Disclaimer:

The film I’m reviewing today is rated: PG-13

Certain images and content included in this post will not be suitable for children.

Before I go into my usual tangent on my first impression of this film I think I should come clean: this is the only one of the Pirates films that I haven’t seen. In the case of most other things I’ve reviewed on my blog so far (with the exception of the TV series Everything’s Gonna Be Okay and the animated Nickelodeon show Avatar: the Last Airbender) each one is something that I’ve seen at least once prior to reviewing it. Sure I may have seen it weeks, months, or even years prior, but I’ve at least seen them once. This is my first movie that I’m pretty much going into blind. Given the quality of the last 3 Pirates films I don’t have high hopes for the quality of this one either, but I suppose it does also help my sense of bias to some degree. Personally I think no expectations is better than any expectations since expectations can either ruin a good movie or hype up a bad one (and generally cloud our judgment), but since I’ve already made the choice to review each of the films of this franchise in turn, there wasn’t any way I was going to be able to go into this without some kind of expectations.

Considering that this movie was released in 2017 I’m at least expecting a heavy usage of high budget computer generated effects since that’s what entertainment decided we wanted somewhere in the mid to late 90’s and early aughts and it’s only been turbocharged since the 2010’s. As far as story is concerned, I’m definitely not getting my hopes up. This series hasn’t had anywhere to go script-wise since movie 2 and now we’re somehow on movie 5 so whatever happens I’m at least prepared for a lot of random bull crap. If this movie has anything going for it, I’m kinda hoping it follows the lead of Dead Man’s Chest to some degree. What I mean is that while the movie itself may not be that good as a whole (because let’s be real, it probably won’t), it may at least have a few moments here and there that’ll make me glad I saw it. Besides that though I suppose I should stop yapping and get straight to it then.

I don’t have any witty remarks for this one since I haven’t seen it yet, so here’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales!

We don’t know who this is yet until eventually we see he’s a kid and he rows out onto the ocean to throw himself into it. You’d think there would be someone looking after this kid to prevent something like this from happening, but whatever. Although, I’m guessing the kid just figured out what movie he’s in.

*You can't get out of your contract* ***that*** *easily!*

So he’s rescued by the Flying Dutchman. You know what that means? More Will!!! yay… Okay, in all fairness Will (played for the fourth time by Orlando Bloom) actually isn’t in this movie for very long, just the opening and ending. Why did he come to save this random boy however? Well, this random boy isn’t random at all, it’s actually his son Henry Turner (played in this flashback by Lewis McGowan) who thinks he may have a way to break his father’s curse: the Trident of Poseidon. Supposedly it has the ability to break all nautical curses. That didn’t seem to help the skeleton pirates in the first movie, but whatever. Will however isn’t convinced that it’s real despite the fact that he literally stands before his son right now under the influence of a nautical curse, but whatever! Dejected, Henry gets back on his rowboat and sets out to have no personality for the rest of this movie. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Nine years later Henry (now played by Brenton Thwaites) somehow managed to make his way into the Royal Navy and they’re in the process of chasing a pirate ship. Directly into the Devil’s Triangle. Smart. Henry goes to warn the captain of the danger but this insubordination only results in him being locked in the brig for treason. Great job Henry. How many was it, like 80+ against 1, how else did you expect this to go? After sailing into said triangle the crew finds themselves at the mercy of yet another ghost story crew in this franchise, this time led by Captain Salazar (played by Javier Bardem). Not only is this clearly not an original idea (in this movie or any other), but they cement its unoriginality by having Salazar’s first line be this:

That’s quite possibly the most boring and generic thing they could’ve had him say. I honestly would’ve preferred if they had this back-and-forth:

*They say "You don't have to do this."*
It would've been equally as unoriginal, but I would've liked it more than what they actually did!

