Pirates of the Caribbean

Notes: Full disclosure with this one. I had originally wanted to discuss Pirates of the Caribbean on my blog way back in 2017 and I'd have had a rough draft for what I wanted to talk about sitting around this whole time.

I've decided that now is the time to finally finish up what I wanted to say and publish the post.

Obviously, this was before the whole Depp vs. Heard and Disney drama. So, what I've written remains in the context of that and not in the events that have happened since, savvy? 

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It appears that whenever Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is bought up, that you can sort out peoples reactions into three groups. Firstly, there those who love it; the people who could have grown up with the franchise and/or are invested enough to be involved to some extent in the wider fandom community surrounding it. Secondly, you have those who are the exact opposite, they despise it with every fibre of their being. Thirdly, you have those who just sort of tolerate it; they enjoy the movies but they don't feel strongly about them either way.

Where do I fit? I love Pirates of the Caribbean. I grew up watching the films and got excited when every announcement was made for sequels or when new trailers came out. Seeing them on the big screen was always something I looked forward to and I frequently re-watch the movies (mostly the first 3) I was heavily into the fandom communities. I even penned a few fan-fictions and was a regular visitor, and even a moderator, for a few communities on Live Journal. 

For the record, Norribeth (James Norrington/Elizabeth) is my OTP.  Image by SunsetDawn20 on DeviantArt.

The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has five films to its name now. Not bad considering the whole thing started off being based on a theme-park ride. There have been comics, books, video games and other media created as a result of the success of the films too. For what I'm going to discuss today, I'm just referring to the films.

I'd really like to discuss the latest instalment in the franchise. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales hit theatres worldwide at the end of May 2017. I went and saw the film during release week with my partner at the time. While he did enjoy the films, he was never into the fandom side of things like I was. 

I have a deeper knowledge of the universe the films are set in as I've read into it and know of certain canon details that weren't directly mentioned in the films. Which is why we both left the theatre with different perspectives of the film. Him being more positive and myself being more negative. A fan of this series would walk out with different feelings to a more casual viewer.

The Pirates of the Caribbean films have pretty awesome posters.

To be honest, the movie wasn't that great. It was much closer to being a steaming pile of horse poo, than being a piece of entertainment. Which is a shame, because I really did want to like it.

I didn't really enjoy the scenes where we got to learn more about Jack Sparrow. For a lot of people, his character is the whole reason they bother to watch the movies; so it made sense that the writers may have thought it best to dish out new details for his character. The problem is, what was added didn't really do much for the story the film was trying to tell. To be perfectly honest, Jack Sparrows lack of developed backstory is a large part of what makes him interesting. It probably would have been better off to leave it alone, unless it made sense for the greater context of the story. In this case, it really didn't.

The movie details how he earned his name and even his clothes. Yep, it turns out that Jack Sparrow's odd fashion sense has a backstory! I don't see how it's all that important for the plot, but okay. The main gripe I have with this particular part of the movie is that there is a bit of contradiction about the nature of his compass. The how it works and how it came to be in his possession has conflicting information given to the audience between this film and the original trilogy. This felt weird and janky and it's hard to say if it boils down to the new directors/writers not knowing the source material, or if it was a ret-con. The overall quality of the movie... or lack thereof, does have me leaning towards the former scenario over the latter. 

It was a little refreshing to see that Jack wasn't as full of "plot armour" as he has been previously in the series. He's getting old and he's starting to make mistakes. It nice to see him with some more flaws, as it makes his character more realistic. But again, this could very well be down to the drop in writing quality, simply because it was overplayed. The end result of this adjustment to his character, is that his character has de-evolved from "stupid but smart" to instead be more along the lines of being plain stupid. 

I didn't mind Barbossa in this film. Hector Barbossa has always been a favourite character of mine in the franchise. I enjoyed him as a villain in the first film and it was great seeing him back in the third and fourth instalments. Just as in the case of Jack Sparrow, the audience doesn't really know a great deal about Barbossa either. 

It turns out that Barbossa has a daughter. While it was certainly incredibly cheesy for the writers to do this, I also have an appreciation for it. Over the years it has become apparent to me that a lot of the fanbase has always imagined Barbossa as having had a daughter. So it was nice to have that for real now with the introduction of Carina. It is a shame that Barbossa died in Dead Men Tell No Tales, however it made for one of the better parts of the film. Carinas age also doesn't make a lot of sense when you consider the time line of events for her father... so, that does bother me a lot too.

