Lots of holes in the ship...

Rating: 4/10 (31 May 2013)

I love the Pirates of the Caribbean films, all three of them, though I occasionally notice the holes in them, and though they are not perfect, they're still a lot of fun in the good ol' classic adventure style. On Stranger Tides is maybe the weakest of the films. Ian McShane is great at Blackbeard, his look is great, but Blackbeard was notorious for killing anyone simply because he could. He only kills maybe 2 or 3 people in this movie. Bruckheimer states he's the most evil character we've ever given you, not true, he hangs sailors upside down, he does burn a guy, but that's it. Disney is afraid to be too scary or villainous even though Shan Yu in Mulan killed an entire village and they prove it. Disney is simply afraid to have villains be too evil. You can't have that for your film, it really downplays it.
At the end of the film, Philip and Syrena kiss and she drags him underwater...and that's it...they don't explain what happened to them or how he's able to breathe or anything. Also I don't think we cared for the fact that mermaids are actually underwater vampires. I though it was cool that the mermaids kill sailors, but that they turn into beasts seemed silly.
I didn't care for the opening of the man lost on the raft and then we're in Spain, with the rain, lying mainly on the plain. We want an opening with our favorite characters, something like the opening to Raiders of the Lost Ark or Star Trek Into Darkness, where we catch Jack on an adventure that has nothing to do with the main one in the movie, this happens in every Indy film.
The cast is good, I don't have anything against Geoffrey Rush, he's my favorite character. Depp is always good as Jack.
That whole scene where they have to jump into the river is the worst scene in the movie. They drag out this scene for longer than absolutely necessary. We know hoe the scene is going to end; he jumps in regardless of how long you drag it out and he lives, the main character always lives through those jumps. Why are they dragging the scene out when we know what's going to happen already? They always survive the jump in adventure films, let's move on, why are they so worried he's gonna die? This is treating your audience like they haven't seen this kind of film before, insulting their intelligence.
There is not one cannon shot in the movie, only sword fights and pistols, which are cool, but still, no cannon fire which is one of the most exciting elements of pirate films.
The locations are great, classic adventure sets, good action scenes, like the sword fight between Jack and Angelica, I like the opening scenes, especially when Jack is caught in London. There's a good chase scene then and I like how Barbossa is on the same chase as Jack.
There's some good scenes, again but some stuff falls flat, even the end, which is essentially the ending of Last Crusade.