Speaking of Salazar, he’s probably one of the strangest things in this movie. Granted Pirates villains up until now have had a motif of oddness from Barbossa’s over-the-top-ness, Davy Jones’ weird pronunciations and design, and Blackbeard’s…senility I’ve grown accustomed to strange Pirates villains. The kind of strange that Salazar is however isn’t fun (much like Blackbeard) it’s just…strange. Firstly, like I predicted in my introduction, this movie contains a lot of overblown computer generated effects which show the most with Captain Salazar and his crew. In the case of Salazar, one thing you’ll probably notice early on is that his hair is constantly in motion as if he’s constantly submerged in water. I will concede some ground that it can be kinda cool, but it’s mostly distracting. Javier Bardem is a great actor and has been able to pull off a wide range of performances, but most of that has been through both his facial expressions and voice. The constantly waving underwater hair Salazar has can cause your eyes to drift when you’re watching and distract you from Bardem’s face which is where your attention should be. Not only that but they put this weird filter over Bardem’s voice which just makes him sound very breathy and awkward. I know they’re trying to make him sound creepier, but if I’m more scared of him flipping a coin in No Country for Old Men then something’s not working.

All of this adding to Javier Bardem’s performance ends up taking away a lot of what makes him enjoyable to watch. A good example of something that makes concepts like this work a lot better is Eris from the Dreamworks animated film Sinbad. While I’m not saying this movie was good overall, at least this one particular aspect was very well done. Since the movie is animated they have Eris, the Goddess of Discord, move around like she’s made of smoke or fluid of some sort which results in some really impressive animation of her whizzing from place to place in a flash, her hair constantly waving around, and her dissolving and reappearing elsewhere. It works well here since the film is animated so it’s all the same medium. The drawing and inking come together perfectly and match each of the other environments of the film easily. In the case of Dead Men Tell No Tales it doesn’t work as well since it’s such an obvious CG effect that it keeps reminding you what you’re seeing isn’t directly in front of the camera. It immediately creates a disconnect between the film and the audience which can make it harder to focus on the plot, characters, or even the visuals.

*Death...*
Also, he's obsessed with death. Boring.

Last thing about Salazar (sorry, I know I’m talking a lot about him) is that he starts the movie by killing this ship full of Royal Navy leaving Henry as the only one alive. Although, it’s revealed later in the film that Salazar actually had a reasonably honorable goal of ridding the seas of pirates. If that’s the case though, then why did he kill this ship full of Royal Navy? His whole thing is getting rid of pirates, so why wouldn’t he just talk to the Navy instead of killing them? That and since he’s been cursed the only person he’s cared about is Jack Sparrow (because of course), so right out of the gate his motivations are already shaky. Like I said though, Salazar leaves Henry to go back and deliver the message to Jack that Salazar wants to kill him. He would do it himself, but -

Oh you think I'm joking. No, that's literally what the movie does.

Meanwhile, back on the isle of St. Martin (because we totally know and care what that is), a certain Carina Smyth (played by Kaya Scodelario) is accused of witchcraft and sentenced to be hanged until she escapes. Eventually she’ll become a main character, but her entire personality is just ‘not being a witch’ and daddy issues. Yeah, it’s honestly kinda painful since the majority of the film is about “Women Oppression” whenever she’s on screen! While I’m not saying stuff like that didn’t exist and wasn’t bad (because it very much was), the movie leans into that stuff way too hard to the point where they forgot to give Carina any character. Sure you can address the harshness of the past that women had to go through, but at least make us like and relate to her! Also, I think this just speaks to a common motif of Disney nowadays where they try to seem “woke” by putting stuff like this in their films but not actually doing anything with it. On the surface it feels like something deeper is being offered, but once you think about it for 2 seconds you realize there’s nothing beneath the surface. It’s just in there for Disney to earn cheap SJW Twitter points (or as I call it: Xitter) and Disney can keep being hypocrites behind the scenes the whole time. They literally have their own lobbying group with some surprising reach in Congress that advocates for the exact opposite of civil rights!

*I confess that I am* ***not*** *a witch*. Neither do I have any development.

At the same time the St. Martin Bank is being opened. They sure talk a big game, but this is pretty embarrassing.

If nothing else, every Jack intro is pretty good in these movies.

It gets better.

*...Frances?*
That would probably be funnier if I wasn't thinking about the Depp/Heard trial.

As it turns out Jack (played for the…last?

- time by Johnny Depp) is currently in the process of robbing said bank with the help of his crew and 12 horses. Using those 12 horses, attached with ropes to the vault inside the bank, they manage to pull both it and the entire building down the street.

No.

