Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017)

Director: Joachim Rønning, Espen Sandberg

Cast: Johnny Depp, Javier Bardem, Brenton Thwaites, Geoffrey Rush

Have I Seen it Before: Maybe, probably? I have a vague inkling that I saw Bardem’s character before, but I may have just seen an ad at some point during the initial film’s release.

Did I Like It: I’m more than a little stuck trying to come up with at least 300 words more to say about this series. The <first film> surprised everyone. It did this largely by being made despite the studios seemingly better judgment and actually making a simple action movie that was mostly about a lunatic pirate who was willing to do absolutely anything to get his ship back.

Three more movies ensued, and the Mouse House—as they can occasionally do—gave us more of what they thought worked. More byzantine plots, more water-logged monsters, and more and more special effects.

This film shaped up to be something of a course correction from the previous sequels, with Jack Sparrow (Depp) back in the position of an underdog pirate captain with no ship to captain. That gets us through half an hour, during which we have a fairly fun action set piece involving Sparrow and his crew largely failing at a bank robbery. Then we are lost in a sea (pun not intended, but I accept the responsibility for it) of cascading plot developments, to the point where the boredom of the previous sequels are back with a vengeance.

We’re now nearly ten years since this film, and the entire time we’ve been living under the threat of one more entry. Could you even bear to look at Sparrow in his 60s* trying to swagger his way through a laundry list of “We need to go get the item from the place!” lines?

Yeah, me neither.

*No worries there, Disney is plenty willing to de-age him, as evidenced here.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)

Director: Rob Marshall

Cast: Johnny Depp, Penélope Cruz, Ian McShane, Geoffrey Rush

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. I’m almost sure I did. I have a fairly distinct memory of watching Depp escape from London. Lora and I talked about it, and although the memory is dim, we were together and almost had to have gone and seen it.

Did I Like It: Remember when I said, in my review of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007) that, at the very least, I could always attach myself to the fact that Geoffrey Rush always seem to enjoy being in these movies.

So much for that. Barbosa gets his moments as the film ramps up to its conclusions where he can shed off the inexplicable obedience to the crown, where glimmers of fun start to come back up again—it’s as close as any character gets to having a character arc—but they are diminished indeed.

Beyond that, the franchise feels supremely out of gas. Whatever chaos made him so watchable in Curse of the Black Pearl has become so predictable that it spent most of the last decade seeping into every character he plays other than Sparrow. The brilliant scenes of ships at sea are restricted to the barest of minimums. The story is bereft of any sort of forward momentum, leaving us with a relatively short runtime, but I can’t get the sense at any point that we’re being treated to anything other than a handful of long pre-determined action set pieces lightly glued together with some padded runtime.

I might close the book on the series—and maybe films based on theme park rides at large—by saying that this might be a textbook case of a film being created simply because it has been a while since we’ve been subjected to an entry…

But then there’s always the ominous clouds of a fifth movie, and the ever-present threat of a theoretical sixth, spinoffs, and beyond.

Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Director: John Madden*

Cast: Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush, Colin Firth

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. It’s surprising to realize I haven’t re-watched this one since starting these reviews nearly 2 1/2 years ago.

Did I Like It: There’s just something about Best Picture winners fro the late 1990s. They age very poorly. I’m mainly looking in your direction, American Beauty (1999). This one, too gets a little bit of derision, but as I’ve already mentioned, it is one of my favorites.

Repackaging the bard as a the prototypical romantic comedy lead works in spades. Doing so gleefully unravels the film from anything resembling historical accuracy, but if you need movies to be historically accurate, I’m beginning to think you don’t get much enjoyment out of life, and that you are perpetually disappointed by your unrealistic expectations of the world. Scenes of the author struggling with his work similarly likely have no basis in reality, but they feel true, which is all we can ask from a film.

Sure, just the mention of Harvey Weinstein makes one’s blood run cold. Also, it’s hard to forget during the film that much of it is centered on a performance from a performer now is now arguably more famous for producing and selling candles which smell like her genitals. On that note, both Paltrow and Affleck do just above Costner-level work to convince us they’re English. It doesn’t help matters. But these are nitpicks—except for the Weinstein part—of a movie that largely holds up and is definitely worth another look.

* No matter how many times I see this movie, I always chuckle as I imagine the famed footballman calling the shots. For the record, I know it is a different John Madden.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

Director: Gore Verbinski

Cast: Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightly

Have I Seen It Before?: Oh, sure. If you hadn’t seen it by fall of 2003, you were way behind the times. I even managed to stick around for the sequels, although for the life of me I can’t think of why I might have done this.

Did I like it?: I’ve often been struck by the difficulty to view a movie without measuring it against the context of the anemic sequels it spawned, or how we all feel about the star of the film. Given that this film legitimized the continuing of both long past the point we should have allowed, it’s hard not to reflexively judge the film as a mistake. Had this film tanked or not resonated with an audience, we’d probably not have to brace ourselves for more big budget missteps from Depp, or really have to hear about him at all.

But the film does resonate, though. The idea that a theme park ride could create such a singularly watchable film is further evidence that pretty much no one knows what they’re doing when they go about developing a big budget motion picture. The Lone Ranger (2013) should have been great on spec (and has much of the same creative talent), but wasn’t, and if anyone thought this would make great spectacle before the movie premiered, they would have been deemed a lunatic.

That’s because the movie is only occasionally interested in its source material. A shot here or there is taken from what visitors to Disney parks had seen for decades, but the movie is really about a character perpetually outmatched by the world around him, singularly possessed by a quest to regain the best parts of himself, using only his wits to win the day.

There’s also a love story with Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly (Natalie Portman?)… You know, for the kids.

If only the sequels could have understood what made the first film work. If only Depp could have avoided letting this level of movie stardom go to his head. Maybe we would have gotten another movie approaching the fun displayed here, but, as I indicated above, getting even one film this good was more than we could have hoped for.