Movie Reaction: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Formula: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl + a couple decades.

I'm not sure what I'm hoping to get out of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise at this point. The Curse of the Black Pearl is one of my favorite movies (Top 10 All-Time). It's one of those movies that I like so much that it feels like a magic trick. The action, the humor, and the characters are so well handled that I never get tired of watching it. I just saw it again last week and it holds up as well as I remembered. However, I don't think I've seen any of the sequels more than once.I just didn't care for them that much. I'm not one of those people who complain about sequels. I love a good sequel and the Pirates franchise is perfect for repeated adventures. I don't care for the direction the Pirates sequels have gone in so far. The humor is more silly and less clever. The action is bigger but not better staged. The great strength of The Curse of the Black Pearl is that Jack Sparrow forces himself into an otherwise traditional action movie. The version of that movie you'd expect is the young protagonist (Will Turner) fights the evil Pirate Captain (Hector Barbosa) to rescue the woman he loves (Elizabeth Swann). Jack Sparrow is essentially a supporting character (the comic relief) who forces his way into the center of everything. Instead, all the sequels have started with the idea that this is Jack Sparrow's movie and are written to fit that. As a result, the magic is lost.The series is still good popcorn entertainment though, and Dead Men Tell No Tales (DMTNT, for short) continues that.

Set a couple years after On Stranger Tides, DMTNT unites a trio that looks very similar to the one in Curse of the Black Pearl. There's Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), down on his luck after years of failed pirating ventures. He is sought after by Henry Turner (Benton Thwaites) the now adult son of Will Turner, who is trying to free his father from the curse of the Queen Anne's Revenge. They pick up Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario), a young believer in science (who is repeatedly called a witch) motivated on a quest by the one souvenir she has from a father she never met. They seek to find Poseidon's Trident, which, legend says has the power to break any curse. Meanwhile, the cursed Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem) wants revenge on Sparrow and forces Capt. Barbosa (Geoffrey Rush) to help him. There are a lot of similarities to Curse of the Black Pearl which makes this feel like a soft reboot of the franchise. It's an engaging enough story. The Pirates cinematic universe isn't as coherent as some of the others out there, but it's functional. My casual memory of the last three installments was enough to follow what was going on.

The series has some character problems at this point. No one appears to have a clue whether Capt. Jack is a cunning and clever pirate of legend or Forrest Gump, lucking his was through every situation. I'm sorry, but we've established that Jack is the hero of the franchise by now. There's no tension in wondering if he's going to do the right thing anymore. It's a little insulting to the audience to think we'll fall for the "only looking out for #1" act again. I'm glad to see Brenton Thwaites getting another chance. After Oculus, Maleficent, and The Giver in 2014 didn't make him a star, I thought Hollywood was giving up on him (like Taylor Kitsch after 2012). This wasn't a great showcase for him though. He's essentially Will Turner without the blacksmith and swordsman skills. Kaya Scodelario (The Maze Runner) doesn't fare much better. She spends most of the movie like some sort of  Caribbean Agent Scully, telling anyone who will listen that she believes in science, not myth. The Pirates of the Caribbean world is not one in which you want anyone to be bringing up plausibility. That invites more questions than answers. Having a scientist in Pirates is like Star Wars explaining midichlorians. Will and Elizabeth were not the most dynamic characters in the first Pirates movie, but the movie does justify their romance. I cannot say the same about Henry and Carina. Their romance is forced into the story. Bardem provides a fine villain. The only problem with him is that I didn't believe for a second that he wouldn't be stopped by Jack Sparrow and company. That's forgivable.

Over the last year or so, I've picked up a new pet peeve. I don't like when I don't know what's going on in an action sequence or when it doesn't seem very well thought out. So, DMTNT perturbed me. The film begins with a massive set piece involving a failed bank heist. A lot of money and resources went into filming this. It's lively and a lot of fun. It also doesn't make any sense. From the perfectly wide streets to the Herculean power of the horses to Jack's ability to keep up with the moving target while also meeting major players in the film by complete coincidence, it's all too much. Later, there's some cartoonish business with a guillotine which I just plain don't understand at all. The climactic sequence is sufficiently big but it's also disorienting. I tracked the action only because I know the beats of a movie like this already (i.e. I knew who was and wasn't actually in peril and who's vendettas needed to be handled). However, the geography of where the characters are at any moment is hard to follow. Say what you will about Curse of the Black Pearl, but everything that happened felt possible.

This May has been overflowing with B-grade efforts: movies that are perfectly fine, but the execution isn't there to make them great. They relied too much on what previous installments did well before or what audiences already knew about the stars. BMTNT is another case of this. It's an animated two hours with a clear story arc. A few moments got an emotional response from me the same way that a dog dying in any movie, good or bad, will wreck my entire day. The scores for the Pirates movies are still among my all-time favorites. It's a collection of actors having a lot of fun with their roles. It's hard to be bored by that. This is no worse than any of the other Pirates sequels, so let that be your barometer going in. I liked this movie, but Curse of the Black Pearl remains the only film in the series I plan to revisit. One encouraging thing I can say for any future sequels - and there will at least be a sixth installment - is that all the problems are in execution. Unlike other franchises which salt the Earth for later installments, there's no reason why the next movie couldn't be exceptional.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend 

After the Credits:

(Some thoughts for if you've seen the movie)

I assume that this time they are killing off Barbosa for good. Regardless, the fact that they've brought him back from the dead once already sure does mute the impact in DMTNT. And I can't be the only one irritated by the long-lost daughter story, right? That's textbook "movie math" at work. They introduce a new female and she has to have a significant past. Jack and Barbosa are old enough. Jack needs to be able to hit on her, so that leaves Barbosa to be the father. It makes the whole universe feel very small.