The problem with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise lies
in the devolution of its most iconic character, Captain Jack Sparrow. What a
lot of people tend to forget about the first three movies is that Jack was not
the main protagonist. He was an important supporting character whose vivid,
spotlight stealing performance by Johnny Depp mutated him into an
all-encompassing entity that dominated the whole series, culminating in a movie
where he actually was the main focus that was, to put it politely… not good. In
other words, Jack Sparrow is to the Pirates
movies what Steve Urkel was to Family
Matters. It also doesn’t help that the character has undergone some serious
flanderization over the years. While he was always goofy and eccentric, he was
also a courageous, heroic swashbuckler. But like Sparrow’s overall presence,
his more clownish aspects have become more and more dominant. Dead Men Tell No Tales at first seems
like an attempt to go back to the series’ roots, but does it succeed?
Captain Jack Sparrow
(Johnny Depp) has fallen on hard times. He’s lost his ship, his crew has
abandoned him, and he’s traded his compass for a bottle of rum. In doing this,
he has unleashed a group ghost pirates from the Devil’s Triad led by Captain
Salazar (Javier Bardem), an undead former pirate hunter with a vendetta against
Jack. To find him, he has enlisted the help of Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush),
while Jack crosses paths with Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites), the son of Will
Turner, who wants to find the Trident of Poseidon, an ancient artifact that
will lift the curse brought onto him at the end of At World’s End, and Corina (Kaya Scodelario), a scientist who is
also looking for the trident for undefined reasons. So now the race is on. Who
will get hold of the Trident? Can Jack Sparrow return to his former glory? And
most important of all, does anybody still care?
One of the main reasons
that the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise fell off so hard (for me at least)
was because it took a then fresh and innovative take on the seafaring adventure
genre which had been pretty much dead thanks to bombs like Waterworld and Cutthroat
Island, and then ran it straight into the ground through overload and
overexposure. Curse of the Black Pearl
was a straight-forward by awe inspiring thrill ride and a vehicle for Depp, who
before then was still a well-respected character actor who had yet to find his
big break. Dead Man’s Chest upped the
ante by introducing a deep mythology for this universe that was mostly crammed
into At World’s End, which was so
convoluted and overstuffed that the DVD actually came with footnotes just so
the audience could know what the hell was going on. On Stranger Tides was their attempt to simplify things, but by that
time both Depp and the Pirates
franchise was so overexposed, and without Gore Verbinski’s direction it failed
to leave much of an impact. Dead Men Tell
No Tales attempts to get back to the roots of the original with seemingly
no one having learned their lesson from the last film.
On one hand, they do have
some rather interesting visuals and inventive slapstick. The film opens with an
elaborate Buster Keaton-esque sequence where Jack and his crew try to rob a
bank and end up dragging the entire building across town, and my favorite part
of the whole movie was a physics defying bit involving a guillotine. Of course,
the stand out has to be everything involving Salazar. His hair and clothes and
hair constantly sway around as if he’s underwater, his crew all have parts of
their body that have basically been evaporated, and his rotted, dilapidated
ship bends open like the jaws of a sea monster to devour other ships. There’s
even zombie sharks, which isn’t entirely original but still pretty cool.
Unfortunately, those are
the few moments of inspiration the movie has, because the rest is just a rehash
of the original. While Sparrow is still fopping about and stealing the
spotlight, he’s playing second banana to a bland romance between Thwaites and
Scoldelario’s characters, who are both bereft of chemistry or charisma. There’s
some somewhat witty banter that gets old after a while, especially this one
running gag where someone accuses Corina of being a witch just because she’s a
woman who knows her science, including a god damn scientist. Some moments seem
to be building up to big reveals that feel unearned and crowbarred in at a
futile attempt to get some emotional resolution. There are even a few plot
points and characters that have a lot of potential, but don’t factor into the
plot at all. At one point, both Barbossa and the British Navy enlist the help
of a witch to track down Jack, but she’s only there for two scenes, barely does
anything, and is never seen or mentioned again. Even the zombie sharks are only
used once, and it climaxes in a moment where Jack literally jumps over one. And
quite frankly, I can’t think of a better visual metaphor. It’s bad enough that
this franchise jumped the shark, but they had to jump over a dead shark.
Overall, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No
Tales is an unnecessary installment to a franchise that should’ve hung its
eyepatch up a long time ago. At this point, it’s like some obnoxiously outgoing
drunk person at a bar who’s trying to impress everyone with jokes, stories and
innuendos. He fun to watch from a distance, but once he heads in your direction
he wears out his welcome really fast and you want to just get him on the next
cab home. Some parts might be worth catching on cable a year from now, but it’s
not worth the price of admission.
5/10
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