Green Goblin Reviews Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Every time I do one of these “most recent in a long line of films” reviews, I gotta establish where I am on the series as a whole, so you can understand where my perception is coming from. Now, your mileage for this series may vary, but I have to still stop and remind myself that much like the Transformers movie franchise, I have seen every Pirates of the Caribbean movie that’s come out. I can genuinely enjoy the first movie by itself. The characters are charming, the tone and aesthetic is immediately immersive (if a little campy) and the story is simple enough to follow, once the premise is laid out by Barbossa at dinner. The second and third movies are what I like to refer to as “digestible”. That is to say that I won’t go out of my way to watch either one, nor will I seek them out, but they are at least films that I can stomach. They can only really be seen one after another because it’s just one long story split up into two films. Doesn’t take away from the fact that they are tedious, confusing, sloppy spectacle blockbusters who allow continuity and establishment of mythos to eat them alive. Yes, “digestible” I feel is a perfect description for Parts II and III. Stranger Tides on the other hand is just……awful. Completely removed from the continuity of the other films, it tried to just get sustain on Johnny Depp’s chewing of the scenery alone, with the most disposable plot of the films yet. Say what you will about the stupid double-crosses in Dead Man’s Chest or At World’s End, at least I REMEMBER the story there. So needless to say, I was tapped out on the Pirates movies prior to approaching this film. While this film didn’t exactly win me back, it was still enough to keep me entertained for a couple hours. So congrats, Disney: The franchise is back up to “digestible” standards. Break out the rum!!
The story starts off with honestly more continuity than I expected going in; Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites), son of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann is attempting to break the curse of the Flying Dutchman’s hold on his father and joins up with the British Navy to learn all he can about the sea in an attempt to find a cure. During a pirate pursuit into a dark cove referred to as the Devil’s Triangle, his boat runs afoul of a cursed ship and its undead crew, led by the ghostly Captain Salazar(Javier Bardem). They kill everyone on board except for Henry, due to his Jack Sparrow wanted poster. He’s to deliver a vague threat to Jack Sparrow and is left on a piece of driftwood to survive. Around the same time back in civilization, a woman named Carina Smith (Kaya Scodelario) is escaping her public execution to search for this movie’s magical MacGuffin, the Trident of Poseidon: the literal weapon of the god of the sea, that can control or break all oceanic curses like a giant reboot button on the entire film series. These two meet up with Jack in prison (Will Turner is held for being a deserter), break out and begin their journey to locate the Trident. At the same time as the trio’s prison escape, Salazar’s crew begins attacking pirate ships all over the seas, which gains the attention of Captain (Commodore?) Hector Barbossa, as most of the ships being destroyed are his own. He sets sail to parlay with the ghost ship and offer up Jack as tribute in exchange for safer seas for his fleet.
That’s a solid plot for a “next generation” Pirates movie. Not overtly complicated, with enough spectacle to keep a person occupied throughout. I will say that I genuinely enjoy the villain role of Captain Salazar. His personality and motivation is endearing (at least, his spoken motivation), the look of him and his crew is unique and cool (one guy is literally just a hat and a hand, wielding a sword), his ship basically consisting of a giant gaping maw on the underside that eats other ships is just fantastic (makes you wonder why it isn’t used in literally every interraction he has). At one point, he even uses undead zombie sharks to get at the Jack and company. All the returning stars still know how to make it work. Depp and Rush still know how to stumble around and chew the scenery as well as they ever could, the returning Black Pearl crew are still questioning why the follow anyone here and…..well, that’s pretty much it for the good bits.
Straight up, the new characters of Henry and Carina just don’t work. The others are so comfortable in their roles that they just overshadow the new generation. I like the establishing of Henry Turner’s place in the continuity, but the new girl’s eventual backstory just had me throwing up my hands with annoyance. “Of course she’s that. Which naturally means that this is gonna happen at the end of the film”. They both feel shoe-horned in, despite the overall storyline revolving around them. That’s a very weird position to find yourself in. But it could be worse. They could be as pointless as the British Navy was in this film; a momentary foil at the start of the adventure that gets ignored throughout, until the start of the third act, where they basically get bitch-slapped away, and had most of the audience going “Oh yeah. I forgot they were a thing”. And I said above how I like Salazar’s spoken motivation (to rid the seas of all pirates), but he seems perfectly fine murdering literally every ship he seas, regardless of nationality or affiliation. That seems a little counter-productive, doesn’t it? I mean, you and the British navy have the same end goal of squashing pirates? You really wanna uses your “gaping maw” ship on them? Shouldn’t you two factions be helping one another? Or how about how Carina’s character is on trial for being a witch (she’s not. She’s just good at math and science), but the same government that’s preparinng to execute her literally has an actual witch on retainer themselves? See, it’s those niggling inconsistencies, alongside the overall pointlessness of the new characters in their own storyline that prevents this film from being genuinely good and is instead just sort of average.
I’m glad that I didn’t flat out hate this film. Continuity, set-pieces and Jack Sparrow’s charming mannerisms give this film a LOT of slack admittedly, but I wouldn’t mind coming across this film again, whilst channel surfing a year from now. Less muddled plot contrivances as the second or third film, yet still more connected and about something than the fourth film. I know there’s an after credits scene, but I couldn’t be bothered to care, honestly. I’d be perfectly fine with the film series ending here.
6/10. If you ARE interested in this film, best make it quick. Next week’s film (good or bad) will have us forgetting the Pirates of the Caribbean pretty damn quickly.