Reviewing - The Pirates of the Caribbean
They get worse every time, but whenever they release the next one, I'll be there.
The Best: Curse of the Black Pearl
The Worst: On Stranger Tides
The Pirates of the Caribbean films were among the most sacred of movies in my family’s household growing up. We loved the theme park ride as children, and these movies captured the imaginations of myself and my three younger siblings. We even spent two years putting together a twenty-minute pirate film called “Pirates: Dangerous Waters”, drawing heavily on the inspiration of these movies. And yes, these movies get progressively worse and worse, but my sister Elaina said it best: “There is no low to which Pirates of the Caribbean can sink that I will not gladly sink to as well.” These movies are too special for us to give up – no matter how bad they’ve become.
Curse of the Black Pearl (****)
In which the rum is gone
“The Curse of the Black Pearl” is the best one of the franchise – there’s no question. Although there will always be a special place in my heart for “Dead Man’s Chest” and “At World’s End”, there’s no topping “Curse of the Black Pearl”. There’s a lot I like about this movie, but it’s not perfect. For one thing, it’s a little surprising how long it is. The movie in general is sort of surprising to begin with. Walt Disney Pictures had never released a PG-13 movie before, so this was a bit of a gamble. They’d done movies based on their theme park rides before, but the best one was Eddie Murphy’s Haunted Mansion - and if that film was the best one, you have to wonder about the quality of the other two. To spend $140 million (around $50 million more than they did on Haunted Mansion) on a movie that’s nearly two-and-a-half-hours long...when there hasn’t been a good pirate movie in ages...that’s risky.
But wow, this was a great movie. Forget about the fact that this is a pirate movie for a second. The plot is really good. You’ve got a cursed group of bad guys who accidentally get rid of the one guy whose blood sacrifice could’ve saved them. They resort to looking for the guy’s son, but instead stumble upon a girl who claims to have the same last name as the guy they’re looking for – and she really only does this so they won’t find out she’s sort of royalty. What’s great about this is that she assumes their motivation (kidnapping her to hold her for ransom), acts accordingly, but her plan goes awry because her original assumption was totally wrong. I love that! Then you’ve got another bad guy (more charming than the others, though) who wants revenge on the original bad guys. He finds the real son, and tries to use him as part of his plan for vengeance. The son figures this out, but goes along with it anyway in order to save the life of the girl from before. This is a complicated plot, but it’s told wonderfully. The motivations of the characters are clear and sensible, and we see the characters frequently trying to guess each other’s motivations so as to modify their own plans. It’s summed up best in this exchange from the film:
Murtogg: Why aren’t we doing what it was...what Mr. Sparrow said we should do?
Norrington: Because it was Mr. Sparrow who said it.
Murtogg: ...You think he wasn’t telling the truth?
I love how the characters are constantly playing a game of tricks and counter-tricks in order to meet their goals. It’s great writing. But beyond that, the film has an incredibly fun aesthetic vibe. Tortuga is a lovably barbaric port akin to Mos Eisley from Star Wars. The English sailors’ outfits are super fun and colourful. The cursed pirates are awesome. The special effects aren’t what they could be today, but they’re definitely passable. And the way the directors back-and-forth showed us pirates constantly turning from humans to skeletons to humans was really fun. Then there’s the music, which has all the swashbuckling atmosphere you’d need to make a swordfight that much more exciting. Put all of that aside and you still have a career-defining performance from Johnny Depp as the now-unforgettable Captain Jack Sparrow. Though it’s sad to say that Disney effectively bled this character dry over his five-movie stretch of time, he is at his weirdest, cleverest, and most charming in this film.
Even though I mean everything I just wrote, and even though this is undeniably the best of the franchise, this is not my favourite Pirates of the Caribbean film. That honour (if you can call it that) goes to another.
Dead Man’s Chest (****)
In which the rum is set on fire and fed to a Kraken
This is my favourite Pirates movie by a landslide. This movie is chock-full of everything you’d want from a pirate flick: bar fights, rum jokes, buried treasure, a kraken, cannibals, and lots and lots of sword fighting. While the narrative may not be as tightly written as Curse of the Black Pearl, we still have the dynamic mix of motivations where every character wants something different, which is great. Will wants to save his ‘twice-cursed pirate father’ to be saved from an eternity of servitude to Davy Jones. Jack wants to free himself from his debt. Norrington – an honourable English captain turned derelict rogue – sees a chance at getting his old life back in the retrieval of Davy Jones’ heart. It’s Elizabeth who I think is given the most uninteresting plot thread. Throughout this film she finds herself struggling with a developing crush on Captain Jack. This is a little bit hard to believe considering he’s never done a single nice thing for her and he’s the reason her wedding to Will Turner gets sabotaged by the villainous Cutler Beckett. Further, we all know that it’s her and Will who are destined to be together. No one really believes that Jack and Elizabeth are going to work out. But apart from that plot thread, I found the rest thoroughly entertaining.