The overall story was "okay" at best. Certain details were poorly explained or not even explained at all. Salazar was an enjoyable villain and the special effects on him and his crew are very impressive. Technical/Special effects in this franchise have always been pretty damn cool, and I really enjoyed seeing that "youth software" that they used on Johnny Depp in order to do the scenes of young Jack Sparrow. It's not "perfect" but it's neat!

While the visuals in this movie were pretty on point. The sound effects in some places are absolutely atrocious. At the beginning of the film when Jack Sparrow is down on his luck and gets pooped on by that sea gull... the sound effect that plays is so cartoon like and felt out of place. The audience still would have got the point without that sound being there. 

There were some new soundtracks in the film that I enjoyed, but I really didn't appreciate how a lot of the "new" tracks were basically just reusing parts from old tracks, they didn't leave an impact like with previous recycling. It's fair enough to keep the beloved scores in the film, but there is no need to reuse them where they don't suit the context. Something fresh and more personally tailored to the new characters and situations would have made the soundtrack a lot better.

The one thing that bothered me the most, as it turns out, wasn't even the fact that the major plot points weren't explained correctly or just flat out ignored. Surprised? I know I am. So what was so terrible that it trumps it? 

What actually bothered me the most was the scene that follows where Carina, Henry and Jack are captured after escaping to dry land from Salazar and his crew. As if the random introduction of unexplained cursed shark magic in the scene right before this wasn't bad enough, we ended up having to watch Jack Sparrow get married (sort of?) to some random woman. The entire scene just felt super out of place and I felt like there could have been a better way for Barbossa to end up meeting up with Jack, Carina and Henry. It just felt like slapstick that was thrown in for the sake of it. It was a poor choice to move the plot forward.

Carina is another issue. While I enjoyed her character enough, I can't help but feel the "woman of science" line was thrown around a lot... without her actually doing any science. Yes, she only really shows this off in the form of seeing the formulas on her prison cell and when she adjusts the telescope to the correct coordinates early on in the film. 

Pictured: Carina being nice enough to leave clues for the Navy so they can hunt her and the trident down

Speaking of those formulas, I found that to be a really out of place detail. Who just writes important information like that on their cell wall? It felt like it was thrown in as a lazy way for the Navy to discover what was up with the trident. If the Navy had access to a witch, and she appears to be a legitimate witch, couldn't they have the witch use her powers to help them out? At this point, why even bring up the fact that the Navy had access to the witch at all? I feel like there should have been a better way to link the Navy into all of this instead of having Carina, who is supposed to be intelligent, apparently be dumb enough to leave important information out in the open!

I barely tolerated Dead Men Tell No Tales and easily would rank it at the bottom of the list. It's such an easy pick for the weakest POTC film. 

My official Pirates of the Caribbean film ranking goes like this:

1. Curse of the Black Pearl
2. Dead Mans Chest
3. At Worlds End
4. On Stranger Tides
5. Dead Men Tell No Tales

The original film, Curse of the Black Pearl was a lot of fun and it had all the makings of a fantastic pirate-y adventure. It both holds itself up on it's own and works as an introduction to further movies. In Dead Mans Chest the story and world became more complex and things got darker. At Worlds End was my least favourite of the original trilogy as things perhaps got a little too farfetched in some scenes. As for On Stranger Tides, I think that the forth film had an okay enough plot, but I just didn't find myself connecting with any of the new characters. 

I also feel that I couldn't enjoy On Stranger Tides and Dead Men Tell No Tales because they featured Jack Sparrow too much. I think a lot of the appeal of Jacks character is that you're just waiting for the moment that he's going to show up and do something stupid... but awesomely! So if he's there for the entire film, it takes a lot of that away. Jack was on screen most of the time and the writing was trying way too hard for him to do Jack Sparrow things all of the time, so it became stale.

I guess what I'm saying is, I would really like any future films to go back to just featuring Jack Sparrow and not have him at the helm all the time. I want to feel that excitement when he comes on screen. That being said, the franchise will always hold a place in my heart, no matter how horrid any future films might turn out to be. 

At the end of the day, if Disney wants another Pirates of the Caribbean film, I know that I'll still be there for the ride.