Deep Dive Disney: Wes Looks at Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Well, here we are, our last look at Pirates of the Caribbean. And, sadly, we are not ending on a high note. It’s sad to think that the franchise has fallen so far at this point when you consider just how much of a critical and financial home run that the first movie was. The following two films continued the trend of quality, even if the third one was a bit too overblown for its own good. The fourth one was a definite dip in quality, but at the very least it was fun and enjoyable and would have still ended the franchise on a relatively high note. Sadly, it was not meant to be, and we ended up with Dead Men Tell No Tales. Joy. The film was released in 2017, six years after On Stranger Tides, which is the longest time between Pirates movies up to this point. Six years may not seem all that long, but in the time between On Stranger Tides and Dead Men Tell No Tales, I graduated from college, started and left at least three jobs, had three romantic relationships begin and end and even moved into a new home. The point is, a lot can happen in six years, and a franchise that was already barely clinging to relevancy as it was is going to have a tough time surviving. Seriously, who was clamoring for another Pirates movie all these years later? This franchise had a great run, told the story it needed to tell. They could have easily just called it quits and no one involved would have had anything to be ashamed of, but they didn’t. All that having been said though, I’ll admit, the trailer showed promise. Maybe it would be fun to see the great Captain Jack Sparrow in action one more time. There was even a really cool publicity stunt for this film that saw Johnny Depp in full Jack Sparrow standing in the display of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Walt Disney World to great unsuspecting park guests as they rode by. That’s actually really cool. Too bad that the video of Depp surprising people on a theme park ride ended up being infinitely more entertaining than the movie itself. When I find myself falling asleep in the theater, you can tell that the magic that made the earlier films so great is long gone. So, what are we dealing with this time? Well, it seems that Henry, the now grown son of Will and Elizabeth, is looking for a means to break his father’s curse and free him from his eternal fate aboard the Flying Dutchman. We’ll get into why this development is complete and utter horseshit a little later, for now, what’s important is that Henry is after a legendary artifact known as The Trident of Poseidon, said to have the power to break any and all curses at sea. To find it, Henry’s going to need some help and decides to seek out old Captain Jack. Speaking of Jack, our old friend is pretty down on his luck. Jack never figured out a way to undo the Blackbeard’s voodoo magic that shrunk the Pearl into a miniature, and with Barbossa now captain of the Queen Anne’s revenge and pretty much ruling the ocean, Jack is forced to restrict his criminal activities to dry land. Eventually, Jack’s crew, even the ever-loyal Gibbs, decides to bail on him. Alone, defeated and having well and truly hit rock bottom, Jack barters his compass for a drink of rum. Unfortunately, this turns out to have been an incredibly terrible idea since betraying the compass unleashes an old enemy of Jack, a Ghostly pirate hunter named Salazar. Now, the race is on between all our key players, as well as an intelligent female astronomer accused of witchcraft and searching for her father named Carina, to find the Trident and save the sea from falling into the hands of the dead. It’s a lot more underwhelming than it sounds, let’s dive into, Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Men Tell No Tales. Main Character:

Oh, what do you even want from me at this point? This is the fifth time Jack Sparrow has found himself in the main character slot and I ran out of things to say about him two movies ago. There are still remnants of the great character that was, but honestly, after fourteen years, the gimmick has well and truly gotten old. Too Johnny Depp’s credit, he’s doing the best he can here, but it’s abundantly clear that his heart just isn’t in it anymore. I think the aim of this movie to show Jack at his lowest point, making it all the more satisfying when he rises once again and conquers his ultimate foe. That’s not a terrible idea on paper, but I don’t think this movie could really pull off the execution, especially when Jack spends most of the movie spouting off cringeworthy one-liners and generally being kind of a dick to everyone. This feels less like the Captain Jack Sparrow we saw in the original movie and more like a parody of Jack Sparrow that we might see Johnny Depp play in some SNL sketch. It’s actually pretty sad to see this once great character reduced to this sad self-parody. We occasionally get a few flashes of the Jack we know and love, but they’re sadly few and far between.

Villain:

I feel as though it may help to highlight the positives first as far as Salazar here is concerned. Javier Bardem is a fine actor and does the best he can and the whole ghost pirate hunter aesthetic is actually pretty cool. I actually really dig the design of Salazar and his crew, especially how their hair is always moving like they’re underwater and parts of them are burned away, giving them this otherworldly appearance. He’s also got all kinds of cool abilities like possessing the living, summoning zombie sharks and bringing the giant figure on the bow of his ship to life to attack his enemies. This is clearly not a bad concept for a villain and could have been great with a better script. Sadly, it wasn’t too be because, despite seeming cool on paper, Salazar is mostly just lame. This franchise has given us some of the greatest and most complex villains we’ve covered here on Deep Dive Disney, but this guy just doesn’t really have that same gravitas as Barbossa and Davy Jones before him. Not helping matters is Bardem’s delivery. Like I said, Bardem is a great actor, but something about the way he delivers his lines just doesn’t sound right, like he’s trying to rush through them. I would often find myself imagining how Geoffrey Rush would deliver those very same lines as Barbossa and it sounded much better in my head. Also, what is going on with Bardem’s accent in this movie? Yeah, the man has a pretty thick Spanish accent to begin with but in his other movies I can usually understand everything he’s saying. Here though, it sounds like he’s gargling maple syrup on top of everything else. However, the real problem with Salazar is how they build him up as the ultimate nemesis of Jack. Now, they do explain that a very young Jack’s defeat of Salazar, something many legendary pirates of the time failed to do, was the genesis of the great legend of Captain Jack Sparrow. It makes perfect sense that Salazar would want to go after Jack, after god knows how long trapped as a vengeful ghost in the devil’s triangle, he’d naturally want to hunt down the upstart pirate who humiliated him and kick his ass. That said, who is Salazar to Jack? Yeah, he’s a dangerous supernatural being who seriously wants him dead, but how does that make him any different from any several other villains in the franchise. Hell, Jack doesn’t even know his name! Actually, Jack’s line where he says “I once sailed against a Spaniard called… something Spanish” was one of the only genuine laughs I got out of the film. This guy is supposed to be Jack’s final boss? I’m sorry, I don’t buy it. If they absolutely had to go the ghost route, here’s a suggestion, why not bring back the ghost of Beckett from the third movie? We could finally elaborate on their shared backstory and find out exactly why the normally cold and detached Beckett allowed things to get so personal when it came to Jack. Sadly, that’s not what we got. Salazar had all the ingredients of a great villain but, unfortunately, fell short in execution.

Side Characters:

Okay, let’s get this out of the way. Will and Elizabeth are back… kind of. They’re basically glorified cameos. Hell, I don’t think Keira Knightly even gets any lines. Will gets a tiny bit more to do, but that also leads me to one of my biggest gripes with the film. See, when we first see Will, he’s covered in Barnacles and the Dutchman looks like the old ghost ship that it once was. The problem with that is, Jones only went all tentacle face on us because he refused to undertake the sacred duty charged to him by Calypso of ferrying the souls of the dead into the next world, something that Will would not have done, even knowing what it would cost him. So, a mere five minutes into the movie, I have to call bullshit. No way would Will shirk his duties, that’s just not the kind of person he is. Also, now that Will’s curse is broken, who’s ferrying the dead souls into the next world? Who’s captaining the Dutchman? What the hell happened to Bootstrap Bill? And lest we forget, the only reason Jack inflicted Will with the curse of the Dutchman was because he was dying from a fatal sword wound at the time and that was the only way he could think to save his friend so why the hell isn’t Will dead right now!? It literally feels like the filmmakers ignored their own continuity just so this sequel could justify its own existence.

Next we have Henry, Elizabeth and Will’s son, played by Brenton Thwaites, who you DC fans may recognize as Nightwing from the live action Titans series. Truth be told, I don’t really have a lot to say about Henry as I found him to be mostly bland. However, his presence does raise a rather perplexing question. Just how old is Jack at this point? Only ten years of real time had passed since the third movie when Henry was supposedly conceived. I looked it up, Brenton Thwaites is close to my age which would have made him twenty-seven or twenty-eight at the time of filming. Even if we’re generous and say that Henry is eighteen or nineteen, Jack, and the other characters for that matter, should still look way older than they do. I know it’s not Johnny Depp’s fault that he’s aged remarkably well in the past fourteen years, but I still think they should have either made Jack older or not tied this new character to Will and Elizabeth at all. It’s especially jarring when we see Elizabeth at the end and she looks the same age as her son. If you’re curious, Keira Knightley is only four years older than Brenton Thwaites in real life.

Next up, it’s Carina. I’m going to be honest, I hated Carina. No, it’s not because she’s a woman with knowledge and intelligence that a woman of her time would not realistically have access to. I get why a lot of people aren’t fans of that trope, but I don’t mind it that much. No, I hate Carina because she’s portrayed as a woman of science who refuses to believe in the existence of the supernatural. A rational way to be in real life, but in a universe where ghosts, fish people, mermaids and voodoo zombies are a thing that we the audience are fully aware of. She’s supposed to come across like an educated and refined woman, but she instead comes across as a stubborn idiot. The only thing that makes her interesting is her connection to another character in the film, but we’ll get to that in a moment. I don’t have anything to say about Gibbs in this movie, I just want to remind you all that Kevin McNally is awesome and, like everyone else in this movie, deserved so much better.

Because Keith Richards is apparently too good for this movie, we instead are introduced to another member of Jack’s family, his Uncle, played by Paul McCartney of all people. Now, I love Paul McCartney and, to be honest, I’ve always been more of a fan of the Beatles than The Rolling Stones but as far as movies go, try though he may, McCartney can’t hold a candle to Keith Richards in terms of stage presence.