Davy Jones is one of my favourite villains of all time, and a big part of that comes down to his visual design. The guy has tentacles for a beard! How awesome is that? Bill Nighy gives an engrossing and inimitable performance, giving us a charismatic and terrifying baddie. The whole aesthetic and story of Davy Jones is fun too. Remember the bit where he’s playing an organ (with his tentacles, no less) aboard his ship during a torrential rainstorm? He’s a mythic figure and he dominates every second of screen time he takes up.
Apart from Jones, what makes this film my favourite Pirates flick comes down to the action sequences. There are so many creative and exhilarating fight scenes, it’s hard to believe they crammed them all into one movie. Jack escapes from cannibals while tied to a giant bamboo stick shish-kebabbed with fruit. Will and the crew of the Pearl navigate a jungle while stuck inside spherical cages made out of human bones. Will, Jack, and Norrington have a brilliantly choreographed swordfight that moves from a beach to a church to a giant rolling wheel that moves through the jungle – come on! Then there’s the two (not one, but TWO) kraken sequences where sailors desperately try to fight off a mass of sweeping tentacles. Every action scene is exciting and thought-out. It’s a blast of a movie from start to finish.
As much as I love this film, I admit it’s not the best of the franchise. Like I said earlier, the Jack-Elizabeth romance isn’t very convincing or enjoyable. The cannibal chapter of the film is probably more than a bit outdated in terms of cultural sensitivity and the portrayal of indigenous North American peoples – although I think what makes it slightly forgivable is the fact that it’s all very tongue-in-cheek and meant to portray a fictional trope rather than a real group of people. But hey, for everything else we get in this film, I’m ready to forgive them. And the promise of a third movie was absolutely exhilarating when I first saw this in theatres. This movie was a blast.
At World's End (*1/2)
In which the screenwriters must have been drinking too much rum
This hurt to watch. They tripped at the finish line.
Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End were shot back-to-back, right? So why did the writing for this film take such a noticeable plunge in quality? The number of bad jokes in this film was appalling. You had the “What ARRRRE you doing” bit, the “Larry” joke, and so many other instances where it seemed very clear to me that the filmmakers thought I would laugh at any instance of self-indulgence they put forth. And what was with Jack Sparrow clucking like a chicken and laying an egg?! Or trying to cozy up next to a goat?! What am I supposed to do with that?
Then there’s the questionable content issues of the film. The character of Sao Feng came under a fair bit of scrutiny for his depiction of a Chinese pirate. I don’t know if this is justifiable or not – every character in this movie is a scallywag, not just him. What I do know is that attempted rape is not something I’m dying to see in a PG-13 movie, and that’s exactly what we get for a few seconds. Not only does Sao Feng kiss Elizabeth, but so does James Norrington. Elizabeth gets kissed three times in this movie by three different guys. I know they tried to elevate her character and make her more empowering, but it really seems to me like all the characters only like her because they want to smooch! And if Elizabeth loves Will – which she does – why did she just LET Norrington plant one on her? He could’ve just kissed her on the cheek. That would’ve been a much more classy way of saying “We’re not meant to be together”. What gives?
If the bad jokes and excessive kissing weren’t present, the plot would still be convoluted to the point of implosion. The last film ended on an exciting note: the idea was to go to “the weird and haunted shores at world’s end” to get Jack back. So it seems like Barbossa intentionally got everyone lost in order to find the edge of the Earth - although what exactly was that waterfall they fell off of? Whatever. It’s not a big deal, ‘cause things get much weirder. Why do you have to turn a ship upside-down to get out of Davy Jones’ Locker? Would it work if you just got underwater yourself? Why did the Black Pearl make it to the Locker but Barbossa’s rental didn’t? If turning a ship upside-down is all it takes, couldn’t any sailor lost at sea come back by doing this?
What about the deals between Beckett, Sao Feng, Jack, Will, and Davy Jones? What deal did Sao Feng have with Beckett, and why did Beckett go back on it? Was Beckett’s deal to find Shipwreck Cove with Will or with Jack? And if Beckett had the compass – which he did – why couldn’t he have just killed Jack and then travelled to Shipwreck Cove? Sure, Jack says that the Cove is ‘nigh impregnable’, but did you see the fleet of ships that Beckett brought? Beckett would’ve won a hundred percent. The deals and counter-deals were impossible to keep up with, as were character’s motivations. Orlando – sorry, Legolas – sorry, WILL said he needed the Black Pearl to free his father. How does the Pearl figure into his plan? He didn’t need the Pearl beforehand, so why does he need it now? Gosh, it was confusing.
