Directors: Joachim
Ronning, Espen Sandberg
Notable Cast: Johnny
Depp, Brenton Thwaites, Kaya Scodelario, Javier Bardem, Geoffrey Rush, Kevin
McNally, Golshifteh Farahani, David Wenham, Stephen Graham, Orlando Bloom,
Keira Knightley, Paul McCartney
Also Known As: Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge
To give a bit of context to this review, my opinion of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is
far from a positive one. Like most people, I was massively surprised by the
quality of the first, but the second and third entries left me cold and/or
irritated by the sheer and immense spectacle driven focus that they had quickly
succumbed to. However, with dire expectations in hand, the fourth film was
surprisingly fun. It stripped away a ton of the melodramatic set pieces for a
much more efficient (and for some, boring) summer blockbuster formula that left
me pleasantly surprised. That is not, however, a statement of On Stranger Tides’ quality as it
certainly was not a film to challenge its viewers or was even executed in any
kind of artistic fashion. It accepted itself for all its silliness and
delivered a fun standalone feature.
This now brings us to the focus of this review, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No
Tales, a somewhat hilarious title considering that at least half of its
main returning characters have been dead or dead-like for at least some portion
of this franchise. As the fifth entry into this franchise, it was mildly touted
as a finale that would wrap up some threads left hanging while maintaining the
classic concepts and even ‘returning to its roots’ to fix some of the issues
that fans had with the fourth entry. True to its promises, it kind of does all
of those things. Kind of. And it still
delivers a fun summer kick off blockbuster that fans will find enjoyable
enough. Truthfully though, Dead Men Tell
No Tales is something of a mess narratively speaking, sticking to the
formula with almost vicious intent and failing to really add anything truly
inspired or new, but not quite sinking to the depths of poorly crafted
storytelling that the second and third entry hit. To put it simply, it’s a lot
of the same old, same old. For better or worse.