An opening note from Lisa: Andrew generously offered to see and review the new Pirates of the Caribbean film, Dead Men Tell No Tales, for this esteemed website. He suggested we do it together, as we did with our Jack In the Box review. I agreed. And then I hijacked this project. Which is fine because California is a community property state anyway, so it’s all both of ours anyway. And he’s Canadian and doesn’t know how to deal with a pushy American, so…
Before we dive into the review, which we’ll do jointly, a couple things I wanted to say that preceded our watching.
1. I was always a fan of this franchise, at least the early movies in it, because I like pirates and I like Disney. It wasn’t a hard sell. I’d given up on the last couple because, as with anything, it gets old and bloated and loses its core and is just a never-ending series of increasingly ridiculous special effects with no plot. How long can Johnny Depp go around playing Keith Richards, really? (A long time, apparently.) The new Pirates hadn’t been on my radar. Until we went to Disneyland and they were showing a featured preview of it.
Actually, before the featured preview the movie was brought to our attention because the day we arrived in Disneyland, Depp surprised riders as they boated along the Pirate’s ride, a few hours after we had done so. I was bummed to miss this celeb sighting, but as I mentioned to Andrew, not as bummed as I might have been before Depp became a problematic figure. (I’m sure Disney, who was well invested in the film by the time his divorce to Amber Heard occurred amidst allegations of domestic violence, were none too happy about Depp jeopardizing their profits.)
Back to that featured preview: Where the Muppets 3D attraction used to be (RIP, terrible puns), Disneyland had a special preview of Pirates. It was a blazing hot evening and we were enjoying some adult beverages and had some time to kill, so we entered the giant air-conditioned theater and donned our 3D glasses with zero expectations. What ensued was a roughly 10-minute clip of what I assumed then was an early part of the movie. I walked out of the theater and said to Andrew and my friend, “That was utterly ridiculous. And complete fun. I’m gonna like this.” A movie that I otherwise had no interest in was now on my radar to experience in all its theatrical glory. So good job, Disneyland/Disney Corporation.
2. Avoiding getting out of bed for my day job one morning, I read The Hollywood Reporter article on Depp and his current legal troubles, which may give you a different view of the production as well. To sum up: Depp and his old management firm are suing each other. He claims mismanagement of his funds (and a somewhat obscure argument regarding the blurring of the agent/lawyer lines that is interesting to, like, entertainment lawyers) and they’re suing him for… being an asshole? I think?
Some key takeaways: only the former agent side talked to THR, so grain of salt; Depp, in his career, has somehow blown through $650 million and is now cash-poor, with all his money going to paying current debts. Boy howdy, is that a problem I’d like to have. There are reports of erratic (at best) behavior on the set of this film. That combined with the aforementioned Heard abuse, and it makes it a wee bit harder to separate art from artist and really get into the joy of this film, but I’ll do my best.
Now, on to our review (we’ll put a spoiler warning before we ruin anything), which comes from a conversation we had after the film Thursday:
Lisa: I feel like we should start with the story of the crazy lady in front of us. I just want to mention how much I appreciate her bringing plastic bags to put her popcorn in so she could refill her large popcorn and have enough popcorn.
Andrew: To say nothing of her Disneyland 2015 hoodie and sweatpants.
L: Anyway, Pirates has been universally panned from the snippets I’ve seen, and I don’t know if they were expecting Shakespeare or what, but it wasn’t terrible.
A: Fair enough.
L: What did you think?
A: Well, I went in thinking that way, and it was worse than my low expectations. I feel like it had good moments, and nice set-piece scenes and big effects, and the combat was cool. I just wish…like you say, we’re not going for Shakespeare here, but I would have appreciated more of a consistent plot. Any sort of consistent characterization…
L: Well, I think because I’ve seen all of them, including the last one which was really bad, I thought this plot was way more consistent and coherent than a lot of them, and less running through the jungle being ridiculous unnecessarily. I think my hardest problem with it is that Jack Sparrow’s a completely unsympathetic character who’s not even the central piece.