In case you’re curious, this is what it looks like:

Sure I guess it’s pretty goofy, is a fun visual on its own, and brings some color back into these movies, but Curse never went so far as to do something this crazy! There were a few things here and there that did make you question the movie’s logic, but it did at least follow your general preconceived ideas of how the world worked (with the exception of the supernatural stuff) to the point where it wasn’t that distracting if you didn’t bother paying attention to it. With this, how is this supposed to be real? Like at all? If you’re paying attention or not I don’t know how you’re supposed to see this as something that could legit happen in real life! Especially after the mayor already announced that the vault in itself weighs 1 imperial tonne (2,240 lbs.)! So they drag the whole-ass building through the town and eventually pick up Carina along the way while exploiting more oppression clichés.

As a dog woman myself, I am offended.
In case it didn't come across, that was a joke.

Eventually the bank gag comes to a head with this image.

Unfortunately, Jack forgot to close the vault before they dragged everything through town, so every bit of gold that was inside of it fell out during the transportation process. His crew is so frustrated and fed up that they end up abandoning him. This means that Jack is down on his luck. For the

FIFTH

FRIGGIN’

TIME!

Okay, I understand trying to establish a style and whatnot, but this isn’t stylistic it’s just freaking repetitive! In The Curse of the Black Pearl Jack was mutinied upon before the movie even started and the film was more or less about him trying to reclaim his lost title and glory. Dead Man’s Chest had Jack’s crew start to question his leadership after several lackluster adventures and being chased around by the Royal Navy relentlessly until his debt with Davy Jones caught up with him. At World’s End started with Jack literally dead and a significant chunk of the movie was about going to rescue him while it ended with him being mutinied upon again! On Stranger Tides had Jack give up on the quest for finding the Fountain of Youth since he was low on resources and he ended up saving Gibbs to help him out on the journey. Now he’s had several botched adventures to the point where his crew doesn’t believe in him anymore and he’s left by himself. Are these movies just allergic to originality? All of that was just an exercise in “How to make Jack miserable.” To be fair, watching Gibbs (played for the fifth time by Kevin McNally) walk out on Jack was a bit surprising and even a bit emotional. Mostly because throughout all the movies, despite everything they’ve been through, Gibbs has been the only one fully dedicated to helping Jack no matter what, so it was a little sad to see him let Jack go.

Anyway, we have a scene of Henry in a hospital recovering after the Salazar stuff he went through earlier, but the people around him don’t seem to trust him all that much.

*Your sleeves have been ripped. The mark of treason*.

Carina disguised as a nun comes in to ask for help from Henry, though she’s a bit skeptical about the concept of curses and ghosts and whatnot that Henry keeps talking about. After all she’s a woman of science (an astronomer), so she doesn’t have time for stuff like that. Normally I wouldn’t nitpick this because I’m also a bit more scientifically inclined myself and less likely to believe the kind of stuff that Henry’s talking about in real life. The only problem with this is that this is Pirates of the Caribbean! This series was founded on supernatural stuff and literally every movie has involved some form of paranormal threat, so my only thought is why wouldn’t this stuff be common knowledge at this point in this universe?! Sure she seems more rational and level-headed, but in the context of the movie, comments like this make her look like a Flat-Earther! She also literally just saw a whole-ass bank run through the town being pulled by 12 horses, so where’s your “Science” on that one?!

She also reveals she inherited the diary of Galileo from her father that she never met which is where she got her star fixation from, and she tells Henry that when a blood moon rises the ruby crystal on the front of it will glow and reveal the location of the ‘map no man can rea -

You're right. Watching these movies for this long has taught me when to fast forward. I will still comment on this though.

*This map has never been seen nor read by any man*.

Sorry, I wrote that how it should’ve been written. This is what’s actually said:

It’s not bad, but it’s not funny either. Sure it’s also not something huge, but it would’ve been a quick and easy way to get us to like Carina a little more. Even in the smallest of scenes they’re missing out on key moments to give her personality and relatability! Anyway, she ends up getting captured by Royal Guards and Henry manages to escape. This leads us back to Jack and his shenanigans.

Considering he’s washed up for the fifth time in this creatively bankrupt series that was creatively bankrupt the minute it became a series, Jack wants to drown his misery in booze like any sensible pirate. Since Jack is so desperate, he ends up trading his compass away for that sweet sweet rum even though he knows that if he gives away his compass, his greatest fear (Captain Salazar) will come after him. I will give some credit that despite the bar shaking due to the release of Jack’s worst nightmare, this is all he has to say.