And finally, let’s talk about our old favorite, Captain Hector Barbossa. Remember back when we first discussed Barbossa and I said that by the time we get to movie five, he’s just as much a main character as Jack? Honestly, after having watched the last two movies, I can now say that Barbossa straight up becomes the main character in the last two movies. He’s the one who gets to have the dramatic arcs while Jack just stands off to the side mugging at the camera. And God bless Geoffrey Rush Here, Barbossa, still captain of the Queen Anne’s Revenge, is living the high life having amassed a massive fleet and more treasure than he knows what to do with. He’s pretty much taken over the world of piracy, until Salazar comes calling. Salazar decimates Barbossa’s fleet, forcing Barbossa to eventually join in the search for the trident, a search that brings him into contact with the daughter he never knew. That’s right, the father that Carina is searching for turns out to be Barbossa, a product of a fling he had while he was in port once upon a time. When Barbossa heard of Carina’s mother’s passing, he knew that the life of a pirate was no life for a baby girl, so he did the decent thing for once in his life and left her on the steps of an orphanage with an old astronomy book embedded with a priceless ruby that he felt would set her up with a decent life. Barbossa is an unapologetic pirate and has no interest in being anything else, but once he meets his daughter, he’s still torn between wanting to know her and not wanting his only offspring to know that her father is a murderous pirate, something we’ll swing back to in the next section.

Memorable Scenes:

Despite being the clear weakest entry in the franchise, there are one or two memorable moments in this film. And of course, one of those is Jack's entrance into the film. This time around, a crowd has gathered for a demonstration of a new, impenetrable bank vault, only to find a hungover Jack inside having just slept with the wife of the town magistrate. This leads to a pretty exciting bank robbery scene that's a lot of fun if not physically improbable.

The next scene comes right after his crew bails on him. Jack holds up the miniature Pearl in the bottle up to the ocean, making it look like it’s full size and out in the sea where it belongs. There’s no dialogue, just Jack getting one of the few scenes where he feels like the Jack Sparrow of old and not the silly clown of a character he’s been reduced to. Speaking of the Pearl, the moment where Barbossa uses Blackbeard’s magic sword to finally release the Pearl from the bottle felt powerful and triumphant and it admittedly was pretty cool to see the old girl in action again.

The last scene I’d like to discuss is Barbossa’s death scene. Long story short, the climax of the film takes place deep beneath the ocean in the resting place of the trident and sees our heroes desperately trying to climb the anchor line back up to the Pearl before Salazar’s men drag them down to the depths. Barbossa, jumps in, now stripped of all the fancy clothes and wigs he’d been wearing up to this point, and buys our heroes some time. Barbossa, the man who earlier in the film declared that he was a ruthless, evil pirate and cared for nothing other than the acquisition of treasure, now heroically sacrifices himself to save the lives of his friends and long-lost daughter. In his final moments, he has a moment with Carina, who has put two and two together. Carina asks, “What am I to you?” to which Barbossa smiles and simply responds, “Treasure.” One of the recurring themes of this franchise has been how one can be a pirate and a good man. Barbossa, in the end, proves that he was both.

Story:

We’ve gone over the many themes of this franchise, such as how a legend can grow larger than a man, how a person can commit wicked deeds and still be good, the idea of what freedom truly means and. All of these themes remain present within the film, I just wish they weren’t buried under all the other crap we're stuck with in this turd.

The Dark Disney Factor:

We’ve pretty much discussed all the dark stuff with Salazar’s burned up crew, zombie sharks and all other manner of nasty methods of terrorizing our heroes. So, I guess we’ll skip this section and wrap this sucker up.

Final Thoughts:

Well, we've have officially covered all of the Pirates of the Caribbean films, and sadly, we did not end on an especially high note. There is a post credits scene that teases a sequel and even a possible return of Davy Jones. If a sequel comes to pass, I'll probably end up seeing it and hoping that the franchise ends on more of a high note, but a part of me kind of hopes it doesn't. Don't misunderstand me, I'd love to see the continuing adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow, I just know that they can't go on forever, and if this movie represents the trajectory of the franchise, it does not bode well for any sequels to be. I'm put in mind of a quote from Barbossa in the third movie. "Sometimes things come back, but that's a gamble of long odds ain't it. There's never a guarantee of coming back. But passing on, that's dead certain." This franchise had it's time in the sun, and it I had a ton of fun with it. The memories of dressing as Jack Sparrow for Halloween, standing up and yelling at the screen in shock when I saw Barbossa at the end of Dead Man's Chest and even seeing the fourth movie in Imax with my dad, something I don't get to do very often these days since my father and I live in separate states, will remain with me for the rest of my life, and whether the series continues or sails off into the sunset, I am grateful for that. But, for the time being, we shall wave goodbye to the Pirates of the Caribbean series and set sail for our next adventure. Said adventure will be the next installment of our reimagining of the Descendants franchise. See you next time.