A: I can see that. And I think we’re coming from different frames of reference, too, as the only one I’ve seen is the first one, which I felt made much more sense. It obviously wasn’t Shakespeare either, but it had somewhat of a coherent plot.
L: Yeah, I think if that’s your perspective, if you’ve only seen the first one, that one is so full of charm, and well done, and the characters are well-drawn. I’ve seen the intervening ones, which…
A: Are not?
L: Yeah. They’re shitshows. They’re like Johnny Depp being Johnny Depp.
[Spoilers follow. If you want our final thoughts while remaining unspoiled, Lisa thinks it’s decent by Pirates standards, albeit with some problems. Andrew wishes it had been better, but thinks it’s okay if you’re fine just enjoying the action sequences and turning your brain off.]
L: The one thing that was kind of funny that was a wink/nod to people who have hung in there through the whole series is that Paul McCartney shows up…
A: Oh, really?
L: Yeah, he’s the uncle in the jail. I knew you didn’t get that.
A: Yeah, I totally missed that!
L: Yeah, I didn’t want to tell you during the movie. But it’s because they modeled Jack Sparrow on Keith Richards…
A: Right.
L: And Keith Richards showed up in the other one. So yeah, Paul McCartney’s in this one. Which I probably wouldn’t have known, but I found it somewhere on the internet in my passing. Anyway, I thought the reintroduction of Elizabeth Swann was ridiculous. She literally does not have a line of dialogue, which is I think how they can get her in there, as they don’t have to pay her Screen Actors Guild’ wages. So I think it’s like “We can give you a cameo and not have to pay you a lot!”
A: That explains a lot, actually. Because I was like “Why did we never see Henry’s mom until the end?”
L: Because you don’t want to pay Keira Knightley to show up. And it wasn’t a movie about her. I was surprised Orlando Bloom was in it, actually. I didn’t know that he was going to show up.
https://youtu.be/sKUbIvaENh4
A: And who was he again?
L: He’s Will Turner! He’s Henry’s dad! No, he didn’t look like an elf.
A: Yeah, I’m bad with facial recognition. Especially when they’re all covered with pirate getups. Right, so that’s the whole Pirates lore thing going on here.
L: And you figured out that Barbossa’s her dad, right?
A: Yes, I think my biggest complaint with the movie was him, honestly.
L: Honestly, what the movie should have done, I think…clearly they’re going to sacrifice a character during the course of the movie. I really thought they were going to kill off Johnny Depp because it’s time to retire him. And he would have been much more noble to take that on, but noble isn’t really his deal.
A: Yeah, and he’s the franchise, and Disney would love to keep cranking these out.
L: Well, I don’t know if they’re going to want to because he’s such a liability at this point.
A: Yeah. I was going to say, the thing I didn’t like with the Barbossa stuff is I felt it was very inconsistently characterized. For the vast majority of the movie, he’s another asshole who doesn’t care about anyone, doesn’t care about his guys getting killed. Which can be all fine and good too, but even his motivation…
L: Yeah, that was totally lacking.
A: There was no motive! It felt very forced to me to have him go try to make a deal with the dead guys, who aren’t even after him really.
L: And can we talk about how absurd the big bad is in this? Javier Bardem as Salazar is just so over-the-top.
A: Yes.
L: And his motivation was sort of creepy ethnic cleansing-y? “I am good and pure and Spanish and all the pirates must be banished and I hate them.”
A: True. I actually had less problems with him than a lot of it, though, because he’s consistent. The thing he wants for the whole movie is to kill Jack Sparrow. And he has good reason for wanting to kill Sparrow, as we saw in the flashback. …But with so many others, the motivation’s missing. If you’re going to build your whole movie around a MacGuffin, Poseidon’s trident in this case, you should have a better reason for getting everyone together to go after it. Henry’s motivation makes sense, do this, free my dad. No one else’s motivation made any sense.
L: Right! Even Carina…
A: Yeah, “Oh, I’m trying to figure out what my dad told me.”
L: It wasn’t compelling. Although I did appreciate the “I am no man” aspect of it.
A: Yeah, I appreciated that too.