*Pirate's life*.
Yeah, I'll give him a point for that.

Sure that was pretty good, but when we see Salazar and his crew gain their freedom from the Devil’s Triangle, we see Salazar doing this:

He's just standing there doing nothing!
I like to believe that he was just patiently waiting for something to happen while passing the time on his Nintendo DS.

Unfortunately for Jack, right after he picks up his bottle of rum it gets shot to pieces by Royal Guards who swiftly arrest him and swear to execute him the following morning. That makes me like the whole trading the compass away for rum even more honestly. Not only the fact he traded it for something so minor, but the fact that it ended up being destroyed that quickly making it amount to absolutely nothing is just hilarious to me. In the commotion, Henry picks up Jack’s trail and follows him to his cell in disguise, Salazar starts his oceanic killing spree on his hunt for Jack, the blood moon rises in Carina’s cell revealing the location of the map, and the one saving grace in all these movies comes back into play.

Geoffrey Rush, we truly don't deserve you.

Barbossa (played for the final time by Geoffrey Rush) is warned by his crew that Salazar has been released and is slowly taking down every pirate ship he comes across including the fleet that Barbossa controls on account of him acquiring the Queen Anne’s Revenge at the end of the last film. Worried, he goes to see his witch friend Shansa (played by Golshifteh Farahani (joke’s on you, I don’t have to pronounce that!)) whose never been brought up in the films until now. He wants to know what he needs to do to overcome Salazar and his cursed ship, so she gives him Jack’s compass that she spawned out of thin air (she’s a witch so I’ll give it a pass) to lead him to Jack when Salazar inevitably catches up to him.

The next morning Jack is due to be executed until he comes across a familiar face.

*Jackie boy!*
Yes folks, that's **Paul McCartney** playing Jack's uncle.

Believe it or not, I actually like this cameo more than Keith Richards’ cameos. Not to say it’s a good cameo necessarily, but the cameos in the 2 previous films with Keith Richards were so pointless when they shouldn’t have been that it made them so annoying to see. In the case of this Paul McCartney cameo however, it knows it’s a pointless cameo and treats it like a pointless cameo. If you cut this part out of the movie you definitely wouldn’t miss anything, but the pure randomness and oddness of it makes me laugh in the strangest of ways. Sure the joke he tells isn’t that funny either, but what makes it funny is the reaction to the punchline.

*A skeleton goes into a bar, orders a beer and a mop.*

[distant laughter]
I don't care, this stupid scene is the *funniest* in the movie!

Jack and Carina are simultaneously slated to be executed that morning, and I’m not gonna lie, it’s this scene that’s surprisingly good too. So far in the film we’ve had pretty generic setups and mostly unfunny humor, but it’s what happens here that really breaks me out of the monotony. When Jack steps up to be executed via guillotine and Carina steps up to be executed via noose, neither of them can help but argue with each other about who gets executed first. For real, seeing these two bicker like children over who dies first and who has the more painless method of execution gets some genuine chuckles out of me until we see Henry swoop in.

What then proceeds is essentially a comedy of errors as we take part in quite possibly the wackiest of escapes in these movies so far (which is definitely saying something) on par with the energy of Curse and those few moments from Chest. Henry managed to get Jack’s old crew back on board by paying them to save him and they end up blasting the guillotine platform Jack is on with a cannon. This results in the guillotine hanging on to the platform by a single wooden beam while it constantly swings around and around like so.

While not particularly realistic, it is at least a creative concept and interesting to watch.
However it would be great if Jack did die so we can make sure there'll be no more sequels.

We also have a pretty dumb Carina rescue attempt courtesy of Scrum (played again by Stephen Graham).

The way the executioner is practically a brick wall compared to him...

Jack’s guillotine disintegrates resulting in this moment too.

One thing that does bring down the mood though is just knowing that this is another Pirates sequel. Sure this might be a good moment, but you know they’re gonna throw in some bull crap later that’ll overshadow all of this anyway. Heck, they’ve already thrown in some bull crap! It’s the fact that once this is over we have to return to that bull crap that’s so annoying, why can’t we just have this craziness for the rest of the movie?! I know nothing else is going to be better than this in the movie, so why even try? Even worse, the name of the ship they escape on is also kinda funny.

