Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales - Review

This review of Pirates is spoiler-free!

Pirates of the Caribbean used to hold a very special place in my heart. Back in 2003 I was just a young kid who loved the very feint fantastical idea of pirates. So when Curse of the Black Pearl came out I was in love with it, and watched it quite a few times. The followups as many people know were not as well received as the original, but they still made a lot of money. After realizing they couldn't keep using the same characters, the fourth Pirates film was Stranger Tides, a story involving almost all new characters. That movie absolutely tanked, bringing us to Dead Men Tell No Tales.

I'll say it right off the bat, this is not a great movie by any sense of the word. Dead Men Tell No Tales brings a lot of characters back from the original trilogy of films, but the main grouping of characters has changed to something a bit different. Jack Sparrow is dragged onto an adventure by a young astronomer named Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario, and the son of William Turner, Henry (Brenton Thwaites). On their tale is another previously unmentioned Spanish Captain known as Armando Salazar (Javier Bardem). Sounds like nothing new for the franchise right? Well I'm happy to say that that is not the case with Dead Men Tell No Tales, as it is more than the sum of its parts.

Let's start with our new protagonist:  Henry and Carina. Bringing youth into this story after many years of older pirates being used allows for the movie to connect with more viewers. Carina and Henry are extremely welcome introductions to the cast, as while they most definitely are the replacements for William and Elizabeth Swann, they seem to play well off on another and don't lean too heavily into the clearly foreshadowed emotional aspect of their relationship. Allowing most of the story to focus on the swashbuckling and developing the backstory of Jack himself helped this movie stand out more than the previous adventures.

Jack Sparrow has changed a lot through the history of these films. Sure he has always been a drunk, but during the original film he also happened to be a brilliant captain. This quickly deteriorated throughout the sequential films, and resulted in Jack becoming more or less of a joke of a character. Thankfully, Salazar and this newest adventure helps to bring out a more serious Jack who takes his role a bit more serious in general. Seeing a Jack who is smarter and not just a drunk raised the film even more. Bardem's Salazar also happens to be the best villain for this franchise since Barbosa in the original.  The reason he hates Jack has valid reasoning behind it, something Davey Jones didn't. Along with this, I felt the intimidation from Javier's character throughout the film.

Visually, Dead Men Tell No Tales is a feast for the eyes. Sure, some aspects of the film are rather shoddy, but overall it was hard to remember those moments when the majority was excellent. The ships sailing the open sea and battling against one another was fantastic, and even the ghost crew and Salazar himself were done fantastically. Pirates has never struggled in this area which made me even happier to see them continuing this trend. One sequence towards the end of the film is absolutely stellar with all of the different things happening on screen, I was giddy watching it.

Dead Men Tell No Tales manages to beat out a story that is strikingly similar to those of the previous films with excellent characters and great visuals The callbacks to previous films also help to keep the continuity and reason for caring about characters strong. One specific character has a much deeper story to them than previously known, and I was thrilled with that development. Moving forward, I can hope that Pirates continues it's upward trend, and if they decide to turn this into a new series of films I hope they decide to create one long story as that works much better than three separate films with no real connection between each of them. For fans of the Pirates series, this film puts the franchise back on the right track, but don't expect a mind blowing film, it's simply a fun swashbuckling adventure.

7/10