Dead Man's Chest ends bringing the whole host of plots it's raised to unsatisfying conclusions. Not unsatisfying in that they don't end, but that the endings are not what we would expect. We'll need to break down each story, and it's conclusion, to see what I mean.
1. Jack Sparrow is fighting to save his own life. Resolved when he thinks he's stolen Davey Jones' heart, only to find it's been stolen from him.
2. Norrington is fighting to regain his old life, resolved when he steals the heart from Sparrow, and at the expense of all the other characters.
3. Will's primary goal is to save his father, and he loses his chance due to Norrington stealing the heart, leaving no way of using the Black Pearl to fight Davey Jones. Incidentally, he also wants to make Elizabeth happy, but that's taken a back seat while he worries about his father.
4. Elizabeth has found, and saved, Will, but now has to worry about her own skin. Here earlier techniques of pretending to be helpless no longer work, so she betrays Jack, as he foreshadowed earlier. Her guilt over this comes to be a block between her and Will.
5. Beckett gets exactly what he wants. He claims the heart of Davey Jones, giving him the ultimate leverage over the ultimate power of the sea.
It's fairly clear that the characters we're sympathetic with are in a bad state, and their antagonists have won. This is a classic ending for the middle movie of a trilogy, especially in the fantasy genre. Think Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, where the Empire wins. Think Lord of the Rings, where Gollum spells out his plans to betray Frodo, and Gandalf has won one battle, but now is beginning a much larger one. The difference here is the scope. Whereas most fantasy movies have 2 or 3 plots moving along, there's no less than 5 here. This is a level of complexity that most movie goers simply are not prepared to deal with. It's incredibly ambitious. The filmmakers knew this. They knew that the plots were hugely complex, and would be hard to swallow. To help absorb all this, audiences were also treated to fantastical action sequences. I can't recall any other 3 way sword fights. Davey Jones and his crew look amazing for such extensive computer effects.
So now with all these plots going, all these frustrated good guys sitting around unsure what to do, and these bad guys with the means of taking over the sea, what does the next movie hold? Well, the first thing it has to do is bring back Jack, and the Pearl. The last movie in a trilogy needs to resolve everything in the good guys' favor, so Jack has to come back. Will needs to resolve his relationship with his father and Elizabeth. Beckett needs to get his comeuppance, Norrington needs redemption, Jones must be defeated. The plots become so complicated you practically need a flow chart to keep track of changing allegiances and betrayals. And in addition to that, we need epic action, and good old fashioned movie fun, so we can accept it all. We get all this in Pirates of the Caribbean 3, At World's End.
