Review of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) by Jacob B — 26 Jan 2019

The worst of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, Dead Men Tell No Tales or Salazar's Revenge because nobody would want to see a movie with the word "dead" in the title *cough* Dead Man's Chest *cough*.

Poor Johnny Depp. He hasn't collaborated with Tim Burton since Dark Shadows, not including Alice Through The Looking Glass because Burton was a producer, not the director. His last collaboration with Gore Verbinski was poorly received and bombed at the box office even though their collaboration before that movie showed that no, Verbinski doesn't suck at making Westerns.

Then there's all those rumours about hitting his ex-wife Amber Heard. Not even Pirates of the Caribbean can save Depp now. Don't be surprised if Fantastic Beasts 3 claims that he's stuck in the form of a new actor because of an overdose of Polyjuice Potion.

The movie's not entirely bad. There are a couple of funny moments, the effects are mostly great and Javier Bardem does a good job playing the main villain. But this movie is the one that has me wishing they just ended the franchise at At World's End.

Jack Sparrow is flanderized into a drunken idiot who ends up getting out of trouble purely by luck/accident. Note that the drunken idiot thing in the POTC movies was always so that others would underestimate him.

Geoffrey Rush is trying his best but his heart doesn't seem to be in it as much as back in the first film and the third for that matter. The pacing is way too fast for a movie that's juggling two plots at once, one of which was barely even addressed in advertising alll at the shortest runtime for a POTC movie to date.

Two more annoying carbon copies of Will and Elizabeth and they're somehow worse than the missionary and the mermaid from the last movie. The movie can't decide whether it wants to be high fantasy or low fantasy.

There's a flashback sequence that shows off some nifty de-aging CGI outside of the MCU but also tells us things that don't need to be explained. I always wanted to know where Jack got his SURNAME and all the crap in dreadlocks from.

Plus a handful of big-lipped alligator moments e.g. (a pointless Paul McCartney cameo and a pointless scene where Jack ends up in a forced wedding to some random woman because, what a shocker, Jack Sparrow pisses off everyone he comes across).

And, most insultingly, despite the tagline claiming it's "Last Movie: Part 1", the story's so self-contained there's nothing final about it. As for that post-credits scene...come on, that could just be some insensitive prick playing a prank (though that's assuming anybody else lives on wherever Elizabeth and her son Henry live).

Dead Men Tell No Tales is a weak sequel. It's not Golden Raspberry Award-worthy, just incredibly bland and forgettable.