Dead Men Tell No Tales Botches the Attempt to Recapture Pirates Magic

Rating: 5/10 (5 June 2017)

I walked out of the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Dead Men Tell No Tales, deflated. I did not expect the movie to stand toe-to-toe with Gore Verbinski's trilogy, but my hopes were high for something of a return to what made the series such a big hit in the 2000s. Dead Men Tell No Tales does try to rekindle some impression of the classic trilogy, but it trips up areas that every other chapter thrived in. The new directors, Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg, bring daffy energy to the film, but fumble the action set-pieces the series is known for. The new villains are inspired, but the old hero is botched. The script revives lingering plot threads, but doesn't understand why droves of people fell in love with the series to begin with. I'm such a big fan of this series' brand of swashbuckling adventure that I was willing to forgive plenty of the film's many clunky creative decisions, but by the end of Pirates 5, I left feeling that maybe dead men are better off telling no tales at all.
Unlike On Stranger Tides, which took pains to separate itself from Verbinski Trilogy, Dead Men Tell No Tales tries to plug back into the history of the first three films. The driving force of the plot is Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites) who must locate The Trident of Poseidon to free his father from the Flying Dutchman. Suffice to say, each camp, including Captain Jack's gang and Javier Bardem's Captain Salazar and his frightening ghost crew, want the trident for their own reasons. Salazar is after Jack Sparrow (AKA "Jas-berrrrow") for revenge after Sparrow killed his entire crew in a battle at sea. That battle is recalled in a neat flashback scene starring a convincingly de-aged Johnny Depp. For what it's worth, the new curses and myths within the story seem like they come from the same DNA as Pirates 1-3.
Some characters also return from At World's End, but let's not pretend that means anything. It's just nice to see familiar faces. The new faces, as was the case in On Stranger Tides, are dull. Henry serves his purpose and connects the film to the earlier Pirates films, and Bardem's Salazar is a frightening villain, well designed and creepy. But on the other end of the spectrum is Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario), an astronomer who holds the key to the location of this trident everyone is talking about. She is a black spot on the cast; a blatant attempt at cashing in on the "strong, independent woman" trend. She's a girl-power gimmick. I hated her in her first half minute on screen, and things never got better. The good news is, she gets lost among the droning staleness of the rest of the large cast.
And what about the man of the hour, ol' Captain Jack? How does Johnny Depp fare in this fifth go around as Jack Sparrow? Badly, I'm afraid. Here's where things get ugly. Jack Sparrow, who for four movies added an eccentric spark to the series' adventures, now comes close to actually subtracting from the story. Where Captain Jack was once a charismatic trickster, he is now a complete and utter buffoon. Johnny Depp plays Jack drunker, higher-pitched, and leagues dumber than ever before. It's like the original, Oscar-nominated Jack Sparrow got kicked in the head by a horse. I can blame Depp for a lot of the problems with Jack Sparrow, but it's certainly not his fault that every situation he finds himself in is written for laughs. 'Dead Men' is the first Pirates movie without writers Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott, and I believe the script is worse for it. Jeff Nathanson doesn't seem to understand how to use Jack Sparrow. He worked so well in the first three movies because he was a lovable scoundrel; charismatic and unpredictable, yes, but always a step ahead of the game. Captain Jack was a clever son-of-a-gun, not a clown. In Dead Men Tell No Tales, his dial is perpetually set to "goofball". Yeah, he's funny, and Depp is a fine comedic actor, but Jack Sparrow is one of the most iconic characters in cinema history for reasons beyond conjuring laughs.
The directors Sandberg and Rønning are not in the same class as the swashbuckling maestro Gore Verbinski. They even struggle to match Rob Marshall's average work in On Stranger Tides. At least Marshall kept things clean. Sandberg and Rønning do a sloppy job with the big set-pieces. There are moments of fun on land or in the big ship vs ship battles, yet the action scenes often fall into traps that the franchise had managed to avoid for 14 years. Almost every action scene suffers from choppy editing, and there are times when the lighting gets so murky that scenes become incomprehensible. Rob Marshall's action scenes may have been tepid, but they were basically fun. The action scenes here are frustrating. A long, long way from the rousing excitement of the Verbinski movies.
For Pirates fans like myself, Dead Men Tell No Tales promised a welcome bit of adventuring, with a story that returns to the same threads we left in 2007. It could have worked, but this movie has major problems, some of which teeter on fatal. Its too juvenile for its own good, Johnny Depp leans way too far into goofy slapstick, and the directors struggle to find their footing in this universe. I like adventure movies, and in these cynical times, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales does provide a wholesome (In a PG-13 sort of way) bout of summer escapism. Still, even for those of us who love this franchise, Pirates 5 made me wish these dead men would have stopped telling tales at 4.
55/100