BEFORE: I've reached another century mark, and usually I like to make sure that those milestones get honored by setting aside a big, important Hollywood blockbuster or a very significant movie that means a lot to me personally. Unfortunately, all I've got is the latest installment of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise. I've had something of a love/hate relationship over the years with this franchise. The first film was pretty great, it was innovative, scary, action-packed with lots of humor. With the second film, "Dead Man's Chest", I think I started to have some problems with the story, but then again, I think I saw that film while on a cruise, which I don't recommend doing - something about the rocking of the real ship while watching a film about other ships rocking back and forth, that effect was nauseating. By the third film, "At World's End", I realized the story was out of control, once they started sailing to China and such, and they weren't even IN the Caribbean any more.
If I remember the last film, "On Stranger Tides", which came out in 2011, I think it was something of a return to form, and I gave it a "6". I'll have to check all of my notes and review the plots of all the previous films in order to properly judge this new one. I re-scheduled this one several times, after not watching it following "Fantastic Beasts" or linking from "Atonement", so to make up for that, Keira Knightley carries over from "Collateral Beauty" and Johnny Depp will link to tomorrow's film.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" (Movie
THE PLOT: Captain Jack Sparrow searches for the trident of Poseidon while being pursued by an undead sea captain and his crew.
AFTER: The thing about sequels is that they constantly have to keep raising the stakes, in order to off-set the real (or imagined) gradual loss of interest and box office from the audience. This goes back to the Old Testament, which featured the Creation, a world-demolishing flood, the plagues of Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea. For the sequel, they really had to pull out all the stops, with the walking on water, raising of the dead and the Resurrection. OK, so they took things in a different direction there, but the impact was still felt. And they teased the next sequel in the Book of Revelation, and if you're still around to see it, that's bound to be a special-effects masterpiece.
I tried to review all of the previous "Pirates" plots, in preparing for this review, but it's not possible. Every time I read two paragraphs of the plots on Wikipedia, my eyes involuntarily close. Actually, that seems about right. There are SO many reversals, and parleys, and offers, and negotiations, it's enough to make your head spin. So many damn rules about how the magic objects work - and I thought the rules about the magic wand in "Bright" were bad! This time, the magic object in question is Poseidon's Trident - because naturally the trident of a Greek God would be found somewhere in the Caribbean - right? Yeah, nothing makes any sense any more. This is the ultimate magic object, with the ability to negate all the other cursed objects in the franchise - and there are a lot of them, considering there are not one but TWO cursed ships and crews in this film, the Flying Dutchman and Salazar's ship.
This Salazar character - what was up with him? I get that he was supposed to move like he was always under water, even when he wasn't, but it still seemed like the effects were off, like his mouth didn't always synch up with his dialogue, was that intentional, or just a by-product of the VFX? Anyway, his origin is tied to that of Jack Sparrow, this notorious pirate-killer took the lives of thousands of pirates, but there was one that got away, and somehow that was enough to fill him with rage that would keep him alive forever, with an army of ghost pirates and ghost sharks? He was trapped in Hell, or trapped inside the compass? Again, all of this magic stuff is incredibly murky, there are tons of rules but no real explanations for how it all works.
There's some kind of diary that talks about a map that no man can read, and somehow this relates to a pattern in the stars that allows those in the know to navigate to an island, and the island somehow is full of gems that reproduce the patterns of all the stars, or something. Blah blah blah, more gobbledygook and things that can't possibly exist. She puts the missing gem back, the waters open up and then everybody makes a mad dash for the magic thingy. I wish I could care, but this all stopped being interesting about three movies ago. There's a ship inside a bottle that's somehow a real ship shrunken down, relationships are revealed, all the curses are broken, and can't we all go home now and spend some time NOT sailing around the world looking for things? Please?
Also starring Johnny Depp (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"), Javier Bardem (last seen in "The Counsellor"), Geoffrey Rush (last seen in "Gods of Egypt"), Brenton Thwaites (ditto), Kaya Scodelario (last seen in "Clash of the Titans"), Orlando Bloom (last seen in "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies"), Kevin McNally (last seen in "The Man Who Knew Infinity"), Golshifteh Farahani (last seen in "Body of Lies"), David Wenham (last seen in "Australia"), Stephen Graham (last seen in "Season of the Witch"), Martin Klebba, Giles New, Angus Barnett, Adam Brown (also last seen in "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies"), Danny Kirrane, Delroy Atkinson, Alexander Scheer, Bruce Spence, Anthony De La Torre, Finn McLeod Ireland (last seen in "The Young Messiah"), Lewis McGowan, with cameos from Goran D. Kleut (last seen in "Hacksaw Ridge"), Paul McCartney (last seen in "Jimi: All Is By My Side")
RATING: 4 out of 10 lifeboats
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