A return to form for the Pirates series

Rating: 8/10 (30 December 2018)

Let me first start off by saying that the first two Pirates movies are the air that I need to live and breath - they are the Star Wars and Empire of my generation, so my view on this film is going to be a bit bias. As a big fan I wanted to like this film but at the same time I never went into it with high expectations - and I kid you not, it is up there in my list of top 5 movies that I enjoyed the heck out of in a theatre. I am rather surprised by the amount if negative critical reception this got, and I could not disagree more about it being bland because I honestly found it rather refreshing in an age where it seems like Marvel and Star Wars are the only films that matter and the only ones that people like.
Let's start out with what I liked:
Captain Salazar was a really well-done villain by Javier Bardem and definitely my favorite part of the film. Just this character alone makes this movie a win IMO. Loved his performance and Spanish accent even if he was hamming it up a little bit here and there. The CGI for his weightless hair was also probably some of the best in the series since Davy Jones. It was also impressive how they managed to completely digitally erase the right side of his head, which was often covered up by the hair. Him and his crew being brought back to human form during the third act was predictable as hell and his demise was rather silly (as was the entire final battle), but he was definitely leagues better than Blackbeard and made for a memorable villain. Also unlike Blackbeard he had a really strong connection to Jack which made his character work well. As much as I loved the film for what it was, I really feel like it would have benefited tremendously from seeing more of Salazar as opposed to Henry, Carina, and the nonsensical Trident of Poseidon business which I'll talk about later.
I really liked most of the visual gags and thought they were very well-choreographed. You can see the whole bank heist thing coming from a mile away, but it was still hilarious. The battle between the Silent Mary, Salazar's ghost ship, and the Black Pearl was also pretty good, especially the one part where Jack using one of the Mary's canons to destroy the figurehead come to life.
While some of the score was just remixes of soundtracks from CotBP and the other films, there were some really good tracks here and there. I especially loved Salazar's theme which took me by surprise and sent chills down my spine when it unexpectedly started playing about midway through the end credits. While it was directly remixed from CotBP, I also loved the track that played after the big final battle when we see the lighthouse from the beginning for the second time. I darn near teared up.
Jack was sort of a positive and a negative at the same time. Depp definitely seemed like he was enjoying it more this time around (whereas in OST he was totally phoning it in and looked bored), although I think they somewhat missed the mark on the character himself. That whole flashback scene detailing the story of Jack and Salazar was very well done and definitely gave us classic Jack Sparrow in all his witty glory, but in the present day during the main story here he seemed like too much of a buffoon who couldn't do anything right and he had no standout moment where he planned out an escape or whatever, which is something that almost all of the previous films had.
Now here come the negatives. Most of these didn't hinder my ability to enjoy the film, but they are definitely worth bringing up:
In terms of writing - and this is probably what bugged me most - I was actually surprised by how much stuff they seemed to neglect from the previous films and expected fans of the series to ignore. I could go on forever, but things like Will Turner being cursed to captain the Flying Dutchman when the rules in DMC and AWE established that Jones was only cursed because he neglected his duties is a good example. I really wonder if the writers even saw the previous films. There being no explanation as to what, specifically, cursed Salazar and his crew when their ship crashed in the Devil's Triangle also annoyed me a little. I can't say it was good from a writing standpoint overall, but none of those inconsistencies and little annoyances took me out of the film.
The wedding scene - yuck! Why was this even in the film at all? Who thought that an audience would actually find it funny? I seriously closed my eyes when it came up. It was so gross and pointless. Why give nonfans more ammunition to trash the franchise?
The zombie sharks - why have them at all? I just thought they were a little too OTT even for Pirates because Salazar had no real need for them and I think they tried too hard with the gross factor by adding flies in their mouths... Blah. The CGI for them also looked pretty bad, but that entire chase scene was actually pretty fun despite being too OTT.
The Trident of Poseidon - this is kind of an issue with the writing, bu I didn't care for this MacGuffin at all. Much like Henry and Carina who I'll talk about later, I thought it was completely unneeded and detracted from the story. I really didn't like the phoned-in rule that all curses at sea were held inside the Trident because it again contradicts rules established in the previous films.
Henry and Carina - I thought both actors were pretty good, but the characters themselves couldn't escape feeling like complete ripoffs on Will and Elizabeth. They were obviously trying to recapture that CotBP love story vibe with these two characters, and while they were enjoyable to see on screen unlike that awful clergyman and mermaid love story in OST, I thought they were also unneeded characters at the end of the day.
Barbossa - as much as I love and welcome Geoffery Rush in the role, I feel like the ending of OST where he killed Blackbeard and took the Queen Anne's Revenge was a great end for his character arc, with him finally sailing the seas as a pirate yet again. Here I feel like he didn't even need to be a part of the film and the only purpose his presence really served was to release the Black Pearl from the bottle and for sake of a really hamfisted twist that didn't jive with me at all. Ultimately I feel like they really screwed up Barbossa.
So at the end of the day, I feel this film is nowhere near the level of bad 0/10 that critics and nonfans want it to be, but at the same time, it is simply a lazily-written entertaining film. For all of their faults, Pirates 3 and 4 are honestly more solid films than this from a writing standpoint. Technically I would rate this about a 7, but to bring the IMDb user consensus score to a more reasonable level, I'll give it an 8.