Succinct plotting has never been among the “Pirates” films’ virtues, so suffice it to say that all three have various reasons to seek the film’s central MacGuffin: The Trident of Poseidon, which has the power to undo curses. The film gives these two precious little to play, but considering their broad physical resemblances and virtually identical character types, it’s hard not to compare Thwaites’ and Scodelario’s performances to Bloom’s and Knightley’s in the first “Pirates,” and the comparison does them no favors. This time, his sidekicks are Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites), son of the first trilogy’s Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) and Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario), a defiant, proto-feminist astronomer accused of witchcraft. And once again, he makes the acquaintance of two straight-arrow youngsters. Once again, Sparrow begins the film attempting a heist, and subsequently facing imminent execution at the hands of some dour British soldiers. Now that his public image is less rosy, audience indulgence of his idiosyncrasies might be less forgiving.) (One hesitates to delve too deeply into Depp’s offscreen scandals, but a key factor in “Pirates’” success was the way Sparrow both melded with and exemplified Depp’s early-2000s reputation as Hollywood’s most beloved iconoclast.
His performance here is no better and no worse than in his previous two or three outings, though what once was a bracingly anarchic approach is starting to feel a bit old hat, like a standup comic rehashing vintage punchlines for cheers of recognition, rather than laughs. Once again serving as both protagonist and comic relief, Johnny Depp reprises his role as drunken, dissolute, sporadically decipherable pirate Captain Jack Sparrow. Hence, the studio has resorted to a “soft reboot,” which in this case means mimicking the structure and story beats of the series’ first installment, with markedly diminished returns. But considering the quality of some of the other big-money franchises in Disney’s fleet, “Pirates” needs to make a far better case for its seaworthiness if it expects to see future voyages.Īfter the triumph of “Black Pearl,” the two Verbinski-directed sequels grew ever more bloated and obsessed with their own cod-mythology as they went the fourth film, directed by Rob Marshall, reined in some of its predecessors’ more lumbering tendencies, yet seemed to leave the franchise with nowhere to go. It will surely make money, and the estimated wait times for its namesake ride will spike in Disney parks worldwide.
#THE PIRATES 2005 MOVIE REVIEW PRO#
The franchise has lost a bit of its luster with every successive installment, but never has a “Pirates” film felt this inessential, this depressingly pro forma. Containing only the faintest traces of the spark that turned this once unpromising idea into a nearly four billion-dollar enterprise, Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg’s “ Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” is a mercenary, visually unappealing exercise in brand maintenance. Now, 14 years and four films later, the “Pirates” franchise has finally delivered exactly what cynics had expected all along. To just about everyone’s surprise, Gore Verbinski’s 2003 “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” was an inspired piece of old-school popcorn entertainment more clever, more fun, and fundamentally riskier than it had any right to be. When Disney first announced plans to build a feature film out of its venerable Pirates of the Caribbean ride, there was little reason to expect anything more than a grab for quick cash and a few Disneyland cross-promotional opportunities.
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