The latest installment in the flagging franchise, Dead Men Tell No Tales, offers a dreary, imitative voyage.
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The subtitle of the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie is “Dead Men Tell No Tales.” The moral of the movie, alas, is that the same cannot be said of dead franchises.
The first Pirates film was an unexpected success: wildly overlong and over-plotted yet kept afloat by a wicked, bravura, and utterly original performance by Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, a swishily swaggering mélange of rum, eyeliner, & impudence. As is customary, the sequel was a pale imitation, and the third installment of the presumed trilogy went a bit trippy và meta.
Which would all have been well & good enough. But money makes people vì silly things. The half-hearted and wildly unnecessary fourth movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides was one such thing. It will surprise no one to learn that the latest installment in the franchise is another. At least On Stranger Tides had the decency lớn be a standalone movie; with Dead Men Tell No Tales, there is talk of that most pernicious of cinematic gambits, the “soft reboot.”
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Captain Jack returns, of course, although the character’s originality has gradually evolved into very nearly its opposite, a species of tired và vaguely embarrassing drag act. Given that his co-stars Keira Knightley & Orlando Bloom abandoned the franchise after the initial trilogy, Jack is supplied with a new pair of pretty, mutually attracted protagonists. Brenton Thwaites plays Henry Turner, a young adventurer who is the son of Bloom’s & Knightley’s characters. (No, the franchise hasn’t actually been around that long. Yes, it feels as though it’s been around even longer.) and Kaya Scodelario portrays Carina Smyth, an astrologer and horologist—sadly, there are quite a few jokes playing on that first syllable; more sadly still, they’re above average for the film—who is eventually revealed lớn be the daughter of ... Well, I’d best leave that khổng lồ “eventually.”
Javier Bardem shows up as the villainous undead pirate hunter Armando Salazar, inheriting the precise plot functions performed in previous installments by Geoffrey Rush’s Barbossa, Bill Nighy’s Davey Jones (who at least had the decency to hide himself under a faceful of tentacles), & Ian Mc
Shane’s Blackbeard. Và series regular Rush is back again, his pirate Barbossa having been un-undead for several films now.
There’s a small role for Bloom, whose current career seems to lớn consist largely of retconning characters (Legolas, Will Turner) from the period when some mistakenly thought he was a plausible leading man, into projects (The Hobbit, this latest Pirates entry) released at a point when we all know he’s not. There’s even a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glimpse of Knightley, who clearly has better things to bởi vì than waste time in this franchise. In place of a previous cameo by Keith Richards, who was a principal inspiration for Jack Sparrow, we have a cameo by Paul Mc
Cartney, who was not.
As with the roles, so too with the plot. Per the norm, there is a mystic artifact to lớn be acquired, the Trident of Poseidon, which has the power khổng lồ break all of the sea-curses accumulated over the previous four films. (How’s that for a reboot?) There are plots and betrayals, piratical zombies và sea monsters and a ghost ship, & much bouncing around from vessel khổng lồ vessel.
Even when the movie introduces new elements to the franchise, they are the stalest chestnuts in the cupboard. Jack Sparrow is given an entirely gratuitous origin story, so that he can be cinematically de-aged à la Robert Downey Jr. In Captain America: Civil War or Kurt Russell in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. In fact, if you genuinely desire subplots about paternities revealed or a noble sacrifice by a secondary character in the final reel, go see (or re-see) Guardians 2, which does both better.
Depp slurs & sways his way through the film as usual, but reports of his erratic behavior on set cast the performance in a somewhat different light this time around. When, at one point, he introduces himself with boozy extravagance as “the great Captain Jack Sparrow,” his audience’s palpable disappointment feels as though it accrues as much to Depp himself as khổng lồ the character he is playing. Meanwhile, newcomers Thwaites và Scodelario possess a small fraction of the shimmer supplied by Bloom and Knightley before them.
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It all adds up to a dreary, dispiriting voyage. During the finale, as Bardem’s Salazar makes a final, mortal approach, he bellows, “This is where the tale ends!” Please, please, please, let it be so.
Dead Men Tell No Tales proves continuity still doesn't matter for the Pirates of the Caribbean films /Does anyone working on this franchise care about the canon?