Dammit, movie! Stop trying to convince me effort went into this!

As predicted, the fun we just had must now come to an end because: Pirates sequel. Barbossa’s crew comes into contact with Salazar and Barbossa convinces Salazar that he can lead him to Jack with the compass. In the meantime Carina reveals that the ‘map no man can read’ is in the sky. Constellations. Wait, how has anyone been able to get where they needed to go in these movies so far without knowing this? Using constellations on the high seas to navigate is a common method ships use, so what have they been using besides this? Jack’s stupid compass? Okay, then how has everyone else gotten to where they needed to go? I knew this dumb-ness was gonna show up again soon. In the meantime, Shansa (the witch from earlier) tells the kinda-sorta-maybe side villain where to find the Trident. Everyone wave at Shansa’s final scene in the movie! She was so needed. Also, we get Salazar’s backstory which actually includes visuals this time unlike the last film.

Like I said earlier, when Salazar was alive he made it his goal to rid the oceans of all pirates. This is because his father and grandfather were killed by pirates, so he has a personal vendetta built in. Here is also when he met Jack and when Jack got his compass from some random pirate we’ve never seen before. The movie seems to have forgotten that it was Tia Dalma that gave Jack his compass and not this random pirate we’ve never seen before, -

*The compass you bartered from me cannot lead you to this?*
but ***WHATEVER!***

Young Jack was one of the few pirates left in the ocean after Salazar’s massacres, but it’s because of his trickery back then that Salazar ended up in the Devil’s Triangle and has been cursed for the past several years. I will also say that the de-aging effects on Johnny Depp do work occasionally. I’d also like to clear the record for my Dial of Destiny review. I believe the de-aging effects on Harrison Ford did look good occasionally as well, I don’t know why I forgot to put that in there, but much like Dial of Destiny the de-aging effects can also be distracting and weird in Dead Men Tell No Tales as well.

Is there a way in the de-aging process to make your subject look less like their skin is made of memory foam?

The end of Salazar’s story and the finding of Jack’s ship in the present also marks the halfway point in the movie. If you’re like me, you might be a bit surprised by this. Not that the movie will be over soon, believe me I’m very glad about that, but that it feels like it went by so fast. That’s probably one of my larger issues with the movie: it feels like practically nothing happens. Sure there are goals set up and accomplished by the end, but there’s almost nothing in-between. A journey is completed, but it’s never felt. One thing I noticed the first time I saw this was that I tended to zone out pretty often during these midway scenes. From time to time there’d be a moment that would shock me out of my stupor and get my brain thinking again, but those were pretty few and far between. As a result the movie feels a lot shorter than it is to the point where I was surprised it was over so soon. Granted this movie is the shortest of the franchise, but it’s still over 2 hours long. The thing about making a movie that long is that you need to make sure there’s a legitimate reason for it to be that long. Everything has to be moving forward either on a plot level or character level in every shot, or in the case of an adventure film like this one, you have to feel invested in the journey the characters are taking every step of the way, and this movie doesn’t do that. In the end the plot looks more or less like this:

Do thing
Do thing
Do thing
Fight thing
Do thing
Fight thing
…and we’re done.

Funny enough Beauty and the Beast, a movie that’s a whole 30-45 minutes shorter than this film, actually feels longer. To me this is mostly because there are so many things that the filmmakers are getting across in every scene that keep you invested and make it feel as if you lived with these characters by the end, because you really have. In this film it’s kind of a blink and you miss it sort of storytelling. Once again you have the classic Pirates overwritten complex style, but a large part of it is also just scenes for the sake of padding the runtime. Boy did I time ‘padding the runtime’ perfectly, because after Barbossa and Salazar catch up with Jack and his crew, they get chased to shore by zombie sharks (I’m assuming when Salazar was alive he had trained live sharks take down ships for him(also, trust me, it’s not nearly as interesting as it sounds)) until they run into the jungle and get captured by these people.