L: Even if you didn’t recognize the other Lord of the Rings character in there?
A: Yes. I did enjoy the horologist joke, though. I thought that was funny.
L: Yeah, that was a good joke. And that was the sort of clever joke that thing needed. …The thing that’s been the case for the last couple of movies is how utterly unlikable Depp’s character is. For the vast majority of the movies, drunk and stumbling is one thing, but to borrow from sports, he’ll come through in the clutch. Whereas for this whole movie, he’s just an utter irascible asshole.
A: Yeah. You make a good point there. He really isn’t essential to the movie at all. He’s just there.
L: He’s there.
A: Staggering around, and being drunk.
L: He only accidentally saves them at the end.
A: And not even, really.
L: So you thought it was awful?
A: I don’t know about awful. I think I’d only really recommend it if you want to turn your brain off. But I knew that going in, but it was even more so than I thought. There’s lots of movies I like that fall apart if you think about them too much. This felt more than that. If you think at all about it, it falls apart. I don’t think it’s the worst movie ever or anything.
L: No, I don’t think it’s the worst movie ever.
A: I think it’s a movie that could have actually been good with a little more care and attention, a little more focus on the actual story. For me, internal consistency matters; I don’t care that it’s a ridiculous world where you have zombie sailors. I don’t want to be Neil deGrasse Tyson complaining about the physics of Star Wars. But none of it really makes sense from scene to scene. Like every time we see the dead sailors at the start, they’re destroying every ship they run into with no real opposition, and then when they run into Sparrow’s ship before the crash on the island, they had like a five-minute fight and none of his crew members died.
L: Yeah, and if you think about it for even half a second, it’s like “We’re these great sailors, and we don’t see this British ship until it’s on us.”
A: That too, yeah.
L: And they don’t see the pirate ship that’s going to take out the British ship until it’s on top of them. And I’m like “Y’all got spyglasses.”
A: Yes, they look through them every five seconds. But I don’t know, what did you think? You came away with a more favorable impression than I did?
L: Yeah, I don’t know. I’ve seen review snippets, and everything is like “This is the worst, most awful movie ever, don’t waste any time.” And I realize those criticisms are coming from seasoned critics whose job it is to offer a thematic film perspective. But I just generally didn’t have a problem.
If you’re walking into this movie going “Tentpole Disney franchise movie,” I didn’t have a lot of problems with it. It’s a fun two-hour romp where they’re going to do ridiculous nonsense, and I thought it was better than the ridiculous nonsense that was the Penelope Cruz Pirates movie (2011’s On Stranger Tides, the fourth installment), or even the one where Will Turner turns into Davy Jones (2007’s At World’s End, the third installment), or the one with the cannibal island (2006’s Dead Man’s Chest, the second installment). And I thought the kid who played Henry Turner was competent. I liked the Carina character quite a bit.
A: I liked her, yeah.
L: I thought she was good. I thought she acted well.
A: I thought she was probably the best actor in this.
L: Probably. Although, she’s from the strain of, I’m sorry and I don’t mean to be reductive, but interchangeable British brunettes that Disney seems to be trotting out in everything, like Keira Knightley and Ridley Scott… that’s not her name.
A: Daisy Ridley, you mean. Ridley Scott is very different.
L: Yeah, you know what I meant! And maybe they’re good actors with strong acting backgrounds and that’s what we’re getting. Also, Henry Turner wouldn’t have been kicked off 800 British ships. His mom, if you follow the canon of the story, was the daughter of the governor of one of the British islands. His dad was a pirate, but his dad was “dead.”
A: Yeah, so he could have gotten away with a lot more.
L: Yeah. And I thought, maybe they couldn’t use whoever played Calypso in the previous movies (Naomie Harris), but the witch character they introduced was like “Here’s a woman who’s going to solve all your problems and explain all the mysteries of the world to you!” with no backstory or impetus of her own or connection. They talk about her knowing Barbossa, but there’s no real connection.
A: Yeah, I thought that was something that could have been good with a little more development. Her scenes were good, but there was no follow-through on it. Like when Barbossa walks in and she’s like “You have to pay the blood price,” but there’s no follow-up.
