I caught an early showing of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End last night with a couple of coworkers, and a large number of strangers in eyepatches, skull bandanas, and tri-corner hats of wildly varying quality. I’m generally apprehensive about seeing big movies that have just opened, and especially on opening night, but I found the crowd refreshingly well-behaved in an enthusiastic nerd sort of way. It was good times.

I don’t want to get too much into the details of the film, but I will reassure you on two points. Firstly, if you liked the first one a lot but were left disappointed and slightly wary after the second, good news: this one is worth seeing in the theater. Yeah, I know it’s getting mediocre reviews, but screw ‘em. My coworkers and I are of the unanimous opinion that it’s much better than the second film was, and one of us has asserted that it’s just as good as the first. And my second point is that if you accidentally read spoilers for the movie (say, on the WoW forum), don’t even worry about it because they seem to be mostly incorrect.