10 Movies That Never Got Better Than Their Opening Moments

Pirates of the Caribbean’s first three movies can still be considered a relatively strong trilogy, though they did get progressively weaker. The fourth and fifth may have left more to be desired, and the potential reboot with Margot Robbie is reportedly now dead in the water, but At World’s End is by no means a poor movie.

In fact, its opening scene is one of the darkest and most harrowing in the entire trilogy. Granted, much of the franchise is Jack Sparrow being his goofy, wacky self, with some huge CGI battles thrown in for good measure, but this moment was something completely new.

After the events of the first two movies, with the piracy problem becoming more of a thorn in the side of the East India Trading Company than ever before, Lord Cutler Beckett declared emergency laws and basically hanged anyone who ever looked at a pirate.

There were several batches of accused taken to the gallows, but the most notable was the one that included a child so small he needed a stool to reach the noose dangling above. You could arguably class this as one of Disney’s more brutal murders, but at least he didn’t go out before inspiring a song of defiance in everyone about to lose their lives.