L: Well, he dies at the end, so maybe he does, but there’s no causal connection.
A: Yeah. And then all of a sudden, she’s helping the British!
L: Yeah, she was a captive of the British, but then there’s also this whole witches’ lair thing going on with no explanation.
A: And they’re like “We hate everything witchy!” but then “We’re going to get help from an actual witch!”
L: Well, come on, that’s a white male thing, “We’re going to exploit whatever’s useful to us.”
A: Fair enough.
L: Sorry, I’m more attuned to exploitation by white men in the current political climate. But yeah, there was no development. Maybe when we get the… that’s what I always wonder about these movies, too, “Can I see a director’s cut?” Maybe the director’s cut, maybe they were allowed to make it 20 minutes longer and give us some of that story that we’re not getting in a two-hour theatrical release. And maybe I’m overestimating what’s on that cutting room floor. Maybe there’s not anything on that cutting room floor. Maybe that is the movie.
And I hate how women are used, like the governor’s wife. And I found some of the shots very disorienting. I didn’t love the cinematography. The guillotine scene just made me dizzy, and I don’t think it’s how centrifugal force works.
A: Yeah, that was shot very oddly.
L: And towards the end, the big scene where Barbossa gets swallowed into the sea, it was so hokey-feeling to me. I thought there were some odd framing choices.
A: What was your issue with the governor’s wife?
L: Well, she shows up to cuckold the governor, doesn’t have a line of dialogue, and is shown again being subservient to her husband. It was slightly misogynistic. And she was clearly much younger than the governor too.
A: Yeah. An interesting part too is that we’re told things, but we don’t really see them. We’re told that Johnny Depp is this great pirate who inspires tremendous loyalty, and then we never see him do anything to justify that.
L: No!
A: The crew is totally justified to walk out on him. And he didn’t do anything to get them back! He’s like “You should pay me for the honor of rescuing me.”
L: Yeah. That’s what I mean by him being super-unsympathetic. Jack Sparrow’s been nothing but an asshole for four straight movies, and yet these guys are still following him around. And they show in the flashback scene at one point he was a great, brazen pirate who saved piracy. But he trades away his one valuable possession for a bottle of rum to set off this whole chain of events. You’re right, we don’t see anything worth being loyal to. Other than the running joke that pirates are dumb.
A: And that bothered me with Barbossa too. Why would anyone be loyal to him? He’s clearly willing to sacrifice all of his guys for nothing. He even shot at people who burst into his dinner!
L: Even in the Barbossa-as-Carina’s-dad thing, it’s inconsistent. A real pirate wouldn’t have given two shits. He’d probably have kids in every port.
A: Right. And to me, it felt like such an odd tonal choice, as for the first half of the movie, you’re painting him as this utter asshole, and then all of a sudden, you’re meant to be sympathetic to him and this thing with his daughter. And then I felt really annoyed by the ending too. Henry gets to have his happy ending and family reunion, and Carina doesn’t?
L: I know! I was waiting, I’m like “When’s Barbossa walking out?” Will Turner was the cursed pirate of the dead, so why shouldn’t we have Barbossa too? Why weren’t they all rescued? I guess you can maybe say “Well, there was the vague threat from the witch, and he paid the blood price.”
A: I think you’re thinking about it harder than the screenwriters did.
L: And if you had told me Carina was Jack Sparrow’s daughter, that would have made more sense to me as a choice.
A: Right. That would make a lot of sense. Because then that gives Jack Sparrow an excuse to be in this film, and an excuse to not be an asshole. And it means we don’t get the tonal shift with Barbossa. Jack’s a selfish asshole in his own right, but not a “throw his men’s lives away needlessly” asshole like Barbossa. Really, the last half of that movie with Jack Sparrow in the Barbossa role of “Oh, hey, this is my daughter,” that would be a much better movie!
L: Hire us, Hollywood. We’ll fix your scripts.
A: Right. And that’s a lot of what bugged me. I’m not expecting great scripts, but so much of it just didn’t make any sense.
