Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men
Tell No Tales continues the PotC trend of titles that
increasingly have nothing to do with the movie they represent. It
really should be called Pirates of the Caribbean: Beating a Dead
Horse, because this series is really starting to grow barnacles.
I mean, not all the series' films have been great but at least they
gave us skeleton pirates, the Kraken, Davey Jones, the Flying
Dutchman, Blackbeard. And what does this most recent outing give us?
Ghosts... ghost pirates that are basically the same as the skeleton
pirates we saw in the first film: cursed humans who are unkillable in
a swordfight. There's also a ghost ship that eats other ships.
Needless to say, the Pirates franchise has definitely run out
of ideas, but what do you expect when you're watching the fourth
sequel to a movie based on a theme park ride? The whole thing
feels tired.
And speaking of tired, Johnny Depp is
back once again as the lovable Captain Jack Sparrow, but his
performance comes off as rather overdone and complacent. The fact
that Jack is drunk for half the film may have just been the
director's way of working around this. New to this film is Javier
Bardem as the ghostly Captain Salazar. While Bardem's performance
isn't bad, it doesn't leave as big an impression as it should.
Geoffrey Rush as Captain Barbossa, on the other hand, is just as
awesome as ever. Yes, there are a bunch of recurring characters in
Dead Men Tell No Tales – some we haven't seen since 2007's
At World's End – but in taking a page from the X-Men:
Apocalypse playbook none of them have aged a day even though this
film takes place about 21 years after Curse of the Black Pearl.
Come on! The only PotC character who should be immortal is Angelica
(Penelope Cruz), who, since she isn't mentioned in DMTNT, I'm
assuming is still immortal and marooned on an island doomed spend
centuries dying from starvation again and again and again. (Isn't
Jack such a nice guy?)
There's also a couple original
characters: Kaya Scodelario as Carina Smyth and Brenton Thwaites as
Henry Turner, or as I like to call them Elizabeth and Will 2.0.
Neither of these characters are very interesting or developed. Henry
is pretty bland (a carbon copy of Will from the first movie) and
Scodelario's acting is pretty bad. Oh yeah, and instead of a Keith
Richards cameo we get a Paul McCartney cameo singing a pirated-up
version of Maggie Mae. Because of course. Who are they going to get
for the next movie? Roger Daltrey?
Dead Men Tell No Tales' plot is
about Henry Turner, son of Will and Elizabeth, searching for Poseidon's Trident so that he can free his father from the curse of
the Flying Dutchman. Along the way he recruits the help of the
astrologist/horologist Carina, Captain Barbossa, and of course Jack
Sparrow. The plot has all the things you'd expect from a PotC film:
action spectacles, fantastic creatures, people searching for their
fathers, uninteresting people falling in love. It does try a few new
things though. There's a flashback scene showing us how a young Jack
Sparrow got his name and his captaincy. I have mixed feelings about
this scene. On one hand it's cool to see the formative adventures of
the series' funnest character, but on the other hand I'm not
interested in learning the origin of random little things like Jack's
hat, his beads, or his nickname. Also, seeing the de-aged Depp's face
and hearing his not-so-de-aged voice just feels weird. Another new
thing this film tries is some uninspired adult humour. And the whole
film ends on a scene that is so sappy you'd swear that it was written
by a six year-old girl.
Not everything in DMTNT is bad. I
thought the scenes with the undead sharks and Jack stuck in a
guillotine were pretty fun. And to its credit DMTNT makes do without
the confusing multitude of subplots that previous films in the series
had. Instead all the confusion comes from how the supernatural stuff
in this film works. What is the Devil's Triangle? Where does its
power come from? How is it linked to Jack's compass? Why did the
Triangle give Salazar's crew superpowers and make them the curators
of it when everyone else who sails into it dies? Was his the first
ship to sail into it? If so, then how did young Jack know about the
Triangle's curse?
You want some more plot holes? OK! How
are just a dozen horses able to drag a whole two-story building (not
on wheels or anything) all around the town streets? What was the deal
with that witch character? She was only in a couple scenes and she
didn't really do anything. Are we really expected to believe that
Jack would be willing to give up his mystical compass just for some
rum? Oh, and good thing Barbossa just happened to have the enchanted
sword that could restore the Black Pearl out from the bottle. Real
convenient, there. And most importantly, since all sea curses are now
broken does that mean that Jack the monkey is mortal again? I could
go at this all day, folks!
But I won't. Overall, Pirates of the
Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales's
story feels a lot like Curse of the Black Pearl
but with a bit of On Stranger Tides's
tone mixed in. It's got most of the same problems as the last Pirates
movie, so if you liked that one then I guess you'll like this one
too. Personally I want this series to stop settling for mediocrity.
The first movie was so good, but they just keep messing it up!
Grade:
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