Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (open spoilers)

Cafe Society
1

Saw this last night with the wife. My parents have my kids, who are out of school one week ahead of the school I teach in.

I think your general opinion of the other four movies will impact your view of this one. My thoughts are as follows. I liked them in this order:

  1. Pirates 2: Dead Man’s Chest - Really one of my favorite comedies and just a very well made action-comedy movie. Probably Johnny Depp’s best movie.

  2. Pirates 1: Curse of the Black Pearl - What a joy and surprise this was. Makes me laugh all the way through and the effects are still impressive. An all time family favorite at our house.

  3. Pirates 3: A World’s End - Now, I like this one a lot, but can tell that the rush of getting it finished made it a bit of a mess. A hurricane/typhoon greatly impacted their initial filming of this movie. Gore Verbinski nearly had a stress heart attack finishing this one. Still, it actually works out to be a lot of fun. The final 45 minutes is amazing.

  4. Pirates 4: On Stranger Tides - This was a disappointment. It actually is still fun and a lot of things work. Blackbeard is great. However, it really was a major step down in quality. I do re-watch it, but not often.
    OK, so knowing where I stand, my thoughts on the newest release. The critic reviews have been very bad, only 25-30% positive on Rotten Tomatoes. I was nervous going in.

I think I loved it.

I don’t know what movie others are seeing, but the bad taste of the 3rd and 4th one must be impacting people. This one was easily up there with the first two movies.

Here are my pros and cons:

Pro:

**Funny. **Much, much funnier than the 4th one. Jack Sparrow spinning around in the guillotine made me laugh harder than anything in a long time. It was just hilarious. The girl(Carina) trying to explain her astronomy to the pirates was hilarious.

Great sequences - The literal bank robbery was fun. The guillotine sequence was great. The finale at “shiny rock” island was amazing.

Touching - I am a softie, but I was touched with Barbossa finding his daughter and sacrificing his life for her. I know it was cheap playing to our emotions, but it worked for me. I even liked Will meeting back up with Elizabeth, the curse broken.

**Return of the Pearl **- This falls into Rogue One stuff where I was cheering, “Hey, I like that because I Know it!!!” Still, it worked for me. Glad the Pearl is back and Jack the monkey, too.

Con:

I was not as big a fan of the opening 40 minutes or so. The bank robbery was nice, but the rest was dragging. If the rest had been like that, it would have been a worse movie by a lot. The last 1 1/2 hours was a huge improvement. Huge. Editing was obviously very tough in the first 40 minute section. It played out as storyboarded for the rest, a much easier and smoother section.

I miss Pintel and Ragetti. I heard they turned down the fifth one and you can see that the other “side pirates” were essentially just their part spread out. I do like that the original guards of the Black Pearl were there(very consistent with the story, too). Still, they are missed.

Music - Very forgetable, which is a shame. The first three have amazing music.
Anyway, I loved the movie and recommend it highly. I was very much surprised with this movie. It was a great film, very well made, the new lead actors were terrific, and I had a great time. I’m buying this on DVD/Blu-ray immediately.

8/10

My new ranking, which really is early having seen this one only once is:

  1. Pirates 2
  2. Pirates 1
  3. Pirates 5
  4. Pirates 3
  5. Pirates 4

This movie was a true sequel. It’s understandable to a certain extent without seeing the others, but a surprising amount of it was continuing story. The Pearl. Will and Elizabeth, Barbossa having Blackbeard’s sword. Lots of small details like side characters and so forth. It does help to see and enjoy the others.

2

Well, one reason that folks are staying away has to be the lack of publicity. I’d heard in a vague way that they were planning on making a fifth one, but I haven’t seen one single teaser, trailer, ad, interview, or any other promotion for it after that.

Did they try to make Jack a protagonist again? Because I think that was the biggest flaw with the fourth one: Captain Jack Sparrow isn’t a protagonist. He’s something that happens to protagonists.

3

Fixed. The new girl and guy drive the story and they do great.

4

OK, in that case, I might check it out.

5

Youtuber Jenny Nicholson broke down why there are diminishing returns with Captain Jack.

The first movie Captain Jack was written as a regular character but Depp played him in such a unique and bizarre way that it became a pop culture touchstone… the sequels were all written to play to that performance. Jack makes funny faces… let’s concoct scenarios that let Depp make funny faces, etc.

Also…does any character’s sacrifice actually mean anything when they have established the rules of this universe such that bringing someone back from the dead is actually doable?

6

Probably not, but it still worked in the movie. I consider this the last movie even though there is a chance Disney will pay Depp to play it again.

I think this movie was much wiser in how it used Jack Sparrow. He was part of the movie, a very major part, but it felt like it shifted back to a focus on everyone. The new girl, Carina, was a surprise and I think the best new character the series has had.

7

Finally got around to watching this.

The introductions of the new characters is very poorly done, it’s rushed and forced and all over the place. There’s a sequence about half an hour in that would’ve been a more logical meeting point for them than the random coincidental stumbling upon each other they did during the pointless opening action scene.

The cinematography was uninspired, with no motivation. This carried over into the editing. It needed better comic timing, easily done with some subtle edit changes. Gore Verbinski really knows how to draw out a joke so the punchline lands. These new directors (they were a pair) had no patience, spoiling the impact of both humour and dramatic tension.

And I agree on the music. The same themes as the other movies, but weakly orchestrated without emotional weight.

Overall it wasn’t horrible, just not as good as it could’ve been.