L: That’s fair. I think I would say save your $8 and wait until it’s on basic cable.
A: I’d probably come to about the same conclusion. If you like pirate-y themes, if you like these movies…
L: If you like helping Disney’s bottom line.
A: Right, and you said it’s not the worst of the Pirates movies, so that’s something.
L: But story has been a problem before. There’s one where Johnny Depp’s on an island, and he’s trapped in this, like, hamster ball essentially, and is rolling through the island in this more and more ridiculous series of events, and then the story is built around it. And you put so much effort into your big action pieces, which have to be, from my understanding, scoped out so much further in advance. But then you’re piecing the story around it.
A: Right. And for me, the highlight of the movie was the 10 minutes we saw in California Adventure, stealing the bank and towing it through town.
L: Right! That was fun. And I liked Carina’s “I’m not a witch, I’m not a witch” in that part.
A: The heist nature of that, the chase, that was all fun. One other thing at the other extreme; my least favorite part of the movie was the forced wedding.
L: Yeah, why is that allowed? “Oh, here’s a hideous woman!”
A: Does that character show up anywhere else?
L: Not that I can remember! I guess you’re setting that scene up so Barbossa can come save them, but I was like, “What is happening?”
A: Right. The hideous woman jokes were pretty awful.
L: Yeah, that was just gross and unnecessary.
A: And weird, too. That made no sense. A) why the guy’s there on this island, why they have a priest suddenly there…
L: They could have just had a desert island and later Barbossa shows up. And I don’t really love “this woman’s so ugly” jokes. Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder, and I’m not supermodel pretty, and I think we should be past this.
A: It’s a cheap joke, really, is what it is.
L: And I did notice there seemed to be more cheap jokes in this one than I’m used to, especially from a Disney film. Like the toenails scene.
A: Yeah, that was cringeworthy.
L: It’s like “Where is this coming from and why are you doing it?”
A: And even, why show it? You could get there with just a cutaway.
L: Yeah. It felt way more juvenile humor than I expected.
A: That’s a good point about the juvenile nature. Honestly, you know what I wish they would have given more time to? The two Barbossa followers, who are like the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of this movie.
L: Even that, I sort of missed, there was a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the other movies, a guy with one eye that kept popping out and this bald guy, and they may have been more Statler and Waldorfy, but they were consistent throughout the movies, and then you bring in all these new people.
A: Fair enough. I thought the Barbossa followers were funny, though.
L: No, they were funny.
A: I enjoyed the “I’ll tell you where my treasure is if you tell me where yours is.” And that made me think of something else; I get that they want to do all this supernatural stuff, but why couldn’t they build more on some actual piracy? The Golden Age of piracy’s fascinating, and has been made into some fun movies we’ve watched, like The Spanish Main. And there are lots of great real characters they could have drawn on, like Anne Bonny.
L: Right. Or even outside of that period. I find Jean Lafitte fascinating. And also, there’s no real sense of place, especially in this one where it’s supposed to be the Caribbean, but they shot it in Australia.
A: Right, and I laughed at “the English colony of St. Maarten,” which was really controlled by every Caribbean power but the English. I’m not expecting perfect historical accuracy, or saying to get rid of all the supernatural, but they could have at least used some real people and locations as building blocks. It might have improved the story.
L: Yeah. Your Merchants and Marauders game creates better stories than this.
A: It sure does. So, what would have made this movie better?
L: Well, Jack Sparrow, the Peter Pan-ness of Jack Sparrow, but even Peter Pan freaking grew up at some point.
A: At least Peter Pan has goals and an agenda, Jack Sparrow’s sort of just bumbling through. He can’t even rob a bank successfully.
L: I think that’s sort of the crux of the issue. Building this around Jack Sparrow without making Jack Sparrow compelling is problematic. Or at least uninteresting.
A: And I think that sums this up. It’s fine with certain low expectations. But it could have used a better script and a better central character, and it could have been much more interesting than it actually was. And it really wasn’t a compelling reason to make another Pirates movie.
If joint Facebook accounts could write articles…