Yeah, so apparently Jack owes this one guy a debt (because what else is new) and in order for Jack to repay that debt he wants Jack to marry his sister. What? What are we doing? What does this have to do with anything?! This showed up right the heck out of nowhere and is gone just as quickly. “Well clearly you just don’t understand how necessary this part of the script was to the story” says one of the writers in the comments section of this page. Yeah, I don’t! Please someone save us from this nonsense!

With Barbossa’s help, Jack gets the Black Pearl back to its former glory and they use it to sail off and find the Trident of Poseidon. Also, one thing I’d like to point out is that there are 4 characters in this franchise at this point that’ve at least made an appearance in every film. First of course is Jack Sparrow, second is Gibbs, third is Barbossa, and fourth is Jack the monkey.

On their way to the Trident, Barbossa figures out that Carina is his long lost daughter. Okay. Of course Rush plays it really well, but there’s practically no heart outside of that to make it interesting. Carina doesn’t find out about this until the end of the movie and even then she still doesn’t have that much of a personality which makes it more difficult for any of this to get any emotions out of me. The only thing she does in the end to address her newfound roots is change her name from Carina Smyth to Carina Barbossa. Yeah, and I’m Rey Skywalker. Also this happens near the end of the movie anyway! Sure we’re about 2/3rds into the film so we have some time left, but it would’ve hit a lot harder if this detail was revealed earlier on and us as the audience had to view Barbossa and his fight to stay alive differently because of this tidbit. The whole time: was he fighting for self-preservation or to save his daughter? It would’ve added layers to a franchise that is for some reason perfectly comfortable having none! Eventually they end up coming across a Royal Navy ship captained by our kinda-sorta-maybe side villain who I just realized doesn’t have a name.

He ends up getting caught by Salazar’s ship immediately after this and destroyed anyway, so who cares? I just wish the short, whiny version of Colin Firth got that same treatment in At World’s End. After that, Salazar and his crew close in on their real prey aboard the Black Pearl and they have themselves a fight sequence. I suppose it’s energetic, but it doesn’t last that particularly long and also doesn’t up the ante from any of the previous fight sequences we’ve seen in this franchise. The main reason to make a movie like this should be to add something new and impressive to this writing or visuals, and since this film was clearly made for the purposes of cha-ching, none of this is impressive at all. Also, there’s even more unoriginal bull crap in it! Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a giant statue -

Well that didn’t take long. Yeah, in the end this fight scene is pretty skippable, but the even more annoying part is that this scene was the one right before the climax! Uh-huh, they actually did that! Henry gets captured and they land on the island the stars led them to which turns out to be a perfect reflection of the stars above. More magic, I’m assuming. Carina takes the ruby she got from the front of Galileo’s diary and puts it in its proper place with no explanation as to how she figured out where it was supposed to go in a sea of glittering rocks! Moses comes in to shake things up and the Trident of Poseidon is revealed. However, Henry bursts in trying to kill Jack! Oh no! As it turns out he got possessed by Salazar. You know, if Salazar could’ve done this the whole time then why didn’t he possess Henry when he went into the Devil’s Triangle earlier? Wouldn’t that have made things a lot easier for him? You know, I really shouldn’t question things this close to the end credits. Salazar gets to the Trident first and tries to kill Jack with his non-explain-y powers, but Carina and Henry (since Salazar de-possessed Henry I guess) get to Salazar and destroy the Trident because that’s supposed to put an end to all nautical curses as previously mentioned. If it makes the movie go faster then sure. Salazar and his crew become real boys, but with the Trident destroyed the water starts to close in on them. Best get movin’!

Barbossa and the rest of the Black Pearl crew are luckily riding along the ocean’s surface just above them and lower their anchor down for their pals to climb up. Since this movie hates me though, Barbossa ends up dying.

Give me your hand, movie. GIVE ME YOUR HAND, you know what you did!

So everyone lives happily ever after more or less. After surviving this mind-numbing adventure, Henry and Carina go home to presumably prepare for their wedding (despite the fact they have no chemistry whatsoever) while Will and Elizabeth (played for the last time by Keira Knightley) meet up as well after Will’s curse is lifted. I’ll let you know if I feel an emotion. Meanwhile, Jack and the rest of his crew sail off into the sunset because: first movie, third movie, and fourth movie. I think now is probably a good time to mention as well that each Pirates film has its own post-credits scene. Yeah, I haven’t mentioned them in any of the previous reviews because they’ve pretty much been unremarkable and didn’t tie into the story at all. Mostly they’ve just been a fun and neat addition to the movie (though ‘fun’ and ‘neat’ are strongly subjective). Until now, which is why I’m mentioning it.

