Directed by: Joachim Rønning, Espen Sandberg
Written by: Jeff Nathanson, Terry Rossio
Starring: Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Javier Bardem
IMDb Link
I've always had a soft spot for the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. The swashbuckling, sword-swinging first entry in the series is a personal favourite film of mine, and even as the series has added mediocre entry after mediocre entry, the charm of what I first saw in the series has kept me entertained enough to ignore the convoluted mythos and ever-bloating cast of comedy characters in favour of what remained of the spirit of the first. My love for the series is why it's so disappointing to say that this film is easily the worst of the lot; the filmmakers have lost what was left of the things that made the movie enjoyable and shoved in seemingly every possible idea, bad or good, that they could.
*Warning: Spoilers Ahead*
Jack Sparrow is back, this time looking for the Trident of Poseidon, which controls the sea and can lift any curse laid by it. However, he isn't the only one. Will Turner's son Henry (Brenton Thwaites of Oculus and Gods of Egypt) is the one that comes to Jack in order to help him lift the curse of the Flying Dutchman from Will, and a girl Carina ( Kaya Scodelario of the Maze Runner series) searches for it in order to find meaning in the diary left by a father that she never knew. In addition to these plot points, there's Captain Salazar (Bardem) an undead Captain who hates pirates, on the search for Sparrow, the man who caused Salazar's current state. To top it all off, the characters are pursued by the British Empire.
The film seems to be trying to cram about four different plot lines in to the same movie, each with its own character motivations and some semblance of an arc, so the set up for them all ends up being hasty at best. and more forced than a smile to your ex at worst.
Henry's makes sense, it carries from the plot left open at the end of the third movie, and on its own it could be a slight re-tread of the first film with different particulars; if this had simply been the plot of the film, it would've been repetitive, but not needlessly complicated.
Carina's is weak for a few reasons, chief among them being the out-of-nowhere reveal about her father. Carina's story is predicated on a reveal that not only doesn't seem to fit in with the Pirates' timeline, but also doesn't make sense, completely changing a mainstay character of the series for the sake of a supposedly sad moment. It seems like her character only exists to give directions, but only needs to be there to give directions because the film decided to make Jack's infamous compass somehow even more important while taking it away from him, and her backstory is just needless. I appreciated her character for what it was, but the way she became necessary to the story was awkward, and her history was crammed in at the half-way mark for cheap tears. That's not so much a complaint about her, but the writing around her.
As for Salazar's story, his history with Jack is fine, if rushed, he's a guy who hates pirates because he lost everything to pirates, and Jack Sparrow's trickery caused his ship to crash and explode. It's the fantasy in the story that I have a problem with, mainly due to lack of explanation breaking my suspension of disbelief. Barbossa'a undead were because of gold cursed by Aztec gods, and Davy Jones' fish men were due to a deal with the goddess Calypso, but there seems to be no reason for Salazar to rise from the dead. He's "filled with rage" and died under a rock formation that's supposedly cursed, but the film shows others dying in the same spot without coming back as ghosts, so it's doubtful that the rock formation has anything to do with his current cursed condition. There's also his release, which happens because of a previously unexplained capability of the compass, that not only has no more than a hand-wave reason attached to it, but also contradicts events from previous movies. Salazar himself is an imposing figure, Bardem plays him with appropriate theatrics, but with so many plot points happening at once he never gets a chance to convey the same impact that previous villains did.
Jack himself is just sort of along for the ride. It seems like they had to constantly dope Johnny Depp up just to keep him from running off the set; his character is taken to a silly extreme and doesn't have any of the enthusiasm that's been present in previous entries in the series.
I also want to talk about is the set-pieces, another constant in the series that rarely fails to impress. Here the film puts all cool before sense. A lot of the action sequences are just neat ideas that seem better on paper than in practice. At one point the film tries to one-up the heist scene from Fast Five (2011) by simply stealing an entire bank; at another the film uses zombie sharks. These seem like fun ideas, but in execution they're brought down by questionable CGI that isn't believable and often obscures the action. Zombie sharks are an awesome thought, but there's no reason for Salazar to have them; so is a ship that eats other ships, but you have no idea why a ship like that exists. Of course Salazar can possess people, and of course he can only do it one time, which is why he hasn't used this incredibly useful ability a million other times up until this point. With no explanation or reason to ground their existence to be fantasy that's at least consistent with what we already accept in this world of pirates, zombies and fish monsters, the action has no reason to exist, so it just comes off as shallow, hollow, and poorly executed.
All that said, the film isn't a total loss, and it'd be disingenuous to leave this review without a few fleeting positive remarks. Aside from Depp, who comes off without his usual charm, the main cast all deliver serviceable performances. I can expect nothing less from Rush and Bardem, who've proven themselves capable of making any of their roles compelling, but Scodelario and Thwaites are both surprisingly watchable, even if their characters and dialogue aren't. There's also the case of the score, which is just about the only thing in the series that remains consistently good; the remnants of what made the first film so compelling are in what you hear.
The Verdict: Dead Men Tell No Tales is a mess of recycled and half-baked ideas. The film manages to over-complicate the adventure plot with multiple motivations and mythology, much more so than even the previous entries. The film never takes the time to make the new generation of characters compelling, and the charm of the old characters is forced at this point. I don't recommend the film, even to long-time fans of the series such as myself.
Rating: This was hard for me to determine, because I really really wanted to like this movie, to simply give it a pass and move on as I have with the other mediocre entries in to the series, but Dead Men is so inconsistent, not only internally but with the rest of the series, introduces so many new characters and hand-waves so much mythology that I can't. I disliked this movie far more than I expected to, so I have to give the film a 4/10. The series' charm has worn off on me.
Published May 25th, 2017
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