Review of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) by Trevorsview — 25 May 2017

We still remember the pleasant cinematic surprise from Pirates of the Caribbean, which took us on a fun adventure fit for the young at heart. When the sequel came out, we started to grow a little sick of it. By the third, it had overstayed its welcome. By the fourth, crap, I keep forgetting that a fourth one exists! Anyway, now we’re on fifth, where a few good qualities, to our amazement, remained consistent these past fourteen years. It still sustains the same atmosphere, like watching a product of the 2000’s. Depp has still got it with his iconic performance, Geoffrey Rush still graces the screen, and best of all, Hans Zimmer’s famous score sounds fresher than ever.

Whew, got the good stuff out of the way. Now let us talk about the atrocities of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.

Basically, the main hero has to find the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis do to harness its power to control life and death. Oops, wrong movie. Well, just replace the ark with the trident of Poseidon, and the Nazis with a pirate ghost army, and the plot stays pretty much the same. Yeah, the youth of the previous decade were into ancient mythology, but now they moved on to obsessing over the future. Why not let a dated concept sit to collect shelf dust?

The whole Indiana Jones rip-off of a plot may intrigue the parents after overcoming the opening prologue: A boy goes out rowing, ties his ankle to a rope, then tosses into the ocean a pile of rocks tied to the other end of the rope. It looks less like Will Turner’s son going down to see him in the Flying Dutchman and more like Suicide 101. This honestly could have all landed on the cutting room floor; everything is retold anyway.

The teens may feel rather dissatisfied too. No pretty imagery parades through to please their senses, particularly by the dull darkly lit stage combat. That also goes for the “fun” action scenes shot in broad daylight, such as the first one, where a bunch of horses pull a house through the village streets. Then later, zombie sharks attack for three minutes’ tops, a CGI-infested made-for-3D visual which looks like patty cake compared to what Zack Snyder can orchestrate.

As for the kids, keep them far away. After all, the rating says PG-13. Inappropriate content gladly makes its way in for nothing besides a few cheap laughs, from the sexual (gawking at a woman’s bare ankles) to the tasteless (offending every Spaniard in the world). However, the children are most likely to be traumatized by some of the imagery, including a basket of severed heads at the foot of a guillotine.

Although the greater portion of audiences will groan over the production’s excessive desperation to curse you with a giggle fit. At the screening I went to, the audience laughed plenty throughout, even I chuckled a few times. Yet the dialogue still lacks any point as the cast goes tirelessly in search for a punchline. For instance, one of the many pointless moments puts Jack Sparrow inside a whale skeleton to wed a boogery ogress of a woman.

These tiresome jokes are blaring enough to make you believe the plot doesn’t even exist, or that the jokes came from the mouths of human beings with fears and opinions. The characters keep contradicting their own desires; especially Jack Sparrow’s Black Pearl crew, who right at the beginning abandons him for no reason, then later comes back for him for no reason. A predictable romantic subplot further bombards the key plot, as played between two actors with no chemistry; the female half of the equation, played by the unenthusiastic Kaya Scodelario (The Maze Runner) makes it worse by relying on the eyes on her chest other than the eyes on her face to stir up emotions. You could potentially forgive the writers for their lack of care in developing believable relationships, until the ending closes every story arc with pure hogwash.

Oh, believe me, it gets worse. This motion picture also brings up the fact that Galileo Galilei actually built his telescope to search for the trident of Poseidon, as a map to its location is found within the stars. Apparently, all these historians overlooked that important detail. Well, considering this alternate reality features a ghost army who pass through matter yet still kill people with their swords, that historical “fact” is the closest to believable Dead Men Tell No Tales gets.

Okay, enough already.