain Sao Feng tells Elizabeth she's the earthly vessel of a mythic being. Before this can be truly explained, a handy cannonball breaks up the scene, and it's never addressed again. Turns out somebody else is the earthly vessel of this mystic being, but Sao Feng should have known this was the case.

There's the aforementioned magic coin held by the boy about to hanged, one of the "Nine Magic Pieces of Eight" discussed by characters throughout the movie, most all of which seem to be in the hands of the Bad Guys of the notorious pirate-stomping outfit, the Dutch East India Company. Guess what? Turns out you don't actually need those magic coins to work the magic that they magically produce, as if by magic. It's sort of like telling Frodo and Sam, "Hey, you can throw any old rock into that volcano and get the same effect ... the Ring's not important!"

The numerous magical contrivances of the movie are all kept vague, such as the effect of the mystic shanty sung by the defiant pirate sympathizers. Why? Because if the magic is defined, that would limit its usefulness as a plot device and actually imply the application of those pesky narrative rules of "cause and effect" into the retina-scraping miasma of CGI that is this movie. The titular curse of the first Pirates movie was a fine magical MacGuffin. It worked just dandy in the narrative. It was fun. Who doesn't like undead zombie pirates? (Or, for that matter, undead zombie pirate monkey mascots?) The magical contrivances of this movie are so muddy and random, they insult the intelligence of the audience.

The characters are just as muddy and random, too. Our heroes, supposedly allies, betray and double-cross each other at the drop of a lice-ridden buccaneer hat, while, at the same time, supposed enemies do great favors for them. This is not character complexity. This is not moral ambiguity. It's what happens when you film a bajillion-dollar movie without a finished script. Dangling plot points and character arcs from the previous movies are resolved with a shrug, buried under the dungheaps of new plot points piled on by this movie that's nominally supposed to wrap up everything that's happened previously. Dali and Buñuel's Un chien andalou has more narrative consistency than this movie. So does Lynch's Eraserhead and Inland Empire.

And yes ... Great Neptune, help us ... the foundations are laid for a fourth movie.