In The Curse of the Black Pearl the post-credits scene involved Jack the monkey stealing another medallion from the stone chest and cursing himself in the process. Dead Man’s Chest ended with the Pelegostos tribes people crowning the key dog as their new chief. At World’s End had Will come back 10 years after being cursed to see Elizabeth and the now 10 year old Henry. On Stranger Tides was pointless since it had Angelica finding the voodoo doll of Jack they had lost earlier in the film which played no part in this one. Then…the post-credits scene for this one…I can’t even, just look.

So that was Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, and quite frankly, I think it was majorly disappointing. You might be curious as to why I chose to describe it that way, so let me go into a bit more detail.

Sure this film was likely never going to live up to any sort of quality standard, but the reason I feel the need to describe it as ‘disappointing’ is because after watching and seeing those few moments that did have me enjoying myself, laughing, and getting invested in the action, the movie made me believe for a moment that it might actually do things right. I was hoping it would at least have those few moments of intrigue that made me glad I watched it like with Dead Man’s Chest. I suppose it did that to some degree, but just considering this is the fifth film in the franchise it mostly ends up being tired and stale. In the end, it’s just another Pirates sequel which is exactly what it shouldn’t be. Surprisingly enough I was actually enjoying this Pirates sequel until it reminded me it’s a Pirates sequel. With little effort thrown in, Disney clearly trying to make money off of a fading fad, and a script that’s first language is “College Essay Question”, it’s just the same old same old.

I will still attest that there are a couple things I like in this movie. They mostly revolve around those few moments with the random Paul McCartney cameo as well as that wacky escape sequence at around the 40-45 minute mark, but there are some key differences between the kind of good that this movie has compared to the kind of good something like Dead Man’s Chest has. If you read my review of that film, you might remember I said something to the effect of “This is the kind of movie I wouldn’t mind rewatching every 3 or 4 years.” In fact, I also had a similar attitude about the film 12 Monkeys that I reviewed prior to that. Both Dead Man’s Chest and 12 Monkeys have enough good things in them to make me want to experience the films in their entirety and original context after a certain amount of time has passed between viewings. In the case of Dead Men Tell No Tales however, I’d much rather clip my favorite parts on YouTube and never watch the movie again. That’s not a good sign.

If nothing else, I’ll definitely remember this film for what it could’ve been and what Disney almost gave us in some moments. At the same time however, I can’t help but be frustrated that not only are we not going to get that film, but it’s probable we’ll just get another by-the-numbers sequel after a certain amount of time. When that happens I’ll still be here to review it, but I’m not gonna like it (probably). For now though, don’t expect anything interesting out of this movie, or this franchise for your money or your weekend movie night.

As far as ratings are concerned, I think I’ll give it a 1.5/5 bloody Johnny Depps. I could probably be softer on this movie and rate it a 2/5 because of those few good scenes, but I just can’t bring myself to do it based on its sheer repetitiveness. That’s mostly what grinds my gears about this film, it’s repetitive, unoriginal, not fun, and above all: plotless. The few moments of intrigue do prevent me from rating it at or below At World’s End, but in conjunction with the rest of the franchise it’s a film that’s easily skipped.

I’m assuming this is a clip that Amber Heard has playing in her house 24/7.

Thank you as well to everyone for joining me on this journey through the Pirates franchise!

It’s certainly been…a journey, and some moments were difficult to get through, but we made it!

This definitely won’t be the last franchise I’ll do, but I prefer to put a reasonable amount of space between the franchises I cover so I don’t get too tired out.

If you have any recommendations for franchises you’d like me to cover in the future, feel free to shoot me an email through the Contact Page of this website.

Next week I’ll be going back to one-off films and I hope I’ll see you there!

Other Pirates Reviews

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

(I make no claim of ownership for any of the images used in this post)

(Each of them are owned entirely by their respective copyright holders, which are not me)

(I’m just a humble blogger who talks about movies, I do not make them)

(Yet)