Review of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) by That Awkward G — 08 Jun 2017

The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has been to say the least, interesting? The first film was phenomenal. The sequel, while still being fun, was not quite as good as its predecessor. And then after that, the ride got messy and repetitive with further installments, and here we are.

This time around, we have Captain Jack Sparrow(Johnny Depp) teaming up with Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites) and Carina Smyth(Kaya Scodelario) to locate the trident of Poseidon to cure all curses of the seas. And meanwhile, Captain Salazar(Javier Bardem) is hunting down Sparrow because Captain Jack did something bad to him. And by bad, I mean he totally messed up his face. And Geoffrey Rush's character of Hector Barbossa also plays a part in this story.

Now, based off of this film's marketing campaign, Dead Men Tell No Tales looked promising, satisfying, and as if it could save this slowly sinking franchise. And did this 5th installment lean more so towards the incredible first movie, or the messes that were Pirates 3 and 4? Unfortunately, Pirates 5 doesn't save this series.

While it has some slight enjoyment and fun to be had, it is yet another convoluted, bland, repetitive disappointment of a movie.

First off, though, to stay positive, the film, like all of the others before it, is visually spectacular! Every technical aspect is virtually flawless! The CGI environments and characters are seamlessly blended with the practical sets and costumes. The music is incredible once again, and the action sequences, although this time around are more meant for comedy rather than excitement, are still very entertaining and fun to watch. Geoffrey Rush's Barbossa is hands down the best character in the movie. And that sadly, puts an end to this film's redeeming qualities.

Johnny Depp plays Jack Sparrow as more of an entertaining presence, and less like the complicated and secretly fascinating character from the earlier stages of this franchise. And about half of the humor and jokes fall flat right on their stupid faces. Also, the rest of the movie is handcuffed by its possibly biggest flaw: the script. It tries to balance too many subplots, bland new cliché characters, and too much poor, eye rolling, expositional dialogue. And it does so poorly. Some characters and plot lines appear and disappear into thin air and are completely forgotten by the writers of the movie. Javier Bardem's Captain Salazar, although looking pretty cool visually, is ultimately portraying a hollow villain. Brenton Thwaites' Henry Turner is hardly a character at all. The performance is fine, but the character serves more as an exposition machine rather than an actual person. Kaya Scodelario's Carina Smyth is also yet another damsel in distress female character that serves as a main love interest, and nothing more. They try hard to give her different elements to really sell the "women empowerment", but it just doesn't flow well with the rest of the movie.

In the end, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales was sadly disappointing. Despite being flawless on every technical level, the film suffers from hardly any characters to get behind, a story that isn't very compelling, and not much of anything new to add to this franchise. If you are a fan of these films, go have fun and enjoy it! You will probably like it! But for me personally, there's still something missing to take this series of films back to its prime.