This movie was not ALL bad. The final fight was epic, and I want to give them credit for that. The Pearl against the Dutchman over a maelstrom was awesome. You had the rain and the music and the cannon fire…it was everything a pirate sea battle should have been. Elizabeth’s rousing speech right before the fight was pretty sweet too – and as much as I know it was stupid and over-the-top, I couldn’t help but love Will and Elizabeth’s ‘wedding’ scene. It was just so ludicrous and fun and epic. It’s just…why did you need all of the other nonsense in order to get me that beautiful final fight? There’s got to be a better set up.
Although I went to see “On Stranger Tides” and “Dead Men Tell No Tales” in theatres, and although I will undoubtedly see the next one should they ever decide to produce it, I have to admit that the next two films are too abysmal to even speak of. And yet, I reviewed them nonetheless.
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (1/2)
In which people drink Mermaid tears in lieu of rum
In the last film, the buccaneers sang “Never shall we die.” This film makes me think maybe they should’ve.
There’s so much wrong with this film that it’s hard to know where to start. Perhaps the most glaring issue is the fact that this film has literally no connection with the franchise apart from the characters. Nothing from the previous movies influences or shapes the narrative here, and the ramifications of this movie do absolutely nothing to propel the universe forward. You know how TV shows will have ‘filler’ episodes that are kind of one-offs to be used when bigger story arcs run dry? That’s the way this movie feels. It’s not exactly the movie that you think would follow the conclusion of a trilogy.
This movie should be charting a new course for the franchise, or at least introducing a new central antagonist. Instead, we get too many fantastical elements to count. Blackbeard has mind-control for ropes, and he’s got zombie pirates and practices voodoo in his spare time. And there are mermaids, but they eat people – unless they like them in which case they marry them. And there’s a fountain of youth, which exists for no apparent reason at all. You can’t introduce a fantastic treasure/curse without explaining it! Think of the Aztec gold from Curse of the Black Pearl. We had clear exposition explaining where the curse came from and how it worked. Same thing for Dead Man’s Chest – Tia Dalma told us who Davy Jones was and why he was the way he was. Here, there’s a Fountain of Youth just because. We’re told how it works, but we never learn where it came from or why it exists. But what’s worse than a lack of exposition here is a lack of relevance. The Aztec Gold had a very real impact on our characters – it cursed the bad guys and made William Turner a central character for the plot’s resolution. The Dead Man’s Chest was the only bargaining chip against a near unstoppable foe, and it meant different things to different people. Whether or not the Fountain of Youth is found makes virtually no difference to most of our main characters. Angelica and Blackbeard want it to prevent a prophecy from coming true, but as for Jack, Barbossa, and the Christian loverboy kid, finding or not finding the Fountain really doesn’t matter. They’re kind of just along for the ride.
And why did the Spanish come all this way?! If you’re really just going for the Fountain to destroy it, why didn’t they kill everyone in the room first? Or at least tie everyone up? I admire the Spanish for their religious devotion, but you’re really doing it wrong if you’re going to just let a band of criminals wander around your workspace.
There’s so much more that I want to say about this film and how bad it is, but I think the best way to respond to this movie is probably by not responding at all. This is the worst entry of the franchise.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (*)
In which you'll likely need a fair amount of rum to get through this
I was exhausted by the time I finished reading the title of the film.
Although this film is admittedly terrible, it’s a slight step up from the previous flick for two reasons: several minor characters like Gibbs, Mullroy & Murtogg, and Marty are back in a greater capacity than they were last time, and we see the welcome (albeit brief) return of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann. I was bored and revolted for 90% of this film, but I can’t deny the surge of emotion that rose in my chest when Will and Elizabeth embraced. There’s just too many happy memories there, and those two are characters that haven’t been bled dry. Jack, on the other hand, is a caricature of his former self. Far from the cunning and brilliantly deceitful anti-hero he was in the initial three films, he’s now washed up, out of luck, and unfunny. He feels like that guy that graduated high school a few years ago but keeps coming back because he’s got nothing better to do. There wasn’t a single joke of his that landed for me.
This film suffers from the exact same problem that the previous film did: its treasure is almost wholly unexplained. We were still learning rules about it in the final act, and not once did we learn where it came from or how it worked. There was an emotional tie through the Trident’s connection to Will Turner’s curse, but it just wasn’t a treasure that I ever got excited about. The final fight was essentially a cacophonous green screen mess. It was spectacle without splendour.
And why did Jack get his compass from a dying captain? We learned in Dead Man’s Chest that he bartered the compass from Tia Dalma. Are we just going to pretend that she didn’t say that? Like, come on!
These last two films are a total waste of time. It’s much better to pretend that this franchise ended with “At World’s End”, even though that was flawed in many ways too. It’s time for Jack Sparrow to move on.
This post was originally published on January 13th, 2020.